PLC Meeting Outlines

Team Norms

Effective PLC teams will need to share their assessment data and exchange instructional strategies in order collaboratively deliver tiered intervention to all students who need it. Because of this, it is important to establish norms for collaboration within your team.

Consider Garmstom and Wellman’s Seven Norms of Collaborative Work (2016):

• Pausing: Allowing time for people to think before responding

• Paraphrasing: Providing an overview of what the speaker shared to ensure understanding

• Posing questions: Asking questions of others’ ideas before advocating for your own

• Putting ideas on the table: Sharing alternative solutions with the intent for honest feedback

• Providing data: Planning for data and facts to drive the conversations

• Paying attention to self and others: Looking for body-language and reactions or others to ensure positive results

• Presuming positive intentions: Believing comments/intentions are being done in the positive 

Meeting #1

This meeting should occur before a new unit of instruction begins. Some of the objectives below may be a simple acknowledgement of work that has already been done.

Objectives:

• Identify what students should know. ( PLC Critical Question #1 )

• Determine the threshold for what proficiency with each standard/skill looks like.

• Write/edit a summative assessment that gives students the opportunity to demonstrate proficiency on unit standards.

• Write/edit a Common Formative Assessment (CFA) to assess student understanding partway through the unit on unit standards.

  • Mastery Checks, Checks for Understanding, or any other existing formative assessment can be used for this purpose as long as students are assessed in the same way across all classes and the criteria for proficiency are clear and match the criteria that will be seen on the summative.

• Create a SkillGrouper sheet for the unit that all teachers can input their rosters and grades into.

Action Items between Meetings #1 and #2:

• Provide initial instruction of content.

• Deliver the CFA on the team's agreed date.

• Grade CFAs using the team's agreed criteria and input scores into the SkillGrouper sheet.

Meeting #2

This meeting should occur after scores from the CFA are recorded in the SkillGrouper sheet. The purpose is to inform tiered intervention before the summative and to improve instructional strategies for the next time initial instruction of this content occurs.

Objectives:

• Exchange instructional strategies based on evidence of what worked.

  • The data in Step 2 shows which teachers and sections saw the most success with each skill. Share how the content was delivered!
    See section 2 for an examples of how to interpret this section of SkillGrouper.

  • Record these ideas so that they can be used the next time this content is taught.

• Identify which skill(s) each section will deliver Universal Reinstruction on.

  • As a rule of thumb, according to MtSS, for any skill where less than 80% of students achieved proficiency, the entire class would benefit from the skill being retaught or practiced further. These skills are automatically highlighted in red in Step 2 of SkillGrouper.

  • Check the checkbox in Step 2 of SkillGrouper for each skill that will be retaught to each entire class.

• Create a Tier 2 intervention plan for the remaining 20% or fewer of students below proficiency.

  • Determine when your team has scheduled time available to intervene with students.

    • Priority 1: If your school has a common "Flex"/"Lunch and Learn"/"ASR" time, plan to pool all students and schedule then.

    • Priority 2: If your team offers multiple sections of the class per hour, or have coteachers that can work with students in a separate setting, plan to pool students within each hour.

    • Priority 3: Plan to intervene with students in small groups within each individual class during a flexible work day.

  • See section 3 for instructions on how to use SkillGrouper to automatically create groups of students for your available time.

  • See section 4 for instructions on how to modify SkillGrouper's suggested groups based on teacher judgement/student needs.

  • Assign team members to run Tier 2 groups based on which skill(s) their students saw the most success with.

• If necessary, change the Summative Assessment's date so that students will have adequate time to practice to the level of proficiency.

  • Don't change the assessment in response to the CFA! Stick to what you said was important for students to demonstrate before the unit. Change your instruction to prepare students to achieve the criteria that the team previously agreed were important.

Action Items after Meeting #2:

• Deliver Tier 1 universal reteaching on the agreed upon skill(s) for each of your sections.

• Communicate Tier 2 intervention groups to the students involved and deliver them on the team's agreed date(s).

• Deliver the unit summative on the team's agreed date(s).