Guiding Questions for ILC
Student Learning
 What do we want students to know and be able to do?
 What is an important literacy skill that students need to
develop?
Success indicators
 How will students demonstrate that they have acquired
the essential knowledge and skills?
 How will we agree on the criteria that we will use in
judging the quality of student work, and can we apply
the criteria consistently?
Differentiated Instruction
 How will we intervene for students who struggle and
enrich the learning for students who are proficient?
o What instructional strategies will we use to build
these skills based upon our analysis of student
work?
Professional Practice and Collective Responsibility
 How will we use the evidence of student learning and
strategy implementation to improve our individual and
collective professional practice?
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Instructional Learning Cycle
School Name:
Principal:
Team Members:
Grade Level or Content Area:
Date:
Meeting 1: Identify and Align
Identify and Align
aligning measureable objective to standards, assessment and strategy
Identify CCSS literacy standard or specific literacy skill which will be the target of this ILC:
Identify the Measureable Objective for this ILC:
Identify an Instructional Strategy for this ILC:
Describe how this instructional strategy is connected to your Reform and Redesign Plan and your building
level school improvement plan (describe as best as you can):
Plan a common formative assessment that will be used during this cycle. This assessment should be short
and easy to administer but still able to provide quality information on the skill being taught.
Determine the score to be considered proficient on the chosen common formative assessment:
Determine when you are going give the students the common formative assessment you will use as a pretest:
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Instructional Learning Cycle
School Name:
Principal:
Team Members:
Grade Level or Content Area:
Date:
Meeting #2: Analyze & Plan
Analyze
discussing data and planning for instruction
Pre- Instruction Common formative assessment scores


Teachers will enter student data into their classroom template (provided in spreadsheet form).
Data teams will enter overall classroom results into their data team template (separate
spreadsheet).
What patterns emerged from our initial common formative assessment? Use the questions below to guide
your team discussion.




What did students do well on your common formative assessment?
What did students struggle with on this assessment?
How can you categorize your students by skill levels?
What skills seem to be missing among your students, or even among significant groups of
students?
Plan for instruction
Now describe one measureable and necessary skill you think students need to develop that you can target
with instruction.
How will we plan for instruction based on the skill the team has selected as a target?
What instructional strategy will be implemented and how will this strategy be embedded into your
instruction?
What barriers to implementation might we anticipate? What might we do to eliminate the barrier?
What evidence of implementation might we collect?
4
Instructional Learning Cycle
School Name:
Principal:
Team Members:
Grade Level or Content Area:
Date:
How will we differentiate for different groups of students:
(Each teacher should identify two students from each group to use as focal students. You will analyze
their work and assessments more closely to inform instructional decisions. Choose students who seem
representative of the larger patterns of skill levels you have identified).
Focal
Students
Strengths
Challenges
Next Steps
Already
proficient
Close to
proficient
Far below
proficient
What data will be collected on implementation and how will this data be collected?
 For example, you might collect student work from your focal students at specified intervals during
the Instructional Learning Cycle (beyond the pre and post test). This should include their work
samples from targeted skill instruction.
Plan for common post-test assessment
Determine when you are going give the students the common post-test assessment.
 This assessment needs to have the same skill, format, length, difficulty level, and scoring protocol
as the pre-test. This post-test can also include items that serve as your pre-test for the next cycle.
Set date for meeting #3:
5
Instructional Learning Cycle
School Name:
Principal:
Team Members:
Grade Level or Content Area:
Date:
Meeting #3: Analyze, Reflect & Respond reflecting and responding to results
Analyze implementation Data
Discuss the data collected related to how teachers implemented the instructional strategies tied to the
targeted skill for the ILC (i.e. work samples from focal students).

How successful was our implementation?

What factors might have influenced the implementation?

What other data might we need to collect on implementation of this strategy?
Analyze
Common post-test assessment scores

Teachers will enter student data into their classroom template (provided in spreadsheet form).

Data teams will enter overall classroom results into their data team template (separate
spreadsheet).
Reflect and respond to results
What conclusions can we draw about student learning?
Why did we get these results?
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Instructional Learning Cycle
School Name:
Principal:
Team Members:
Grade Level or Content Area:
Date:
Fill in the table below for the previously identified focal students, but now using the data from the posttest assessment. If any of these students have shifted categories, place them now in their new category.
Post-test
Focal
Students
Strengths
Challenges
Next Steps
Already
proficient
Close to
proficient
Far below
proficient
Compare the results of the focal students across the pre and post-test assessments. What change, if any,
do you see?
If there was no change, or little change, what can you shift in your instruction to get a different outcome?
(i.e. texts, strategies, scaffolds, etc.) If there was no change, explain how you will shift instruction but
continue with the same target skill area for the next ILC:
If you did add questions to your post-test to serve as the pre-test for the next cycle, what did you learn
from the results that can help you shape the next ILC?
 Return to page 4, Meeting #2, of this template and use the Analyze and Predict section to analyze
these results to begin your next ILC.
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