Facilitating Teacher Teams and Authentic PLCs
Facilitating Teacher Teams and Authentic PLCs

Author: Daniel R. Venables

Publisher: ASCD

Published: 2017-12-15

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1416625216

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As professional learning communities become more widespread, educators have learned that they can't simply form grade-level or subject-area teams and call it a day. To profoundly affect teacher practice and student learning, PLCs need strong and knowledgeable leadership. In Facilitating Teacher Teams and Authentic PLCs, Daniel R. Venables draws on his extensive experience helping schools and districts implement effective PLCs to explore this crucial but often-overlooked need. Taking a two-pronged approach to PLC facilitation, Venables offers targeted guidance both for leading the people in teacher teams and for facilitating their work. This practical resource provides * Strategies for facilitating interactions among colleagues in PLCs and building trust and buy-in. * Field-tested, user-friendly protocols to focus and deepen team discussions around texts, data, teacher and student work, teacher dilemmas, and collaborative planning time. * Tips for anticipating and addressing interpersonal conflicts and obstacles that commonly arise during use of protocols. Current and prospective PLC facilitators at every grade level will find this book an essential guide to navigating the challenging and rewarding endeavor of leading authentic PLCs. Build your skills, and help your team rise to the next level.

Facilitating Teacher Teams and Authentic PLCs: The Human Side of Leading People, Protocols, and Practices
Facilitating Teacher Teams and Authentic PLCs: The Human Side of Leading People, Protocols, and Practices

Author: Daniel R. Venables

Publisher: ASCD

Published: 2017-12-20

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1416625240

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As professional learning communities become more widespread, educators have learned that they can’t simply form grade-level or subject-area teams and call it a day. To profoundly affect teacher practice and student learning, PLCs need strong and knowledgeable leadership. In Facilitating Teacher Teams and Authentic PLCs, Daniel R. Venables draws on his extensive experience helping schools and districts implement effective PLCs to explore this crucial but often-overlooked need. Taking a two-pronged approach to PLC facilitation, Venables offers targeted guidance both for leading the people in teacher teams and for facilitating their work. This practical resource provides Strategies for facilitating interactions among colleagues in PLCs and building trust and buy-in. Field-tested, user-friendly protocols to focus and deepen team discussions around texts, data, teacher and student work, teacher dilemmas, and collaborative planning time. Tips for anticipating and addressing interpersonal conflicts and obstacles that commonly arise during use of protocols. Current and prospective PLC facilitators at every grade level will find this book an essential guide to navigating the challenging and rewarding endeavor of leading authentic PLCs. Build your skills, and help your team rise to the next level.

The Practice of Authentic PLCs
The Practice of Authentic PLCs

Author: Daniel R. Venables

Publisher: Corwin Press

Published: 2011-01-11

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1452224145

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Discover the keys to building effective PLCs Creating an authentic professional learning community requires breaking down the walls of isolation and collaborating to improve student learning, because collectively we are more than the sum of our parts. Grounded in the award-winning author’s foundational work with the Coalition of Essential Schools, this book enables educators to hit the ground running with a research-based process that includes: Setting the foundation for collaboration and team building Facilitating protocols Examining student and teacher work Implementing teacher-designed common formative assessments Analyzing and responding to data

How Teachers Can Turn Data into Action
How Teachers Can Turn Data into Action

Author: Daniel R. Venables

Publisher: ASCD

Published: 2013-12-18

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1416618805

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From state and Common Core tests to formative and summative assessments in the classroom, teachers are awash in data. Reviewing the data can be time-consuming, and the work of translating data into real change can seem overwhelming. Tapping more than 30 years' experience as an award-winning teacher and a trainer of PLC coaches, Daniel R. Venables, author of The Practice of Authentic PLCs: A Guide to Effective Teacher Teams, soothes the trepidation of even the biggest "dataphobes" in this essential resource. Field-tested and fine-tuned with professional learning communities around the United States, the Data Action Model is a teacher-friendly, systematic process for reviewing and responding to data in cycles of two to nine weeks. This powerful tool enables you and your teacher team to * Identify critical gaps in learning and corresponding instructional gaps; * Collaborate on solutions and develop a goal-driven action plan; and * Evaluate the plan's effectiveness after implementation and determine the next course of action. With easy-to-use templates and protocols to focus and deepen data conversations, this indispensable guide delineates exactly what should be accomplished in each team meeting to translate data into practice. In the modern sea of data, this book is your life preserver!

The PLC+ Playbook, Grades K-12
The PLC+ Playbook, Grades K-12

Author: Douglas Fisher

Publisher: Corwin

Published: 2019-05-10

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1544385757

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Help your PLC+ group to work wiser, not harder. This practical guide to planning and implementing PLC+ groups in a collaborative setting is designed to equip professional learning community teams with the tools they need to work effectively toward improving student learning. Designed as an accompanying resource to PLC+: Better Decisions and Greater Impact by Design, the Playbook helps educators bring the PLC+ framework to life by supporting teams as they answer the five guiding questions that comprise a PLC+: Where are we going? Where are we now? How do we move learning forward? What did we learn today? Who benefited and who did not benefit? Twenty-three modules support PLC+ groups as they work through one entire cycle of learning, addressing the five questions and four cross-cutting themes—equity, high expectations, individual and collective efficacy, and effective team activation and facilitation. Tools to support implementation of the PLC+ framework are embedded throughout the Playbook: Blank templates allow team members to record their work for every module Step-by-step instructions guide PLC+ groups to facilitate productive discussion, engage in professional learning, and gather and analyze evidence of student learning Crosscutting themes provide cohesion and focus throughout the work PLC+ groups can utilize each activity in the Playbook or find an appropriate entry point and continue the work of building PLC+. Engage in deeper learning around the ideas and concepts central to PLC+ and make greater equity and efficacy a reality in your school or district.

On Common Ground
On Common Ground

Author: Richard DuFour

Publisher: Solution Tree Press

Published: 2009-04-01

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1934009865

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This anthology presents the recommendations of education leaders, and each chapter contributes to a sound conceptual framework and offers specific strategies for developing PLCs. These leaders have found common ground in expressing their belief in the power of PLCs although clear differences emerge regarding their perspectives on the most effective strategy for making PLCs the norm in North America.

Leading in Sync
Leading in Sync

Author: Jill Harrison Berg

Publisher: ASCD

Published: 2018-08-15

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1416626980

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Teacher leadership holds great promise for improving the quality of teaching and ensuring student success. But for co-performance of leadership to be effective, teachers and principals need to lead in sync.Leadership coach Jill Harrison Berg guides educators through the process of creating a shared vision for student success and effective teaching, developing a mutual understanding of each person's role in achieving that vision, establishing a schoolwide culture of teacher leadership, and building the trust needed to bring it all together. Leading In Sync: Teacher Leaders and Principals Working Together for Student Learning provides principals, assistant principals, coaches, department leaders, grade-level and content team leaders, mentors, professional development leaders, and in fact all teachers with the strategies and tools needed to: * Examine their own thinking about what constitutes quality teaching. * Tap faculty members who are already leading. * Identify who has the knowledge, skills, and dispositions required for particular leadership roles. * Support leadership collaboration through efficient, effective communication. * Develop trust within the school community. Berg offers thought-provoking context and reflection questions so that educators can examine their own unique settings; real-world examples of teachers and principals co-performing leadership to improve student success; and dozens of strategies, tools, and templates to facilitate leading in sync.

The PLC+ Activator’s Guide
The PLC+ Activator’s Guide

Author: Dave Nagel

Publisher: Corwin Press

Published: 2020-04-02

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1071822098

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Keeping professional learning communities focused on goals: High functioning professional learning communities don’t happen by chance. They require deliberate efforts and structures to ensure efficiency and focus, and to ignite action. The first books in the PLC+ series challenged PLC teams to engage in difficult discussions about equity of access, high expectations for all students, and a commitment to building individual and team efficacy. All of this requires activation and skilled facilitation to move from discussion to action. The PLC+ Activator′s Guide offers a practical approach, real-life scenarios, and examples that show activators what to expect and how to navigate their PLC+ on a successful and collective journey. Readers will find: Templates to help activators prepare for PLC+ meetings Approaches for fostering and nurturing collaboration Vignettes from real schools that are implementing PLC+ Reflection questions with spaces for activators to record notes Solutions for addressing barriers that often arise in PLC+ teams Activators will find this an essential guide to keeping PLC+ team discussions goal-focused and the work centered on building the collective efficacy of the team.

Design Thinking in Play
Design Thinking in Play

Author: Alyssa Gallagher

Publisher: ASCD

Published: 2020-04-08

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 141662886X

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Design thinking is a person-centered, problem-solving process that's a go-to for innovative businesses and gaining traction with school leaders interested in positive change. But understanding design thinking is one thing; actually putting it in play is something else. Authors Alyssa Gallagher and Kami Thordarson offer educators a practical guide for navigating design thinking's invigorating challenges and reaping its considerable rewards. They dig deep into the five-stage design thinking process, highlighting risk factors and recommending specific steps to keep you moving forward. The 25 downloadable and reproducible tools provide prompts and supports that will help you and your team • Identify change opportunities. • Dig deeper into complex problems. • Analyze topics to isolate specific challenges. • Connect with and solve for user needs. • Apply what you've learned about users to design challenges. • Maximize brainstorming power. • Create and employ solution prototypes. • Pitch solutions and secure buy-in from stakeholders. • Organize and analyze user feedback. • Map out a solution's specific actions and resource requirements. Design Thinking in Play is a must-have for education leaders who are tired of waiting for someone else to solve their problems and ready to take action, have fun, and leverage collective insight to figure out what will really work for their school, their colleagues, and their students.

Achievement Teams
Achievement Teams

Author: Steve Ventura

Publisher: ASCD

Published: 2022-05-27

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1416631488

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What if you had a collaborative process of looking at student data that could pinpoint student gaps in learning and suggest effective strategies to close those gaps? What if you knew not only what you should start doing to enhance student learning, but also what you should stop doing because it hasn't given you the hoped-for results? Enter Achievement Teams. This is not another program that's here today and gone tomorrow; it's a timeless approach that any school or district can replicate that focuses on the most significant variable in student achievement: teaching. In Achievement Teams, Steve Ventura and Michelle Ventura offer a framework based on John Hattie's Visible Learning research that makes teacher collaboration more efficient, rigorous, satisfying, and effective. Think of it as a systematic treasure hunt for best practices using real data on your students. The authors walk you through the Achievement Teams four-step meeting protocol: * In Step 1, teams focus on the evidence from a pre-assessment to provide specific feedback to students and teachers about concepts and skills that students did and did not learn. * In Step 2, teams use that evidence to establish SMART goals for both teachers and students. * In Step 3, teams summarize the collected data and make inferences around students' mastery levels. * In Step 4, teachers select high-impact strategies directly targeted to student needs. A post-assessment reveals what did and didn't work. The authors provide a plethora of resources along the way, including reflection activities to extend your thinking and a variety of helpful downloadable templates designed to facilitate the work. If you're a teacher or leader who is interested in maximizing student achievement, this book is for you.