COMMON CORE/ STANDARDS AND PLC

3 Big Ideas of PLC

We accept learning as the fundamental purpose of our school and are willing to examine all practices in light of their impact on learning.

We are committed to working together to fulfill our fundamental purpose. We cultivate a collaborative culture through development of high-performing teams

We assess our effectiveness based on results rather than intentions

Critical Questions

What is it we expect students to learn?

How will we know when they learn?

How will we respond when they don’t learn?

How will we respond when they already know it?

What is the right work?

Educators work collaboratively and take collective responsibility for student learning.

Teams implement a guaranteed and viable curriculum, unit by unit

Teams monitor student learning through ongoing common formative assessments.

Educators use the results of common assessments

Why a guaranteed and viable curriculum

One of the most significant factors that impacts student achievement is that teachers commit to implementing a guaranteed and viable curriculum to ensure that no matter who teaches a given class, the curriculum will address certain essential content (Marzano,2003) **

We undermine the PLC process when we settle for …..

Taking the seductive shortcut and merely handing out documents to individual teachers, pretending that documents create a guarantee and viable curriculum.

What is meant by guaranteed and viable curriculum?

1. gives students access to the same essential learnings regardless of who is teaching the class and

2. can be taught in the time allotted…

It does not mean

Teachers have to teach from the same page on the same day

Teachers need to use the same instructional strategies or same materials.

It does mean

During a unit presented within a specific window of time established by the team

( for example, three weeks)

Each member of the team will work to ensure every student acquires the knowledge and skills the team has agreed are the most essential

When this is embraced

The question is not “How can I cover all the material in this textbook?”

The question becomes, “ What materials should I use and instructional opportunities must I provide to make sure that ALL students reach the benchmarks set for this course…..

How?

Identifying essential learnings- “the critical skills, knowledge, and dispositions each student must acquire as a result of each course, grade level, and unit of instruction( Dufour,2010)

Reeves calls these Power Standards— identify these from current state

standards or common core **Interesting fact------

What makes learning essential?

Endurance

standard that students will need to know for a longer period of time.

Leverage

Standard is taught and used in more than one subject

Readiness

For the next level of learning

If a standard has one or more of these characteristics it is considered a power standard

Research suggests that teams look for about 1/3 of their standards to fit one or more of these criteria

Build Consensus as a Team

Teachers individually review the list of standards for a subject area. Meet together, but work independently Shouldn’t take to long Gut reaction

Check the standards you believe to be power standards based on the criteria

Teacher teams need to come to agreement and build a consensus about which standards are power standards,

Compare common checks Come to agreement vs just voting

This step might take some time

Note: Important that everyone has a voice

Draft of Power Standards

Alignment- Check with other teams- grade level or

cross-curricular

With what will likely be on state tests- look over released items or test blueprint

Common Core-**Read Dufour response

By determining power standards

Teams can obtain a collective focus on what students must learn and then what learning will be monitored with common formative assessments

Next large group session in two weeks will center around

Interpretation and intent of standards (unwrapping and assessments.)Common Formative Assessment

Accessing the standards

OPI website: Home page

Tab across top Curriculum & Assessment Drop down menu Content Standards

Click

Find Content Standards on left hand side- Click

Will show list of all subjects-

Accessing test release items

Montana Analysis and Reporting System Can find: CRT release items Item Analysis Montana Common core field test items grade 10-11-12

I will email the link with the user name & password for this site: