• Implementation of Professional Learning Communities

    Overview:

    Halifax County Schools is charting a new course to student achievement.  The district emphasizes structures, systems, processes, and protocols for the "valuing and protection of instructional time", "a high profile on teaching and learning",  "rigorous student engagement, and project-based learning. Professional learning is the key to sustaining the BOY, MOY, EOY best practices in the areas mentioned above. The district's professional learning calendar is shared and made available to schools for the purpose of building teaching and learning capacity across content areas and grade levels. 

    While the term PLC is used loosely and has become an interchangeable word for collaborative meetings, it actually has its own well-defined system for imparting quality teaching and learning practices. The district endorses Dr. Richard Dufour's PLC model. See the following Link for a quick glance.  Consequently, professional learning communities (PLC) are the source in which teams of educators come together to ponder, inquire, and assess the work of teaching and learning through deep data dives. The outcomes inform student achievement and student agency. 

    Schools are encouraged and expected to implement professional learning communities (PLCs) and attend district PLCs as scheduled on the district calendar. The content of district-scheduled PLCs includes input from targeted audiences. The content of elementary and secondary schools' scheduled PLCs is shared with the elementary & secondary directors accordingly for support and alignment with the district's improvement initiatives. 

    NC Professional Teaching Standard #1:

    Teachers should:

    • Work collaboratively with all school personnel to create a professional learning community;
    • Analyze data;
    • Develop goals and strategies through the School Improvement Plan;
    • Assist in determining professional development; and
    • Collaborate with colleagues to mentor and support teachers to improve effectiveness.

    a.

    Explore: Link

    1. PLCs allow educators opportunities to directly improve teaching and learning.                                                                              PLCs allow teachers an easy way to share best practices and brainstorm innovative ways to improve learning and drive student achievement. Educators share opinions and feel that what they are doing in the classroom matters. These learning communities also enhance teacher reflection on instructional practices and student outcomes.
    2. PLCs build stronger relationships between team members.                                                                                                                    The PLC has a commitment to student learning. Meeting weekly creates a bond and builds a team of leaders within the school or district that eventually may extend regionally and potentially across the state.To build a strong PLC team, it’s important to define the roles and relationships of PLC team members. This starts with understanding everyone’s strengths. Enhancing the strengths of others builds trust and team relationships.  
    3. PLCs help teachers stay on top of new research and emerging technology tools for the classroom.                                         Collaboration within a district and beyond is essential in order for educators to have ongoing and regular opportunities to learn from each other. A global PLC allows teachers to share and learn from each other daily.  
    4. PLCs help teachers reflect on ideas. The more minds that come together from different backgrounds, the more likely you are to add value and purpose to teaching and learning. Student success must be the focus of PLC collaborations.

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    View the sample below with the intent of understanding how to work together to grow teaching and learning capacity through PLCs. View the PLC tools, consider sharing and/or distributing freely within teams, schools, or district purposes to guide work groups. These resources are great to inspire, organize, plan, measure, and celebrate the PLC journey. Discover: PLC Resources and Tools: (Link)

    Explore: Link     

    The Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southeast developed a Professional Learning Community (PLC) Facilitators Guide to support educators in the implementation of recommendations from the What Works Clearinghouse's Practice Guide Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade. The practice guide focuses on the foundational reading skills that enable students to read words, relate those words to their oral language, and read connected text with sufficient accuracy and fluency to understand what they read. The practice guide, developed by a panel of experts comprised of researchers and practitioners, presents four recommendations that educators can use to improve literacy skills in the early grades. Use the guide to review the content of the guide and to select best practices to enhance students' skill development through the PLC inquiry questions.

    The materials include a facilitator's guide, participant activities, and videos. The facilitator's guide includes a framework for facilitators to conduct each of the ten PLC sessions. It also includes participant activities, discussion questions, small- and whole-group activities, and implementation and reflection activities. The participant's activities include reflection questions, lesson plan examples and templates, video-viewing guides, and sharing opportunities. The videos illustrate practices presented in the foundational reading skills practice guide.  

    Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are a form of professional development in which small groups of educators with shared interests work together with the goal of expanding their knowledge and improving their craft. REL Southeast developed PLC materials focusing on the guide. The practice guide was designed to assist a literacy leader in guiding a professional learning community in applying the recommendations from the practice guide. 

    Professional Learning Communities (PLCs): Facilitator's Guide and Handouts

    PDF File View, download, and print the full facilitator's guide as a PDF file (1.8 MB)
    PDF File View, download, and print the handouts as a PDF file (558 KB)

    Video Title Link To YouTube
    Video 1: Inferential Language, Read Aloud & Discussion YouTube
    Video 2: Inferential Language, Read Aloud & Discussion YouTube
    Video 3: Narrative Language, Connectives YouTube
    Video 4: Narrative Language, Prediction YouTube
    Video 5: Narrative Language, Retell YouTube
    Video 6: Narrative Language, Main Idea YouTube
    Video 7: Narrative Language, Cause & Effect YouTube
    Video 8: Morphology YouTube
    Video 9: Academic Vocabulary in Text YouTube
    Video 10: Sentence Segmentation YouTube
    Video 11: Compound Words YouTube
    Video 12: Syllables YouTube
    Video 13: Rhyme YouTube
    Video 14: Onset & Rime YouTube
    Video 15: Phonemes Linked to Letters YouTube
    Video 16: Phonemes YouTube
    Video 17: Letter–Sounds YouTube
    Video 18: Word-Building YouTube
    Video 19: Letter–Sound to Phonemic Awareness Link: CVCe YouTube
    Video 20: Advanced Word-Building YouTube
    Video 21: Blending by Chunking; Blending by Sounding Out YouTube
    Video 22: Building Words with Sound Boxes YouTube
    Video 23: Vowel Pattern Word Sort YouTube
    Video 24: Base Word, Prefix, Suffix YouTube
    Video 25: Syllable Sort YouTube
    Video 26: Contractions YouTube
    Video 27 Derivational Suffix YouTube
    Video 28: Word Analysis Strategy YouTube
    Video 29: Decodable Words in Isolation and in Text YouTube
    Video 30: High-Frequency Words YouTube
    Video 31: Non-Decodable Words YouTube
    Video 32: Word Reading Strategies YouTube
    Video 33: The Fix It Game YouTube
    Video 34: Repeated Reading YouTube
    Video 35: Partner Reading YouTube
    Video 36: Choral Reading YouTube
    Video 37: Echo Reading YouTube
    Video 38: Alternated Reading YouTube

     

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