1. PLC Unit Design Training
Welcome!
PLC Unit Design Training

2. Today’s Objectives By the end of the session…
You will have built shared knowledge of the role of PLCs in standards based unit design.
You will have a strong start on the step one: planning and preparing for your second unit of study.
You will be able to determine next steps including specific agenda items for your team.

3. The Data Team/PLC Cycle …
… is an ongoing process in which educators (teachers and administrators) work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to support the learning of each and every student.

4. Essential Questions
There are five essential questions each team should ask during this cycle:
What do we want each student to learn and be able to do?
How will we effectively teach the skills/concepts for this learning to occur?
How will we know if each student is learning?
How will we respond when a student is experiencing difficulty learning?
How will we respond if the student already knows it?

5. Meet your trainers! Mickey Garrison, Educational Excellence
Missi Thurman, Centennial School District
Amy McQueen, David Douglas School District

6. Agenda Opening/Intros Review PLC/Data team process Curriculum Mapping
Deconstructing Standards
Guided practice
Lunch
Supported Workshop Time
Reflection and Next steps
Need to change

7. PLC/Data team process

8. What are the steps to the data team process from start to end?
Morning Quiz:
What are the steps to the data team process from start to end?

9. Why NORMS?
“The establishment and adherence to team norms helps build team discipline, trust between team members, and supports a safe environment…”
Basic Norms often include:
Time agreements, Roles, Agenda Use, Methods for decision making, Commitment/Accountability statements
Higher Performing Teams often include:
Avoidance of negative talk/put downs, time set aside for celebrating success, no rank/all peers (over time), have fun, regular quality reviews.
Try to move past basic professionalism…
Those should already by a given!

10. Step 1: Plan and Prepare Instruction
Identify priority standards
Deconstruct the standards:
What is the standard asking students…
To know
Understand
Be able to do
Backward Design Model by McTighe and Wiggins
What do you want students to Know, Understand, and Be Able to Do?
How are they going to demonstrate their learning? This needs to be appropriate to the Bloom’s/DOK level suggested by the standard.
How will you know if a student is meeting the specific standard or their performance objective?
What are the key qualities you are looking for in this work?
How would you describe the criteria for meeting this standard or objective?
Address using a post-assessment as a pre-assessment—
T: My students won’t know anything, anyway.
C: May I please borrow your crystal ball?
-Or-
What are you assessing? Is it valuable? Depth of Knowledge or just discrete facts/skills?

11. Rick Stiggins
“To assess student achievement accurately, teachers and administrators must understand the achievement targets their students are to master. They cannot assess (let alone teach) achievement that has not been defined.”

12. Step 1: Plan and Prepare Instruction
Determine what proficiency looks like for the standards
Create a common assessment that assesses the standards at the appropriate DOK and Blooms Level
Create a scoring rubric that defines EACH levels proficiency
Calibrate scoring
Administer the assessment
Begin Draft of Unit Plan
Backward Design Model by McTighe and Wiggins
What do you want students to Know, Understand, and Be Able to Do?
How are they going to demonstrate their learning? This needs to be appropriate to the Bloom’s/DOK level suggested by the standard.
How will you know if a student is meeting the specific standard or their performance objective?
What are the key qualities you are looking for in this work?
How would you describe the criteria for meeting this standard or objective?
Address using a post-assessment as a pre-assessment—
T: My students won’t know anything, anyway.
C: May I please borrow your crystal ball?
-Or-
What are you assessing? Is it valuable? Depth of Knowledge or just discrete facts/skills?

13. Step 2: Organize and Chart Data
Score the assessment based on the rubric
Chart data into the following categories:
Exceeding
Meeting
Approaching
Far to Go
Bring charted data to the next meeting
What would you say about this student’s work in relation to the criteria or the performance goal?
What qualities are present or missing?
Specifically, what can this student do (or not do) based upon the criteria?

14. Step 3: Analyze and Prioritize Needs
Review the results
Determine strengths and errors/misconceptions for each group of students.
Look for patterns:
Identify common errors/misconceptions.
Determine if there are specific groups of students performing at a particular level.
Determine if there is evidence to indicate an issue with the assessment.
Always start with strengths—
What are the students able to do relative to the criteria and performance expectations?
What does this student know and/or understand?
I need to know what my students are able to do first, so that I can build upon it.
Then determine an inference as to why the students are successful on those skills.
Then look to the errors/misconceptions—
Identify the specific skills, concepts, practices, or experiences each group of students will need to progress to the next level of achievement.
Are there specific groups of students performing at a particular level, such as boys or girls, special population students, ELL, etc?
What are the crucial knowledge, skill, or content gaps we need to address?
Then write an inference as to why the students have those errors/misconceptions.
Overgeneralization of a rule?

15. Step 3: Analyze and Prioritize Needs
Determine the priority need for each group and be intentional about how skills are sequenced
Always start with strengths—
What are the students able to do relative to the criteria and performance expectations?
What does this student know and/or understand?
I need to know what my students are able to do first, so that I can build upon it.
Then determine an inference as to why the students are successful on those skills.
Then look to the errors/misconceptions—
Identify the specific skills, concepts, practices, or experiences each group of students will need to progress to the next level of achievement.
Are there specific groups of students performing at a particular level, such as boys or girls, special population students, ELL, etc?
What are the crucial knowledge, skill, or content gaps we need to address?
Then write an inference as to why the students have those errors/misconceptions.
Overgeneralization of a rule?

16. Step 4: Select Common Instructional Strategies
Select research- or evidence-based strategies.
Agree upon which instructional strategies to teach.
Agree upon the best sequencing of selected strategies.
Determine when and how strategies will be taught.
Ensure that the instructional strategy selected directly addresses the prioritized need from Step 3.
What does it look like?
What
does it sound like?
Start with 1-2 strategies and have teachers scaffold learning so that students go deeper in their learning. For example, problem solving in math-teach perseverance-giving students problems that are too difficult and then debriefing. The strategy itself, teacher questioning.
What practices might support increased understanding of the concepts or performance?
What experiences does the student need to further learning?
Are there any other factors to consider as we begin to explore instructional strategies?
If my strategy is to increase the opportunities for problem solving on more rigorous tasks in my mathematics classroom, I need to...
1. Teach students how to persevere when struggling with tasks
2. Model how to engage with a problem through Think Aloud, Three Read, or Problem Stem Strategies
3. Model different problem solving strategies (Draw a picture, write an equation, make a table, etc.)
4. Teach students how to share their thinking
5. Teach students how to listen, reflect upon, and respond to the thinking of other students
So, one strategy with multiple steps or sub-strategies inside.

17. Step 5: Results Indicators
Address:
What will I (teacher) do?
What will students do?
What will I see in their work if the strategy is working?
Make the procedure explicit so it is replicable, to achieve the best results
This is where the professional learning comes into PLCs. When teams collaborate on unit and lesson design, they have deeper discussions about research based strategies that work best for teaching specific concepts. Expands their toolbox.
Remind that students should be doing the heavy lifting. Think deeply about how to get students to engage with the task. What we see in the work is our assessment of whether the strategy is shifting the dial.
Explicit is more than just saying the strategy—help teachers walk out of the meeting with an in-depth plan of how to implement. “Modeling” is a great strategy, but all teachers have a different picture of what modeling looks like. We need our picture to be as similar as possible to be able to determine if the strategy was successful in moving the dial for our students.

18. Step 6: Create a Theory of Action
If we ____________ then __% of our
(Step 4) (Step 2)
students will be able to ________.
(Step 5c)
If we use gradual release with our note- taking tool then 76% of our students in the “FTG” and “Approaching” groups will be able to write a summary of a nonfiction text.
Mini Action Research Project
Replaces the SMART Goal
Don’t get stuck on the Percentage

19. Step 7: Reflect, Monitor & Evaluate the Process
After each meeting, reflect on the process.
Determine which steps went well and identify areas where additional training or support are needed.
Reflect on the growth made in each classroom.
Discuss differences in instruction.
Discuss how your reflection will impact your instruction.
What did we have to change throughout the process?
Did we need to add anything?
Did a chosen strategy work or not work? How do we know?

20. 8 Minute 58 Second Break

21. Digging in with Step 1: Plan and Prepare by Curriculum mapping

22. The Role of PLCs…

23. Standards Based Unit Design
Curriculum Mapping:
Deconstructed Standards
Enduring Understanding
Essential Questions
Content
Vocabulary
Student Friendly Learning Targets
Assessments
Instructional Strategies

24. Roadmaps to Learning…
Common Core State Standards
Identify desired results.
(Targets)
Determine acceptable evidence. (Assessment)
Plan learning experiences and instruction. (Strategies and Lessons)

25. Guided Practice: Deconstructing standards

26. As you deconstruct standards, remember If… Then…
If a standard is knowledge…
If a standard is reasoning then…
If a standard is a skill then…
If a standard is a product then…
K =
K targets
R =
K + R targets
S =
K + R + S Targets
P =
K + R +S*+P targets
(*Not always S)

27. What does it look like to deconstruct a standard?
Standard: Anchor Standard Grade 2 (informational): Identify the main topic of a multi-paragraph text, as well as the focus of specific paragraphs within the text.
Step 1: Type of Target?
Reasoning
Step 2: Nouns?
main topic, multi-paragraph text, paragraphs.
Step 3: Verbs?
Identify

28. Step 4: Knowledge? What must students know?
Informational text (both literary nonfiction and expository/technical texts)
Main topic
Difference between the main topic and key details
Focus of specific paragraphs
Authors of informational text(s) include key details in order to help readers make meaning of the text.
Good readers use key details in an informational text to identify the main topic.
Informational texts can have multiple paragraphs that work together to inform readers about a topic

29. Step 6: Write targets in student friendly language.
Step 5: Reasoning? How are students using knowledge to make a decision?
- Identify the main topic of a multi-paragraph
informational text
- Identify the focus of specific paragraphs within the text
- Identify the focus of specific paragraphs within an
- Describe the relationship between main topic and
focus of specific paragraphs
Step 6: Write targets in student friendly language.

30. Good News! https://salkeiz-cia.orvsd.org
The CIA website has given you a great jumpstart on this labor intensive work!
Use the available resources as a good base to start the process as a team
Focus for today: 2nd unit of study

31. How many minutes until…
Resource Reminders
How many minutes until…

32. Your Turn to Practice!
Start by writing down one FULL priority standard from Unit 2.
Complete steps 1-6 including writing the actual student friendly learning targets.
Add vocab/content as you notice them coming up
What do you notice? How is this different than your normal process. Be specific.
Next, Let’s verify…

33. One simple question…
Does it all add up?

34. Continuing Across the Curriculum mapping

35. Roadmaps to Learning…
Common Core State Standards
Identify desired results.
(Targets)
Determine acceptable evidence. (Assessment)
Plan learning experiences and instruction. (Strategies and Lessons)

36. Lunch

37. What are you still wondering about?
Dear Facilitator…
Burning Questions?
Concerns?
Confusion?
What are you still wondering about?

38. Supported Work Time: Unit Design
Work left to right
Add another priority standards or two from Unit Record them exactly how it is written in CCSS
Repeat the deconstructing and mapping process considering how you weave the standards together in instruction.
Then consider strategy, tools, resources and assessments you may already have that can accomplish the LTs

39. Work Time Reminders: Work left to right
Then, review/read right to left occasionally to ensure you are still staying aligned with the standard
Don’t forget the wealth of resources available to you!
When you are ready, begin creating a pre-assessment for the unit. Remember you are trying to find out what they DO know in addition to what their needs may be.

40. Next steps…

41. Record Next Steps
Please take a few minutes to reflect on your work today.
Write yourself a note:
What do you personally want to remember?
What do you want to be sure to discuss with your team?
What questions do you need to seek answers to?
Finally, think/write what will need to be on your upcoming agenda/s to ensure the work continues and is ready for the unit.
Be ready to share out!

42. Today’s Objectives Looking back…
You will have built shared knowledge of the role of PLCs in standards based unit design.
You will have a strong start on the step one: planning and preparing for your second unit of study.
You will be able to determine next steps including specific agenda items for your team.

43. +,  Complete a plus, delta at your table:
+ What worked to support your learning and doing today?
 What could we do to improve in the future?

44. Thank you slide
2:45 – 3:30
Mira and Sandy