PLC+Examples

==Nonlinguistic representations engage adult learners in learning experiences. The following documents were used during Professional Learning Community (PLC) meetings to plan and reflect on data-driven collaboration over time.==

This document represents the original method for monitoring the PLC process at Pioneer School. Color-coded rows within a table represent corresponding meetings. The table was helpful, but it did not produce a clear perspective of our collaborative progress.

In previous meetings (at Pioneer School) we had talked about the cycle of inquiry as the basis for the PLC process. We used the graphic organizer in this document to better understand how a PLC operates.

So why not blend the two ideas? This document includes a nonlinguistic form depicting the collaborative process on a cycle of inquiry graphic organizer. Teacher teams (at Pioneer School) were better able to see the foci of meetings and the way meeting time was allocated along the cycle of inquiry continuum.

This is the original form grade level teams used to document their work on the Cycle of Inquiry at Woodridge School. We used this form during bimonthly meetings from Sep. through February.

After Will showed me his documents and explained how he used them to help teams "see" a summary of their work over the course of the year I adapted them to suit Woodridge's needs. This is the document I came up with for a meeting in which I lead teams through a reflection of their COI work over the past 2 months. Teams filled it out and answered some questions to help them process the activity and draw conclusions from the finished document.

After this "reflection" meeting, a few staff members mentioned that "seeing" the COI process as a graphic, instead of the original, text heavy COI template we had been using, helped them understand the COI better. They asked if they could record their COI notes on a form that looked like the reflection document they had just used the week prior. So I came up with this document which 4 of the 7 grade levels opted to use at the next meeting. Of course this nicely dovetailed with the work Will and I had been doing on ch. 6.