Tahquitz High School PLC (Professional Learning Communities)

1. Tahquitz High School PLC(Professional Learning Communities)

2. Why PLC? • To allow for the opportunity to create an environment that promotes best practice based on the facts, the data, and most importantly the needs of our students. • To ensure that all students will be successful! • To allow Tahquitz to get to the next level.

3. Collaborative Model • Under our collaborative model, we will continue with our late start days roughly twice a month. • Department Leaders/War Room PLC will meet with the Admin Team prior to the first collaboration day of the month. The purpose of these meetings will be: • Disseminate any information to be passed on to the departments • Go over the collaboration plans for the month • Retrieve input on and discuss topics crucial to THS.

4. Collaboration • On our collaboration days, department leaders will do a quick informational meeting and then give the team members the time to collaborate by making common formative assessments. • These assessments will need to address all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy to give us a true snapshot of what levels of understanding our students have obtained.

5. Collaboration Continued • Results/data from these formative assessments will give us a clear picture of whether our students have mastered the standards. • The data will also give us an opportunity to discuss what can be done when our students have not mastered the standard.

6. The Follow Up • So we have results, now what??? • With the data, we will have the opportunity to discuss the reasons why mastery was or was not achieved. • The following questions should be discussed: • What specific questions on the test did students struggle with and why? (Language, Blooms level of question, lack of knowledge, lack of understanding, or the standard was not taught well.) • How can we go back and re-teach the part of the standard not mastered? • What common lessons can we develop? • What lessons can we share or borrow from those teachers that had better success rates?

7. The Process • Develop formative assessments that are strictly aligned to the standards at multiple levels of Blooms. • Review the data • Discuss the results and what steps can be taken to allow all kids to master the standards. • Develop/refine lessons that allow for mastery of standards.

8. PLC, TPO, and WASC • Our PLC groups will give all teachers the opportunity to work towards meeting the TPO focus areas (#4- Planning Instruction and designing learning experiences for all students and #5 Assessing Student Learning) as well as open up our eyes to the critical needs of our students. • The entire process will also allow for us to have a valuable tool in self assessment during and beyond the WASC process.

9. “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”Theodore Roosevelt