I used to teach in Japan, and the level of teacher collaberation there is remarkable. I’ve never seen a school in the U.S. where teachers from a certain grade meet and plan together as much as I saw in Japan. (Granted, they tend to work until 6-7PM every day…)

I loved your comment:
I guess we all need to work at putting the pieces of this together: Teacher collaboration focus on student learning using formative assessment to drive instructional practices while providing authentic experiences for kids.

That certainly sums it up well!
Thanks for your post.

But then once the formative assessments are in place and being used, how do teachers use that data to provide additional instruction and intervention and also enrichment. (Questions 3 & 4) This is where the teamwork component is so critical. Being able to openly share that your kids did not do well on the assessment while kids in another class did is a lesson in risk taking and personal reflection. How was the instruction taking place in the classroom different? What changes can take place in the classroom to ensure that all kids are learning? This is the part where all on the team feel mutually accountable for the learning for all students, not just those in their own class.

How refreshing it will be to hear more about educators working in this sort of capacity rather than the lone ranger type – going above and beyond completely on their own and influencing only a small number of students rather than working towards making significant changes in the school culture, climate, and learning for all students in their building.

Please do share your work along the way. I’d love to hear and learn from your PLC group experiences.

I agree……thinking good formative assessment would include pieces grounded in the arts as well as authentic or performance-based tasks. One of our greatest tasks with this particular initiave includes exposing teachers to new technologies and asking them to identify and begin using those that might act as great formative assessments. I’m looking forward to watching how this unfolds.

Thanks again—this post provided some timely assistance and with any luck, it will help to clarify our thinking as our PLC moves forward.

I think that most PLC schools at the elementary level focus on reading and math for several reasons including state tests, the dedicated amount of time to those subjects during the school day, the higher level of teacher confidence with the content, especially in language arts, and because key concepts and skills in those areas are fairly easy for teams to identify and agree upon. Formative assessment data is more likely to be used to provide intervention strategies from support providers (AIS, special ed., classroom aides, etc.) I think reading and math are comfortable places for teachers to start this focused work and to see the fruits of their labors. And I can’t forget that increases in student achievement in Language Arts and Math are often identified in district-wide goals which in turn drive building and then grade level team goals.

I noticed the emphasis from DuFour tends to be on specific curricular area standards, but why couldn’t a PLC examine the integration of the arts or PBL to assess the effectiveness on student learning? Five teachers in our HP Pond Partner group last year compared student learning from our year-long project-based experience with a non-participating control class. Granted, we didn’t utilize formative assessments along the way and provide interventions, but rather only relied on pre-post data from an objective test as well as an open-ended inquiry design task. At least it was a start for us to look at data, ask more questions about our practice, and to help fit together the pieces of student learning for our team. Now others can look at that data for themselves and start to draw their own conclusions about their own practice.

I guess we all need to work at putting the pieces of this together: Teacher collaboration focus on student learning using formative assessment to drive instructional practices while providing authentic experiences for kids.

I agree with all their stuff for the most part. I wished they’d focus a bit more on authentic personal learning. I find too many leaders who read and listen to Dufour and others, tend to focus PLC’s around very narrow and outdated learning models. Specifically the increase of reading and math scores. Not that this isn’t necessary and the model effective but the lack of emphasis on the arts or project based learning bothers me? You?