1. What Do PLC’s Need to Focus on?
Collective Inquiry:
What Do PLC’s Need to Focus on?

2. Collective Inquiry
“The process of building shared knowledge by clarifying the questions that a group will explore together.”
(Learning by Doing, 2006)
Collective inquiry means that a PLC will examine best practices in teaching and learning, reality of current practices and conditions in their schools and board.

3. The Work of Collaborative Teams
DuFour believes that the basis for collective inquiry for teams is focused on two important questions:
What is it that we want our
students to learn?
How will we know when each
student has learned it?

4. Collective Inquiry
Teachers need to address 3 areas in order to clarify the two questions:
Essential learning must match curriculum standards and guides
Essential learning must prepare students for provincial assessments
Assessments must provide students with timely feedback and be specific enough to determine what a student needs help with
Teachers need to work together in teams to dissect the curriculum and figure out what is essential and teach that. Then work together to build assessment tools, and anchor work samples so there is a common understanding of expectations and standards become objective. They can be very easily overloaded by the entire curriculum; therefore it is important that they determine as a team what is viable- the essential curriculum.

5. Resources That Teams Need
Provincial standards
Curriculum guides
List of prerequisite skills for students entering the next course or grade
Assessment frameworks
Data on past student performance
Examples of student work and criteria
Research on curriculum design, assessment, data (Jay McTighe, Grant Wiggins, Robert Marzano)
These are the things that DuFour believes teachers need to uncover the essential curriculum- role of the administrator

6. Work of Collaborative Teams
Teams of teachers need to work together to understand the essential curriculum
Learn together; learn by doing.

7. Collaborative Study of Essential Learning
Promotes clarity- what will the curriculum standards look like
Promotes consistent learning priorities across the teaching team
Is crucial to the common pacing of teaching and assessments
Can help establish a viable curriculum- what are the most essential parts for students to learn
Creates commitment to and ownership of the curriculum that they are asked to teach
Together as a team, teachers must study the curriculum to be able to determine what is essential- what do students need to know in order to compare with provincial standards and write provincial assessments, and what is not necessary for them to know.

8. “Keep, Drop, Create” Activity
What is essential learning?
Intended Curriculum
vs.
Implemented Curriculum
Use this with departments or teams to analyse what is being taught and what is essential curriculum. Trying to answer “what is essential learning?”. Once teachers have worked in teams to determine the essential learning, they need to meet several times a year to see the difference between what is taught (implemented curriculum) and what was determined to be the essential curriculum by the team (intended curriculum).

9. “Keep, Drop, Create” Activity
Part of the essential curriculum and taught
Not part of essential curriculum but taught
Part of essential curriculum but not yet taught
Teachers in teams examine their lesson plan books in comparison to the essential curriculum….look at what they have taught…is it essential curriculum? What have they missed? What can they drop?

10. Collective Inquiry What is it that we want our students to learn?
Teachers in collaborative teams need to constantly engage in professional dialogue about what is the essential curriculum…
What is it that we want our students to learn?
How will we know when each student has learned it?