PLC Facilitator Training
September 12, 2007
Early Release Day
“The most promising strategy for sustained, substantive
school improvement is developing the ability for school
personnel to function as professional learning
communities. (DuFour & Eaker, 1998)
Materials
• Icebreaker
• Norm Form
• PLC Log, SMART Goals, PLC Evaluation,
and PD Needs Assessment from 06-07
• Unit Plan Template
• PLC Plan Sheet
• PD Request Form
Agenda
Sept. 12 Early Out
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Team Building Activity - PLC Overview
Share District Expectations
Develop Norms
Examine your current reality
PLC Needs
Develop tentative PLC Yearly Plan
Team Building Activity
Parallel Words – Team Builder
Ask players to sit in a circle and have one person start the game by saying a random word
or phrase (such as peanut butter). The person on his or her right then says the first word
or phrase that comes to mind (for example, jelly). Continue around the circle until all
players have a chance to make a word association.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Discuss the following questions:
How does this activity reflect the power of group brainstorming and thinking?
What helps you think quickly on your feet?
How might this game help you with brainstorming? PLC Tasks?
Repeat the activity using the following words?
Round 1 – Professional
Round 2 – Learning
Round 3 – Community
After the activity write a group definition of a PLC.
Write the definition on the bottom of your “Norm Form”
Discuss:
How does your definition reflect the differences between a PLC and a traditional school?
What are some ways your PLC reflects the definition of a PLC?
What changes would need to be made to more accurately reflect the definition.
Big Idea #1 How is a Professional Learning Community different than a
traditional school?
PLC
Learning for All
In Regard To
Focus
Traditional School
Teaching
Strategies to back their
commitments
Commitments
Haphazard strategies
at best
Teachers develop and
monitor the indicators
frequently
Indicators
Indicators are often
developed by outside
sources. Monitoring is
done at the end of the
learning only.
Timely, Required,
Systemic Intervention
Response to
Students who aren’t
Learning
Left up to the individual
teacher
Educational Issues
Collaboration
Student behavior,
personalities, school
politics
Big Idea #3 For each term below explain the importance of each word in a PLC
Goals:
Data:
PLC teams establish goals, work
together to achieve the goals, and
provide periodic evidence of progress.
PLC teams are data driven. They
welcome data, use it as a catalyst for
improved teacher practice. Data is
useful only when the team has a basis
of comparison.
Common Assessments:
Improvement:
PLC teams develop common
assessments, identify how students
perform on specific skills. There is
common administration and common
scoring of the assessments. The data is
used to improve instruction and help
individual students meet the learning
goals.
Focus on continual improvement which
results in change in teaching and
learning. Improvement focuses on the
classroom not those factors that are
outside the classroom and beyond our
control.
Commitment and Persistence
Sustaining PLC’s requires:
1. Hard work
2. Focus on learning rather than teaching
3. Collaboration on matters related to
learning
4. Accountability for continuous
improvement
District Commitment
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8 Early Outs
October 8 PD Day for Data Analysis
January 2 half day for PD
2 half day Learning Teams for Core PLCs
For professional development related to data analysis, curriculum development,
common assessment development and analysis, instructional improvement,
and development of interventions and enrichments.
PLC Organization
Configuration of Teams—work with
principals to make them meaningful, if
across buildings we can help coordinate.
• Leadership of Teams—several trained
facilitators, share the leadership, identify
new facilitators to be trained, decide who
will go to principal/facilitator/PD Rep
meeting
PLC Expectations
PRODUCTS
After September Early Out
Norm Form
Tentative Yearly PLC Plan Sheet
After Each Early Out
Monthly Log
PLC Plan Sheet
Yearly Log
TBA (decided by building)
2 unit plans (Cores)
Non-cores - what makes sense?
TIME
--All PLC members are expected to meet in the building with the PLC group on
designated days from 1:15-3:30.
Schedules on early out days should be the same as a regular school day for extracurricular activities.
--Facilitators and PD Representatives will have follow-up meetings with principals
Rationale Unit Plan
Unit plans answer the questions of a PLC:
What do we want students to know?
Essential Questions
How will we know they learned it?
Assessments, Scoring, Data Analysis
C & C Question: How will we help them learn it?
Instruction & Special Ed Adaptations
What will we do when they didn’t learn?
Interventions
What will we do when they did learn?
Enrichments
Unit Plan Template
October PD Day
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Identify the 2 units you will do
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Make your unit development plan
Norms
•Why we need them?
•What they are? Samples/Categories
•Publishing the norms
•Enforcing them
•Periodic evaluation
Why Norms are Needed
Norms are ground rules to identify behaviors that will
help us do our work & discourage behaviors that
interfere with a group’s effectiveness.
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How we act
How we interact
How we conduct business
How we make decisions
How we communicate—to have honest discussions
that enable everyone to participate & be heard.
NORMS EXIST WHETHER OR NOT
YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THEM
Categories of Norms
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Time
Confidentiality
Decision Making
Participation
Leadership
SAMPLE NORMS FOR PLC’s
TIME/ATTENDANCE:
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Start & Stop on time
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Stay on task
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Attend all meetings
CONFIDENTIALITY
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Say what you need to here in the room, not in the parking lot
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Individual comments are confidential
DECISION MAKING
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Reach decisions by consensus, fist to five
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Use data to drive decisions
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We will publicly support all decisions made by the group
PARTICIPATION
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Stay on task, focus on what we have control over and what moves the PLC forward
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Listen and hear one another’s viewpoints—look at pros & cons
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It is your responsibility to make sure your idea is put in the room
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Speak directly to the person and you have issue with.
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Address issues, not personalities
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Commit to getting representative views, allow equal airtime for all participants
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Focus on being a change agent
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Be willing to experiment and make mistakes
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Think creatively
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Be responsible for the work of the PLC
LEADERSHIP:
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Assign and rotate roles of timekeeper, recorder/secretary, leader, etc.
ACTIVITY FOR DEVELOPING
NORMS
PURPOSE:
• To ensure all members have the opportunity to contribute
• To increase productivity & effectiveness
• To facilitate the achievement of your goals
PROCESS:
• Put the categories for norms on the board, may want to add a
miscellaneous
• Each person records behavior you consider ideal for a group, one
per slip of paper and place it under the appropriate category.
• 1 or 2 people will work with each category to group those with
similar ideas together.
• For each group of cards, the group writes a norm, record on chart
paper.
• Determine support for the norms
• Adopt final set of norms
OPTIONAL ACTIVITY
Consensus occurs when…
1. All points of view have been heard
2. The will of the group is evident even to those who
most oppose it.
Use Fist to Five to get consensus
All participants start with a fist and then put up the
number of fingers to indicate their level of support for
the topic.
5 = greatest support, fist=no support
Those most opposed have the opportunity to voice
their opposition
Publishing Norms
How can you keep them visible?
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Posted in meeting room
Copy for everyone
Review at the beginning of each meeting
Include on the top of each agenda
STOP & DEVELOP NORMS
• Revisit Last Year’s Norms
• Revise
• Start from Scratch
• A copy will be turned in at the
– Principal/Facilitator/PD Rep meeting following
the early out
Enforcing Norms
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? ALL GROUP MEMBERS
Norms will be violated so talk about violations & how violations
will be dealt with.
If you don’t call attention to violations, you are creating a
second set of norms.
Ask: “How would you prefer to be notified you have violated a
norm.”
Keep it light hearted , like throwing foam balls at someone who
comes in late. Use colored cards, flags, hankies. All
members must agree to these methods.
Periodically evaluate the adherence to the norm—How well did
we do on this norm.
Stop and Develop Ways for
Publishing & Enforcing
Put this on your list of norms to turn in
5 Principles of Successful Meetings
• Discuss only one topic at a time
• Use only one process at a time
• Achieve interactive and balanced
participation
• Respect cognitive conflict by eliciting
disagreements and respecting other
viewpoints
• Have all understand and agree to meeting
roles and responsibilities
Current Reality—using our data for comparison to continue
the improvement cycle.
PLC Yearly Log
SMART Goals
PLC Evaluation
PD Needs Assessment from 06-07
What were our accomplishments last year? (Log,
Smart Goals, back of PLC Evaluation)
What needs did we identify? Are there others to
add? (PD Needs Assessment)
How did we function as a team last year? (PLC
Evaluation)
Questions for PLC Groups
FOCUS ON RESULTS…
Where do we want to be?
Where are we now?
What questions do you have that data
might answer?
How will we get where we want to be?
What are we learning?
Where should we focus next?
PLC’s
Focus on educational issues
not school politics
not student behavior
not personalities
PLC PLAN SHEET
PLC GROUP NAME:___________________________________________
Members Present:____________________________________________
Members Absent:_____________________________________________
PLAN for Early Outs, PD Time to include:
Unit Development (Learning Teams will focus on Unit Development with Core Subjects)
Common Assessment Analysis & Revision
Continue sharing and developing curriculum with research-based instructional strategies, resources, interventions, and enrichments
to help reach the PLC’s SMART Goals.
Oct. 8 PD Day
Nov. 7
Dec. 5
Jan. 16
Learning
Team # 1
Cores)
Goal:
Goal
Goal
Feb. 6
March 5
April 2
Goal
May 7
GOAL
GOAL
GOAL
GOAL
Questions to be addressed at Next Meeting
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What do we want students to learn? (Curriculum Objectives, Unit Development)
How will we know if they learned it? (Assessment, Data Analysis)
What will we do if they didn’t learn it? (Instruction, Intervention)
What will we do if they did learn it? (Instruction, Enrichment)
Learning
Team #2
(Cores)
(
PLC EARLY OUT MONTHLY LOG for _____, 200_
PLC GROUP NAME:___________________________________________
Members Present:____________________________________________
Members Absent:_____________________________________________
QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED
During today’s PLC time
Next PLC Time
How will we know if they learned it? (Assessment, Data Analysis)
What do we want students to learn? (Curriculum Objectives, Unit Development)
What will we do if they didn’t learn it? (Instruction, Intervention)
What will we do if they did learn it? (Instruction, Enrichment)
TODAY’s GOAL:
RELATED SMART GOAL:
SUMMARY OF TODAY’s PLC TIME: (Include any data reported)
AGENDA FOR THE NEXT PLC TIME:
Date:
Time:
GOAL:
Materials to Bring:
Individual Responsibilities:
Place:
Leader:
PLC Facilitator Training Dates
for OCT. 8 PD Day
September 28
8:00 to 11:00: 6-12 Math
12:00 to 3:00: 6-12 Comm. Arts
October 1
8:00-11:00: 7-12 Social Studies
12:00 to 3:00: 7-12 Science
October 2
8:00 to 11:00
12:00 to 3:00
3rd-5th Grade
K-2nd Grade
Specials—TODAY - after this meeting
“A successful face-to face team is more
than just collectively intelligence.
It makes everyone work harder, think
smarter and reach better conclusions
than they would have on their own.”
James Surowiecki
“If there is anything that the research community agrees on, it is this:
The right kind of continuous, structured teacher collaboration improves
the quality of teaching and pays, big, often immediate, dividends in
student learning and professional morale in virtually any setting.”
Mike Schmoker