« Student Drum Ensemble to open International Festival | Main | WCPSS 20-day count: 139,599 »
Professional Learning Teams at Baileywick Elementary School
Recent Entries
- WCPSS 20-day count: 139,599
- Professional Learning Teams at Baileywick Elementary School
- Student Drum Ensemble to open International Festival
- Apex Middle School Celebrates Constitution Week
- Strengthen Elementary Reading Skills
- Superintendent's Journal: Retaining our Teachers in a Tough Economy
- ParentVision: "College Is Possible" Event for Latino Students and Families
- Upcoming Business Event
- Beginning the College Search
- Helping Hands Makes a Difference
Categories
This article is written by Carol Chalk, the Instructional Resource Teacher at Baileywick Elementary
Having a common, designated time for all Professional Learning Teams at Baileywick to meet has proven to be an amazing addition for our teachers this year! Every member of our certified staff collaborates with classroom teachers in six grade-level PLTs during the first 15 minutes of meeting time on Wednesdays.
This time, devoted solely to Kid Talk, centers around providing additional support and intervention ideas to classroom teachers for students who have unique instructional and/or behavioral needs. The conversations and collaboration occurring during this time are establishing greater depth and ownership in our schoolwide professional learning community as we "put our heads together" to meet the needs of each and every student at Baileywick.
After the initial 15 minutes of Kid Talk, collaboration moves to shared analysis of student data collected from common formative assessments. Teachers discuss student progress toward the essential learning objectives based on the results of the common assessments. These discussions have greatly increased the team commitments to supporting all students across each grade level.
Teachers seek to determine commonalities among classes as well as unique needs and challenges each individual teacher may be experiencing in her classroom. Dialogue around classroom instructional practices often occurs as teachers continue to learn from each other. Many teachers decide to make adjustments to their current classroom instruction. Then, PLTs collectively examine the need for further remediation, practice, and enrichment of essential skills and objectives.
Collaboration shifts to creating a plan for implementation, determining action items and next steps, and assigning someone the responsibility of completing each item. During this time, Baileywick teachers agree on who will be responsible for working with each specified small group of students in order to remediate, re-teach, or enrich the essential learning objective(s) determined by the most critical area(s) of need. Each grade level team has been assigned three to four additional staff members to serve groups for this purpose during a common schoolwide Team Time.
At Baileywick, the addition of "WAKE Wednesdays" has provided a structured time for collectively committing to nurture and inspire all learners.
Posted by Bill Poston at 1:23 PM on September 29, 2009 | Leave Feedback
What Do You Think?
Have an opinion about this article? Let us know, using the form below.