Week One:
Theory Into Practice, pg 281-290
Professional Learning Communities: Teachers, Knowledge, and Knowing
Diane R. Wood
Canadian Journal of Education 32, (2009) pg 149-171
Who is the "Professional" in a Professional Learning Community? An Exploration of Teacher Professionalism in Collaborative Professional Development Settings
Laura Servage
Professional Learning Communities and Communities of Practice: A Comparison of Models, Literature Review
Selena S. Blankenship and Wendy E.A. Ruona
Week 2:
The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, Winter 2010 pg 10-17
Professional Learning Communities: Overcoming the Roadblocks
Nan Lujan and Barbara Day
California Schools, Spring 2010, pg 4-9
Professional Learning Communities Allow a Transformational Culture to Take Root
Kristi Garrett
Reframing Organizations pg 240-269
Ch 12 Organizational Culture and Symbols
Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal
Week 3:
Academic Leadership Volume 8, Issue 2 Spring 2010 pg 1-7
Continuous Inquiry Meets Continued Critique: The Professional Learning Community In Practice And The Resistance Of (Un)willing Participants
Youness Elbousty, Kirstin Bratt
Teachers College Record, Volume 112, Number 1, January 2010, pg 182-224
Learning From Success as Leverage for a Professional Learning Community: Exploring an Alternative Perspective of School Improvement Process
Chen Schechter
Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, v83 n5 p175-17
Leading Deep Conversations in Collaborative Inquiry Groups
Tamara Holmlund Nelson; Angie Deuel; David Slavit; Anne Kennedy
Wikipedia
Professional learning community
2.21.2011
2.20.2011
Point Slope and Slope Practice
I've been trying to come up with more ideas where students solve problems with more than one step as well as a way for them to self-check and kind of monitor their own progress.
And now I would like to share them with you. :)
First of all, index cards are a teacher's best friend.
Second of all, I'm finishing up (*fingers crossed*) my linear equations unit and I used basically the same idea to practice two different concepts.
My first idea was to make two sets of cards, one with point-slope form equations and the other set with the same equations but in slope-intercept form.
The point was that the students with slope-intercept form cards would graph their equations on their handy dandy whiteboards. Then the other students who have point-slope form equations would solve them for slope-intercept form and then go find the student who has the matching graph.
The bad part of this idea was...I never actually did it. But aren't my cards pretty? =)
Idea number two was much better and actually implemented.
I took one set of cards and wrote two ordered pairs on the front.
Students were in partners. The first partner uses the slope formula and finds the slope between the two points. I wrote the answer on the back so tiny that they wouldn't see it through the card. The second partner flips the card over to make sure they have the correct slope.
If not, they go back and look for the mistake. If they are correct, the second partner now takes one of the points and the slope and writes the equation in point-slope form. Then, they solve the equation for slope-intercept form.
I had all the cards (there were more than this) laid out and the pair had to come up and find their equation.
If they couldn't find it, then they knew their equation was wrong (since they had already checked the slope). And, from looking at the equations and their slope, they could usually pick out what their equation should be and that helped them to find their mistake.
Once students thought they had the matching pair, they flipped both cards over. In the top left hand corner I had written a tiny capital letter on each set. If the cards matched, students knew they were correct.
I gave them a new card of ordered pairs and the partners repeated the process, switching roles each time.
I hope this doesn't sound too complicated. It was somewhat confusing at first but after the first set of cards, students knew what to do. Of course, I was there to help them correct mistakes but my biggest job was to make sure students weren't just finding the letter and then searching for the right card. I kind of played gateway to the cards and made them tell me their equation or show me their work before getting to choose a card. Like any other activity, teachers need to circulate the room, check and correct.
If this doesn't work for you, I hope it triggered some other idea of how to use index cards, get students up and moving around, or just to break up the monotony of your routines.
And now I would like to share them with you. :)
First of all, index cards are a teacher's best friend.
Second of all, I'm finishing up (*fingers crossed*) my linear equations unit and I used basically the same idea to practice two different concepts.
My first idea was to make two sets of cards, one with point-slope form equations and the other set with the same equations but in slope-intercept form.
The point was that the students with slope-intercept form cards would graph their equations on their handy dandy whiteboards. Then the other students who have point-slope form equations would solve them for slope-intercept form and then go find the student who has the matching graph.
The bad part of this idea was...I never actually did it. But aren't my cards pretty? =)
Idea number two was much better and actually implemented.
I took one set of cards and wrote two ordered pairs on the front.
If not, they go back and look for the mistake. If they are correct, the second partner now takes one of the points and the slope and writes the equation in point-slope form. Then, they solve the equation for slope-intercept form.
I had all the cards (there were more than this) laid out and the pair had to come up and find their equation.
If they couldn't find it, then they knew their equation was wrong (since they had already checked the slope). And, from looking at the equations and their slope, they could usually pick out what their equation should be and that helped them to find their mistake.
Once students thought they had the matching pair, they flipped both cards over. In the top left hand corner I had written a tiny capital letter on each set. If the cards matched, students knew they were correct.
I gave them a new card of ordered pairs and the partners repeated the process, switching roles each time.
I hope this doesn't sound too complicated. It was somewhat confusing at first but after the first set of cards, students knew what to do. Of course, I was there to help them correct mistakes but my biggest job was to make sure students weren't just finding the letter and then searching for the right card. I kind of played gateway to the cards and made them tell me their equation or show me their work before getting to choose a card. Like any other activity, teachers need to circulate the room, check and correct.
If this doesn't work for you, I hope it triggered some other idea of how to use index cards, get students up and moving around, or just to break up the monotony of your routines.
2.17.2011
PLC: Week Two
A mission statement is why we're here and a vision statement says where we'd like to be. It's our driving force. We should own it. It should be simple, realistic, and straightforward.
Organizational culture: 'how we do things here'.
We need leaders to craft space for teachers.
We need self-observation as well as pure observations.
We need infrastructure for PLC type of learning.
Results on one test don't tell you everything you need to know, but it does tell you something.
What are you taking away from collaboration? Do you want collaboration? Are you comfortable with observations?
Are we really willing to commit to everyday, continuous improvement?
Organizational culture: 'how we do things here'.
We need leaders to craft space for teachers.
We need self-observation as well as pure observations.
We need infrastructure for PLC type of learning.
Results on one test don't tell you everything you need to know, but it does tell you something.
What are you taking away from collaboration? Do you want collaboration? Are you comfortable with observations?
Are we really willing to commit to everyday, continuous improvement?
PLC: Week One
PLC: We plan and implement common assessments, review data, and analyze individual student learning. Every student matters. We come together to decide what should be taught, how it should be taught, and how to achieve mastery.
PLCs can't exist without an organizational structure.
PLCs ask, what can we do about students who are not learning? How can we work together to find solutions?
All assessments give us more pieces of the puzzle of student learning. Everything is informative.
PLCs are:
PLCs can't exist without an organizational structure.
PLCs ask, what can we do about students who are not learning? How can we work together to find solutions?
All assessments give us more pieces of the puzzle of student learning. Everything is informative.
PLCs are:
- a form of job embedded professional development
- a formal title of what some schools already do through mentoring/collaboration
- collegial professional learning. We need people to work and talk with. We want to find out what other people are doing.
- interactive learning as opposed to the "sit and get"
- learning by doing
- a variety of contact: face to face or online
- results oriented; want to know the 'what' as opposed to the 'how'
PLC: The Start of Something New
Thanks to our school improvement grant, 20 teachers from my school have the opportunity to take a graduate level course for free. We are partnering with a local university and hoping that it will smoothly transition into a cohort where we can earn our master's degree in teacher leadership. So far, this is our pilot class and the instructor comes to us on Monday night from 3:15 to 5:45. The class is called Professional Learning Communities and Curriculum and the university developed it specifically for our school. If it goes well, they plan to implement it into their regular program.
Our first class was January 24th. I plan to post some notes that I'm keeping from each session. We've also been given some readings and if you are interested in what those are, please comment and I'll try to post titles/authors.
The 20 of us have been broken down into smaller groups to try to simulate a real PLC type setting. Our first assignment has been working together to develop a PLC readiness survey that we will give to other teachers in our school who are not taking the class. To me, it seems pointless because regardless of whether we are ready or not, we're doing it.
We've started meeting on Wednesday mornings from 7:15 to 8:00 based on content area. We started the first week by discussing norms. The meetings are not mandatory this year and we are being paid for each meeting that we attend. So norms were kind of hard to decide since technically, we don't have to show up. Next year we are going to eight periods so that we can have built in collaboration time which will then be mandatory.
But anyway, I think it's going to be super hard to have PLCs when we don't have any common classes. I am the only algebra and geometry teacher. Every teacher is the only teacher. How are we supposed to collaborate? How do we create common assessments? Yes, we can implement strategies and games and lesson formats, but somehow I think we are missing the point. We are the first small school in Illinois to try this and we are supposed to be setting the example for other small schools. We are pioneers and the terrain is tough!
Yesterday was our monthly in-service and we talked about exciting things such as exit exams for every course, student portfolios that show mastery of every required standard (basically a sbg report card!), aligning curriculum K-12, and implementing grade level vocabulary standards.
I think we are doing everything I want to do but I get frustrated because there is no manual on how to do this.
I can't wait to get started!
Our first class was January 24th. I plan to post some notes that I'm keeping from each session. We've also been given some readings and if you are interested in what those are, please comment and I'll try to post titles/authors.
The 20 of us have been broken down into smaller groups to try to simulate a real PLC type setting. Our first assignment has been working together to develop a PLC readiness survey that we will give to other teachers in our school who are not taking the class. To me, it seems pointless because regardless of whether we are ready or not, we're doing it.
We've started meeting on Wednesday mornings from 7:15 to 8:00 based on content area. We started the first week by discussing norms. The meetings are not mandatory this year and we are being paid for each meeting that we attend. So norms were kind of hard to decide since technically, we don't have to show up. Next year we are going to eight periods so that we can have built in collaboration time which will then be mandatory.
But anyway, I think it's going to be super hard to have PLCs when we don't have any common classes. I am the only algebra and geometry teacher. Every teacher is the only teacher. How are we supposed to collaborate? How do we create common assessments? Yes, we can implement strategies and games and lesson formats, but somehow I think we are missing the point. We are the first small school in Illinois to try this and we are supposed to be setting the example for other small schools. We are pioneers and the terrain is tough!
Yesterday was our monthly in-service and we talked about exciting things such as exit exams for every course, student portfolios that show mastery of every required standard (basically a sbg report card!), aligning curriculum K-12, and implementing grade level vocabulary standards.
I think we are doing everything I want to do but I get frustrated because there is no manual on how to do this.
I can't wait to get started!
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