Deer Park PLCs

What is a PLC?  It is an ongoing process in which a team of teachers work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve.

Overarching Targets for the 2011-2012 School Year:

By June of 2012, teams will…

1) create and implement norms and procedures for working together.
2) identify 7-10 “Power Standards” (with supporting standards) for their subject area.
3) create/select assessments necessary to identify what students know and are able to do and to monitor student learning on a timely basis.

 

Click on the work plan below for a .pdf version of the PLC work plan.

 

 

 

Resources for 2011-2012 PLC work:

The following documents should serve as helpful resources as teams engage in PLC work throughout the year. The first document, Safety Net Curriculum, provides a visual tool for understanding the “big picture” of the work in which teams will be engaged. The second document, Standards Prioritization, provides a helpful “checklist” of items for teams to use as they work through the process of prioritizing standards and selecting power standards. The third document, the Power Standards Template, should be used as a tool to compile and organize power standards and prioritized supporting standards.

 

ALL THINGS PLC – Click the link for an excellent website where teachers and education professionals are sharing knowledge, asking questions, and finding expert insight into the issues teachers face each day in the classroom.

EXEMPLARS & “UNPACKING” RESOURCES (NEW!!) – Often times it’s helpful to see some good examples of the quality products produced by others.  Likewise, it’s often helpful to get someone else’s take on a the “meaning” of a particular standard. This page provides examples of the types of Power Standards that should emerge from the work of grade level or department teams; additionally, there are some resources to help with the “unpacking” process. If you feel like there’s something missing from the page or if you’ve got ideas for additional items that would be helpful for others to see, send me a message!

JANUARY 22nd UPDATE:

Many teams are making great progress on the creation of Power Standards, and in fact, some have completed the work! The majority of  teams throughout the district are continuing to work through the Power Standards process and there are some new and hopefully helpful documents available in on the Exemplars page detailed in the paragraph above.

As PLC teams work into the spring, they should focus the following items:

• Continue to dig into transition and content frameworks documents provided by OSPI and other agencies -  the implementation framework documents produced by PARCC (available HERE) should prove to be particularly informative and helpful in the process of prioritizing Common Core Standards.
• At the secondary level, continue to organize opportunities for ELA, social studies, science, and technical teachers to discuss informational text standards – that is, how will Social Studies and Science teachers help to hit standards related to the increased amounts of informational text expected by CCS.
• Begin discussions or refinement of Common Formative Assessments.

OCTOBER 17th UPDATE:

Throughout the fall, teams should focus on digging into the wealth of Common Core and Power Standards resources available online (many available right here on this website!). Much of the work will focus on transitioning from previous state standards to Common Core Standards (or on selecting Power Standards for non-Common Core subjects). For teams that have previously started this work, there are many helpful documents published by various organizations (regarding transition to Common Core) that should prove to be helpful resources for cross-checking and/or validating team decisions.

In the coming weeks and months, PLCs should work through the following items:

• Review Safety Net Curriculum document (link above) to ensure common purpose and focus
• Gather necessary standards documents and resources, to include:
• Common Core Standards Guides where applicable (see Common Core page)
• State Standards guides where applicable (OSPI Teaching & Learning)
• Content frameworks documents available from both SBAC and PARCC (available on the Assessment page)
• State and national transition documents (available on the Common Core page)
• Engage in study and analysis of Common Core Standards documents in applicable subject area and grade
• Study transition and content frameworks documents – framework documents produced by PARCC should prove to be particularly informative and helpful in the standards prioritization documents
• At the secondary level, organize opportunities for ELA, social studies, science, and technical teachers to discuss informational text standards.
• Begin populating the Power Standards template – to include prioritized supporting standards
• Engage in cross grade-level meetings to work on vertical alignment
• Provide FEEDBACK (make sure your logged into your dpsdmail account prior to clicking the link!)