001Professional learning communities or PLC's are teams of educators that are committed to supporting one another and growing their professional practice. Professional collaboration time is important because it provides a space for teachers to reflect, share ideas, and it's that authentic experience through those conversation that really drives our inquiry process. Collaboration is a great opportunity for teachers to dive deep into high impact strategies that will yield results for students and increase growth. >> Our late start Wednesdays at stag have become a place where our teachers truly value the dedicated time for professional learning and have a collective belief in the impact they can make together. idea of just having a moment in the day or in during the week to kind of share out ideas and and kind of have time to work on them and implement
002them in the classroom uh has been really invaluable. >> Each year, all of our PLC teams at STAG engage in an inquiry process during late start Wednesdays. We transitioned to an inquiry model about 4 years ago because it gives our teams the autonomy to identify an area of need that they want to investigate and do the work together. Throughout the year, they gather and analyze evidence of student learning and implement responsive instructional actions to support growth for all learners. The inquiry process is great because it lets our entire PLC focus on one particular issue, one particular thing that we'd like to improve and that we all see a need for. the start of the inquiry. It's where it's a little messy and that's um okay because the process is us collecting evidence and then taking
003that evidence and analyzing it to make real change. >> Now become with the inquiry model they become a place where teachers can really dive into something that is relevant, interesting. Teachers look at high impact strategies. They collect evidence from students and they make decisions about are those strategies working well at getting the outcomes that we want from our students. So it creates teams that believe in what they're doing. >> We're more intentional in what we are doing uh with the data that we're collecting. Uh it's driving our uh instructional practices. >> Each PLC team creates an inquiry question aligned with the district 230 instructional framework. This ensures our teams target research-based practices that have a high impact on learning. This clear focus for developing an inquiry question perfectly aligns our building PLC work with district
004professional learning, demonstrating a clear commitment to professional learning and collaboration at all levels. >> When we first started the process, our inquiry goal was uh focused on student self- assessment. Since then, we've evolved and we are more uh focused on student engagement. >> We focus on increasing student ownership of revision and feedback. So instead of the teacher always giving the feedback, it's so much more meaningful now that students take that ownership of doing some of their own revisions and giving each other feedback. Our instructional uh component is teacher clarity. Uh we focused on that because not only do we have like kind of the curriculum the traditional curriculum or content where we're in the classroom, but we also have to apply those as skills uh in the shop setting. Not only does it uh help
005us explain our instructions and what the students skills and content need to know, but it's evolved into the students taking better ownership of that learning environment. >> This year mine is focusing on the learning intentions and success criteria which is uh under teacher clarity. So um this is just the idea that the students have a very um straightforward route to success via like um very tangible reproducible goals. So when we first started uh we wanted to make sure students were involved in the assessment process as we move forward. Now we're more trying to get student voice to make sure that what we've implemented in the last couple years now we're making sure to get their voice and say is it actually working >> right the better you can know that maybe you could peer ass
006obviously you're peer assessing right but you're also self assessing through it. Okay. >> Our staff understands the importance of building strong learning partnerships with students in the classroom. There is truly a focus on making learning visible for students so they are empowered to take ownership of their individual progress. >> Our focus is on strength, speed and power. And through uh various tests we are collecting data, times, distances. Ultimately at the end of the day we're we're seeing more engagement, more excitement and uh leading into the student ownership. kind of taking that teacher clarity piece and really kind of running away with it and developing procedures in the classroom. Uh we call them SOPs, standard operating procedures where students can now instead of me uh being the direct instruction answering every single question. Students now have
007the ability to find those answers and students are now referencing and working together. I I see them inspecting each other's work and then referring back to the SOPs is, you know, where students may have made a mistake. This inquiry goal is one day they will record themselves talking and then they transcribe it, they analyze it, they get feedback from each other, from themselves, which uh sometimes it's hard, but once they get past that, they are it's they're amazed at how uh they can find and improve their own errors. >> Our thought process was if you can see it from the back seat and assess a student, you should be able to get into the front seat and do it yourself. And what we found through our initial data was kids were learning that we were
008going from 30% to 60%, we were going from 45% to 90% and kids understand it. >> Our staff understands that they can make the biggest impact when they work collectively. Our PLC model allows them the time and space to make that happen.