Our Professional Learning Communities are working hard on three big questions: 

What does every child need to learn? (Essential skills) 

How do we know if they have learned it? (Assessment)

What do we do when they haven’t learned it or already know it? (Remediation or Enrichment)  

This is the premise of our PLC work.  Teachers also look at data and work with each other to ensure that every child has the highest quality instruction – regardless of which teacher’s classroom they happen to be in. 

The early release Wednesdays are when our entire staff is committed to our PLC work. 

Our topics for PLCs for the next few weeks are:

November:
Pyramid of Intervention focusing on math
Data Analysis of essential skills – math
Remediation lessons

December:
Pyramid of Intervention focusing on literacy
Data analysis of essential skills – literacy
Enrichment and remediation

January:
Pyramid of Intervention – Reading
Universal screening data
Analysis and implications for instruction
Remediation

February:
Data analysis of common assessments
Analysis and implications for instruction
Enrichment and remediation

On Early Release Days, our teachers are working with training in various areas to support the School Improvement Plan and to increase knowledge in our PLCs.  Topics are:

October 21 – PLC – Pyramid of Intervention – Math
December 2 – Reading (K-2)
Writing (3rd)
Technology (4th and 5th)
February 17 – PLC –  Digging deeper with Student Data
March 10 – Behavior Intervention (K-2)
Differentiation (3-5)
April 21 – PLC – Universal Screening Intervention

Update on Professional Learning Teams at Willow Springs
October 16. 2009

We really appreciate your support of the new Early Dismissal days, and we want you to know that this time is being used for some serious work to meet the needs of the students here!  Our PLTs have really been working hard  and we have accomplished a great deal to ensure that all students will experience success at Willow Springs Elementary.  So far this year, our grade levels have focused on developing essential skills in reading, writing and math.  The grade levels each discussed the key objectives for learning and then we lined everything up and shared with the grade levels above and below to make sure that we didn’t have any gaps, and the teams were able to stress objectives to place more attention on to help students be more prepared in various areas. 

Once the essential skills were determined, teachers have been studying the curriculum and using our resources to develop common assessments that will allow teachers to know if their students have mastered the objectives.  After each assessment, the teachers work together to determine which students need extra remediation on specific skills in order to become proficient.  They discuss strategies and work together as a team to come up with a plan to help all of the students on the team become successful.  Just like a team of doctors work together to diagnose and treat their patients, our teachers team up to help diagnose and support students who need help with essential skill development.

Teachers study the data from these assessments to assist them in helping each other grow stronger in their teaching skills. This allows them to see which methods were more productive for the students, and all learn from those strategies. Not only do they research and share ideas and proven methods, but they also develop ways to extend the learning of level 4 students who need to be stretched in their thinking.  By utilizing the strengths of all teachers on the grade level, the students in every classroom are able to reap the benefits of the collaborative efforts of the entire team.

The teams are also working hard to develop what we call a pyramid of intervention for literacy and math skills.  This pyramid helps teachers know what interventions are most useful for specific types of problems that students may be having.  By diagnosing carefully, and having this group of interventions to rely on, teachers are better able to meet the needs of individual students without ‘re-inventing the wheel’ each time.  Developing this pyramid of intervention takes a lot of discussion, studying research and looking at our own data.  It requires that the team meet often to discuss strategies that they have been working on to see if they work as well as they had hoped.  We will be working on the basic pyramid all year in order to make it as strong as possible.

When you look at our topics for the Early Dismissal Days, you will see a great deal of repetition.  That is because we follow the same process for each essential skill and objective – every time your child is assessed, the teachers are studying that data to improve, themselves!  Throughout the year, we will develop and revise the Pyramid of Intervention and we will look at each assessment to study data, finding out where we need to improve, deciding which students need remediation and determining which students need extension learning.