Learning Goal: To better understand the PLC process and how it works at Strathmore Secondary College.

What are PLCs? What the hell are FFTs? Why are we doing them?  Professional Learning Communities will involve teachers collaborating on best practice to improve student achievement at Year 7 and Year 8.  Faculty Focus Teams will involve teachers collaborating on curriculum and learning tools to improve student achievement at Year 9 and Year 10.  Each team will be focusing on improving their practice to improve student learning. Both are guided by norms that each member agrees to.  Differences: PLCs have SMART goals set by the team. FFTs have an objective and agenda set by the faculty coordinator.

PLC groups  Year 7 – TE (convener), DP, TT, VP  Year 7 – CF (convener), DU, CD, KM  Year 8 – TH (convener), PT, FV, TL  Year 8 – JP (convener), MN, GY, EC FFT  Year 9 – LS, BA, PN  Develop rubric for persuasive writing (Present at fac meeting Feb 19  Moderate and collect samples of work.  Year 10 – GV, OS, NK  Develop a rubric for Justice (Present to faculty at meeting Feb 19)  Moderating and collecting samples of work on Justice (distribute to Year 10 team)  Develop a rubric for Cartoon Analysis (Present to fac meeting March 26)  English Language – DN, LD

Focus  Establishing team norms  Setting SMART goals

Establishing norms  Underpin all good collaborative work  Ensures all team members contribute and are accountable  Allows us to develop commitment and trust with one another

Guidelines  Everyone needs to be clear on the commitments made to each other regarding how the team will work together.  Commitments need to be stated as explicit behaviors.

Criteria for team norms  The norms have clarified our expectations of one another.  All members of the team participated in creating the norms. All voices were heard.  The norms are stated as commitments to act in certain ways.  All members have commitment to honoring the norms.  Team must establish a process for addressing violations of the norms

For example  In order to make our team meetings positive and productive experience for all members, we make the following collective commitments to each other:  Begin and end out meeting on time and stay fully engaged during each meeting  Maintain a positive attitude at team meetings – no complaining unless we offer a better alternative.  Listen respectfully to each other  Contribute equally to the workload  Make decisions based on consensus  Encourage one another to honor out commitments and candidly discuss our concerns when we feel a member is not living up to those commitments  Fully support each other’s efforts to improve student learning.  Always take minutes and send them to DP.  Begin meeting by revisiting norms and previous minutes.

SMART goals  Strategic and specific  Measurable  Attainable  Results orientated  Time bound

For example  SMART Goal:  Current reality: Last year, 85% of our students met or exceeded the target score of 3 on each strand of out summative writing task.  SMART Goal: This year, at least 90% of our students will meet or exceed the target score of 3 on each strand of the summative writing prompt.

Clarify the essential writing skills  By the end of the year students will be able to:  Develop a plan for writing.  Focus on a central argument.  Support an argument with logic, reason and evidence.  Use words, phrases, and sentences to create fluency and cohesion.  Provide a concluding statement and section that supports the central argument.  Edit final copies for grammar, capitalization, punctuation and spelling

Strategies and Action Steps  In order to achieve our SMART goal, we will:  Clarify the essential writing skills.  Develop monthly common writing prompts  Agree on criteria by which we will judge the quality of student writing  Practice applying criteria consistently to establish consistency in grading.  Establish the proficiency target of 3 out of 4.  Identify examples for each stage of the rubric  Share standards, rubric, and samples with students, and teach them how to apply the rubric to their writing.

Week 1 PLC  Establish and agree to team norms (needs to be ed to faculty heads after first meeting)  Revisit the purpose of PLC – What are the four essential questions?  Decide on how notes for each meeting will be taken  Begin thinking about SMART goals.

Week 2 PLC -  Decide on SMART goals  copy to faculty head