It has been quite some time since I have updated our PLC blog, so I thought I'd write an overview of what I have been working on during this time.
This past week we had a pick your own adventure type of learning time.  The teachers where able to pick from a few options that would be able to meet all of our needs.  I choose to work in the group that was focusing on SLO's (Student Learning Objectives).  It is a new way for teachers to track student growth that was piloted in our district last year and is now a tool we will be using.  Ms. Willett and I were able to develop our objectives and begin compiling our baseline data so that we can begin data cycles in which we will track our student growth and target areas we need to focus or lessons on.
The first Friday of the month we work with PEBC.  This year we are focusing on inquiry based learning.  We are also doing a book study on Collaboration and Comprehension: Inquiry Circles in Action.  I am very excited to learn more about this as I have been making attempts at creating our science lessons with inquiry in mind.  I always tell my students that we are all learners and love sharing the different things I learn with them whether its through book studies, conferences or workshops.

Today, during our PLC we began our time together discussing our visitor experiences and feedback from their time touring Bill Roberts.  The visitors came from schools supported by The City Year made up of people who meet with small groups of students needing intense academic intervention.  They toured our school to get a better idea of how to meet differentiated needs of students while still meeting deeper level thinking skills.  Needless to say, they were, “wowed!”

Then, 2nd Grade shared out some of their writing samples for their prompt this week related to College Awareness.  College Awareness will be a concept that will be a feature throughout the year.  We want kids to connect with knowledge that everyone will go to college.  By the way, the 2nd Grade comments and writing samples were sweet, innocent, funny, and insightful.  Who knew you have to go to college in order to get a driver’s license?

The rest of the PLC was devoted to creating district-required Student Growth Objectives for our individual classes and content areas.  The goals are connected to individual student growth related to a specific body of evidence, i.e. writing samples, standardized test scores, classroom teacher made assessments, etc.  The conversations between colleagues were deep, and were focused on the best way to measure the student growth through thorough and direct instruction.  The objectives were written and submitted to Administrative staff at the end of the PLC.

Today we had Michelle Jones from PEBC presenting to our staff for our PLC time together.  We are focusing as a staff on backwards planning though a book titled "Understanding By Design".  Each month we focus on a chapter or two and use the strategies to help us with our planning.
Today we also brought artifacts from our classrooms to share with our colleagues how we are integrating the thinking strategies and routines.  As a school we have been focusing on using these in our teaching practice, so sharing things that are going on in our classrooms is so exciting.  I love seeing what other teachers in our building are doing, and I also love getting ideas and having feedback on what we are doing in our classroom.  I brought with me a few student examples of our interactive math notebooks and how the items that I have the students add are very intentional and designed to help them with the thinking strategy 'Determining Importance'.  As the year progresses I'll introduce more thinking strategies, but at the moment this is what I believe my students need the most (especially in relation to word problems). 
Another exciting thing going on at our school is classroom observations.  Our amazing staff is giving up their plan time for two days next week so that we can observe each others classrooms and have a formal feedback session on what amazing things we have happening at our school.  What better way to learn than from each other?!  I will be going up to a 3rd/4th grade math classroom. 

This week in PLC's we had Michelle Jones from PEBC leading our staff.  We were able to look at the work we have done with PEBC over the past four years.  As a school we have been focusing on incorporating the thinking strategies and routines into our teaching practice and Michelle has been a large part of this work.  This year we are focusing on using backwards design as we focus on 'Planning for Understanding'.  We were able to look at six areas that are part of the PEBC planning continuum and separate into groups to allow us to focus on one of the key points that is essential to our learning as educators.  In these groups we are looking at various books so that we can come up with a book study to help us grow in our focus area.  The area that I chose to work on was 'Planning for Inquiry' because I feel that math and science lend themselves to an inquiry approach, but I'd like to better incorporate that into my math lessons. 

Supporting teachers in their learning process is one of the most spectacular things about Bill Roberts.  Over the years, the staff has taken on literacy and math best practices, cognitive thinking strategies (deeper, critical thinking) for all content areas, increasing a cohesive and comprehensive school-wide writing practice, and our study of the Harvard Zero Project through Making Thinking Visible.  The staff has also increased the effectiveness of working as teams in focusing on closing the achievement gaps, pulling and analyzing data to inform and guide instruction, and planning in both grade level and vertical (ECE-8) teams in content areas.  Much, if not most, of these high-level learning opportunities would not be able to take place if it weren't for early release every Friday.  The first Friday of the month is our partner/professional development from PEBC (Public Education Business Coalition), who presents the thinking routines and the implementation tools for thinking strategies to our entire staff.  The second Friday is dedicated to professional development around the Common Core Standards.  The following Friday is analyzing student data to determine best instructional plans for our students.  The last Friday is professional development around writing which supports our goals on our UIP (Unified Improvement Plan).