Professional Learning Community Team Facilitators Training

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Professional Learning Community Team Facilitators
Training

• February 28, 2007

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• "It is virtually impossible to create and
  sustain over timeconditions for productive
  learning for students when they do notexist for
  teachers."Seymour Sarason, Yale Universityfrom
  The Culture of the School and the Problem of
  Change

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Understanding Goals

• What are the important moves facilitators can
  make to maximize the effectiveness of PLC teams?
• How would you self-assess your schools progress
  toward the Critical Attributes of TCAPS PLC Work?
• What is formative assessment, and how can we use
  it effectively in our classrooms and PLC teams?
• What are some standard PLC meeting protocols, and
  how do we decide when one or another is most
  appropriately used by our PLC teams?
• What are some obstacles to PLC work, and how can
  we do our best to overcome them?
• What successes and challenges are other PLC teams
  experiencing and how can we learn from them?

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Introductions and Share Out

• PLEASE SHARE
• Your name, school, what you teach.
• How many PLC teams you have at your school and
  their SMART goal topics?

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Think, Puzzle, Explore

• On three different sticky notes please write
• What do you think you know about facilitating a
  PLC team?
• What puzzles you about leading PLC teams?
• What would you like to explore more about
  facilitating a PLC team?

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Core Questions of PLC Work

• What do we want students to learn?
• How do we know they are learning?
• What new or improved instructional practices can
  we use?
• What will we do for students who are not learning
  and how will we deepen the understanding of those
  who are?

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Where Have We Been?

• The WORK of the PLC Team
• Looking at and improving student and teacher work
• Experimenting with best practices instruction
• Begun work on Formative Assessment and
  Hierarchies of Intervention

• LOGISTICS
• Norms
• Calendars
• SMART goals

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How Would You Self-Assess Your Schools Progress
Toward Our Critical Attributes of TCAPS PLC Work?

• Planning and following through for students who
  do not learn
• Deepening student understanding of the essential
  questions of each subject area discipline.
• Encouraging a broader vision of the kinds of
  instruction and types of learners we want in our
  schools.

• Shared vision
• Shared leadership and decision making
• Reflective practice
• Collaborative faculty groups to examine teacher
  and student work
• Focus on understanding and results

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PLC Team Norms and Why Theyre Important

• Norms provide an atmosphere of professional
  respect and safety in which to explore hard
  questions of teacher practice and student
  achievement.
• Norms help us use the limited amount of PLC time
  to its best advantage.
• Norms encourage all participants to contribute to
  and benefit from PLC work.

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Quick Share-Out of Examples of Important Norms
from Your PLC Teams
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To PLC or Not to PLC?

• Kinds of Topics to Avoid in PLC Meetings

Useful Activities for PLC Meetings

• Review of student data.
• Setting or revising SMART goals
• Creating or learning new instructional
  approaches.
• Writing or reviewing formative or summative
  assessments.
• Sharing teacher or student work that supports
  progress toward your SMART goals.
• Designing steps or interventions to help students
  who are not yet learning.

• Building management issues
• Issues that dont relate to curriculum,
  instruction, or assessment.
• Activities you cannot directly link to your PLCs
  SMART goal(s).

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Tips on Facilitating a PLC team

• Before the meetingremind others of meeting date,
  time and place, get familiar with the meeting
  protocol, get the room and materials set.
• During the meetinglaunch the meeting, listen and
  reflect, keep the focus on the protocol and group
  norms, summarize, plan next meeting topic.
• After the meetingbrief principal, distribute
  recorders notes to all on team.
• See detailed hand-out on this topic.

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SMART Goals

• Be sure to differentiate being action steps or
  strategies and student achievement goals.
  Richard DuFour
• Strategic and specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Results-oriented does it have the language of
  student learning embedded in the goal? Ask why
  teacher practice shifts are being done? How will
  these shifts impact student achievement?
• Time Bound when will we complete this goal.

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Where are we heading?

• TCAPS PLC Priorities for 2006-2007
• Continue to develop and refine PLC team norms,
  logistics, and structures.
• Continue to refine SMART goals to reflect
  essential questions and big curricular ideas.
• Develop and deepen assessment literacy for
  principals and teachers.
• Develop and implement Hierarchies of Prevention
  and Intervention.

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Beginning a professional conversation about
assessment
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A Need for Balanced Assessment as a Means of
Monitoring Student Progress

• Assessment for Learning
• Occur frequently during learning
• The audience is primarily the students
  themselves.
• Provide lots of descriptive feedback.
• Are low-stakes
• Provide many opportunities for incremental
  improvement over time.
• May actually provide new learning in doing the
  assessment task.

• Assessments of Learning
• Come at the end of learning.
• The audiences are usually parents,
  administrators, curriculum leaders, government
  leaders.
• Can be high-stakes.
• When these assessments occur its too late to
  impact learning.
• Provide no chance for students to learn from the
  assessment itself.

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Creating Comprehensive Assessment Systems

• Formative Assessments
• Common Formative Assessments
• Interim Assessments Running Records, Periodic
  Writing Samples, End-of-Unit tests, CAAP.
• Summative Assessments
• Common Summative Assessments Standardized
  Assessments, MEAP, PLAN.

As we do our PLC work, how can we start and end
with student results?
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A Next Step with Rick Stiggins
How can we get the tools of into teachers hands
to effectively Assess for Learning?
Chapter 2 Classroom Assessment for Student
Learning DVD (10 minutes)
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Getting Beyond Standardized Tests

• How can we see assessment through new eyes? How
  can our students?
• How can assessment experiences provide students
  hope, confidence, and belief in themselves?
• How can we turn the emotion associated with
  assessment on its head?
• What assessments can you conduct that your
  students would not want to miss?

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Critical Attributes of Formative Assessment

• Feedback to students is frequent and descriptive
  and from multiple sources.
• Students have multiple chances to act on
  feedback, revise, and improve their performances
• The focus is on the work not on the attributes of
  the students.
• Students can describe in detail what the targets
  are.
• Students believe the target is within reach if
  they keep trying.

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More Qualities of Formative Assessment

• Students engage in frequent self-assessment over
  time.
• The most recent assessment information is
  considered most heavily in determining a
  summative grade. Replace out-of-date evidence
  with more recent evidence.

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A Sample Unit Assessment Plan

• Informal pre-assessment
• Formative assessment
• Formative assessment
• Formative assessment
• Formative assessment
• Summative assessment

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How Do You Use Formative Assessment? (Share Out)

• In what ways are you already using formative
  assessment?
• In what ways could you use it more?
• How could your PLC team begin to explore and
  apply the principles of formative assessment to
  impact your SMART goal?

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Possible Types of Formative Assessments

• Selected response questions
• Short answer response questions
• Extended response questions
• Rubric-based performances
• Personal Communication (Informal teacher
  questioning of individuals and groups in class)
• Criteria-based teacher observation in class.
• Student performances
• Student reflections
• Student work produced with Thinking Routines

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How to decide which type of formative assessment
to use in a particular situation?

• Type of Target
• Knowledge Mastery
• Reasoning Proficiency
• Skills
• Ability to Create Products
• Dispositions

• Assessment Method
• Selected response
• Extended written response
• Performance assessment
• Personal Communication
• Criteria-based teacher observation
• Student reflections
• Student work produced with Thinking Routines

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What can we learn from formative assessments?

• FROM THE TEACHERS VIEWPOINT
• How did my instruction work?
• What could be my next instructional moves?

• FROM THE STUDENTS VIEWPOINT
• What do I understand or can do so far?
• What do I still need to understand or do?

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Four Meeting Protocols

• Looking Together at Student Work
• Looking Together at Formative Assessments
• Looking Together at Common Formative Assessments
• Making the Decision to Change SMART Goals

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Looking Together at Student Work

• Before the meeting
• Choose a facilitator, recorder, and presenting
  teacher.
• Presenter selects student work and makes copies
  for each team member.
• At the meeting
• Facilitator reviews protocol with team members.
• Presenting teacher presents work, explains
  assignment, and may tell about student(s).
  Others listen.
• Team silently reads the work and may take notes,
  recording observations and questions.
• The team discusses their observations and
  questions. The presenting teacher is silent.
• Presenting teacher reflects on the discussion of
  the team.
• The group reflects on the process.

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Looking Together at Formative Assessments

• Before the meeting
• Choose a facilitator, recorder, and presenting
  teacher.
• Presenter selects student work and makes copies
  for each team member.
• Decide whether you will be discussing a formative
  assessment developed and used by only one team
  member or whether all team members will give the
  same or common formative assessment before the
  next meeting and youll meet to compare outcomes
  and instruction used to prepare students for the
  assessment.

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Looking Together at Common Formative Assessments

• Similar to Looking Together at Student Work
• Multiple members of the team agree to give the
  same assessment and present student work at a
  later meeting.
• The team discusses what instructional strategies
  were successful and what next instructional moves
  are indicated in the student work.

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Making the Decision to Change SMART Goals

• What does the formative and summative data show?
• Are there additional outside resources that have
  not yet been used by the PLC team?
• Has a more pressing topic emerged since the
  present SMART goal was set?
• What is the level of interest and enthusiasm for
  the current topic?
• How can topics be changed so that other teachers
  in the school can smoothly move to new groups at
  the same time?
• Are there other school or district priority
  achievement areas your group wants to address?

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Cross-District Sharing of Successful Strategies

• Please meet with teachers from other schools that
  have similar SMART goal topics to discuss
• Whats working for your team?
• What challenges or obstacles have you solved?
• What challenges or obstacles remain?
• Be ready to share out in fifteen minutes.

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Online Resources

• All Things PLC http//www.allthingsplc.info/
• TBAISD PLC Resources
• http//www.tbaisd.k12.mi.us/general_ed/gen_prof_le
  arning.asp
• TCAPS Elementary PLC Facilitators Resources
• http//www2.tcaps.net8080/plc/

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I Used to ThinkBut Now I Think

• I used to think that facilitating PLC team
  meetings

• But now I think PLC facilitating

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Works Cited

• Stiggins, Rick, et. al. Assessment for Learning
  An Action Guide for School Leaders. ATI. 2005
• Stiggins, Rick. New Assessment Beliefs for a New
  School Vision. Phi Delta Kappan. Pp. 22-27
  September 2004.
• DuFour, Rick, et. al. On Common Ground. Pp.
  65-83. NES. 2005.
• Fullan, Michael, Leadership and Sustainability
  System Thinkers in Action, Corwin Press, Thousand
  Oaks, California.  2005.

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More Works Cited

• Langer. Colton, Goff. Collaborative Analysis of
  Student Work. ASCD. 2003
• Allen, Blythe. The Facilitators Book of
  Questions. National Staff Development Council.
  2004.
• McDonald, et. al. The Power of Protocols An
  Educators Guide to Practice. Teachers College
  Press. 2003.
• Schwartz. The Skilled Facilitator. Jossey-Bass.
  2002
• Conzemius, Anne and ONeill, Jan. The Handbook
  for Smart School Teams. NES. 2002.