First and foremost, Canyon Elementary has actively encouraged the PLC process in our school for the past seven year, and have seen increases in growth across all grade levels. As a school, we strive to reach all students and aid them in achieving their potential. Administration creates schedules that allow all grade levels to meet a minimum of hour each day. This allows teachers to review curriculum, build common assessments, discuss each student individually, and assess small group design. Teacher’s follow a PLC set agenda which lists agreed upon norms and also lists SMART goals that were built at the beginning of the year. Emphasis for the meetings are placed on the four big questions: What do we expect our students to learn? How will we know they are learning? How will we respond when they don't learn? How will we respond if they already know it? During this time, teachers are also able to divide students by skill and discuss which teacher or para is best fit to teach this skill for optimum effectiveness and growth.

 

Our specials teachers meet not only as their own teams, but also meet with other grades often to discuss ways to create cross-curricular teaching, bringing math and reading into their art, music, and PE lessons.

 

We meet as a leadership team approximately twice a month to discuss concerns of the school, progress being made, and identify avenues to increase our abilities as whole team. The grade level PLC agendas are reviewed during this meeting as yet another way to monitor progress of our students and creates a way to check and maintain fidelity to the process.

Our school believe that bringing in parents is an increasingly important component to the success of our students. We access two avenues of parent cooperation, the first being our Build Leadership Team, where parents meet with teachers and administration to confer over building policy, ways to increase student academic motivation, and how to increase partnership between the school and the community. Secondly, parents are asked to be active participants in their students learning and behavior plans through MTSS meetings. As a school and community, we have both behavior and academic teams consisting on the homeroom teacher, school counselor, principal, SPED teacher, and administration that meeting on the parent’s student to address concerns and create intervention plans which are individualized to meet the student’s specific needs. These meetings occur frequently and can be initiated by any team member, with parents taking an imperative role as a team member.  

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Administration creates schedules that allow all grade levels to meet a minimum of hour each day. This allows teachers to review curriculum, build common assessments, discuss each student individually, and assess small group design. Teacher’s follow a PLC set agenda which lists agreed upon norms and also lists SMART goals that were built at the beginning of the year. Emphasis for the meetings are placed on the four big questions: What do we expect our students to learn? How will we know they are learning? How will we respond when they don't learn? How will we respond if they already know it? During this time, teachers are also able to divide students by skill and discuss which teacher or para is best fit to teach this skill for optimum effectiveness and growth.

2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

Each day students meet with teachers and para's in small groups to recieve intensive instruction on the skill that needs work. Small groups are held for 30 minutes for math and 30 for reading. Teachers also provide time in class to work with student who are struggling with a current lesson. The small groups are divided by both skill and level. The students are then diverted to the teacher or para who best suits the particular need of the student, matching the students with the teacher who can best deliver the skill lesson that is needed for improvement. 

3. Building teacher capacity to work as members of high performing collaborative teams that focus efforts on improved learning for all students.

As previously stated, we as a school maintain adherence to the four PLC questions when building our programs. Firstly, we expect all of our students to thrive and grow no matter where they are skill wise or academic level. We level our small groups by skills as well as level, keeping groups in a relatively low number to maximize our time with each student. Second, we have created common formative assessments in each grade level, allowing teachers to examine what is working and potential problem areas that can be improved upon. Thirdly, when students are not learning, teacher’s identify which students are struggling in which skills, then create individualized intervention plans to meet that student’s needs. Finally, through differentiation and increased awareness, students are pushed in a rigorous curriculum that, as a district, we have built to create an environment where our highest learners can continue to grow.

Our specials teachers meet not only as their own team, but also meet with other grades often to discuss ways to create cross-curricular teaching, bringing math and reading into their art, music, and PE lessons.

 

Achievement Data Files

• plc-learning-community-evidence-of-effectiveness-3215.docx

For the year 2018-2019, our school has met the requirements for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and Wyoming Accountability in Edcuation Act (WAEA), as a school that meets expectations over all. We were an exceeds target in the equity catagory for the WAEA and Above average in equity for the ESSA. We were noted as above average in achievement for the ESSA. We were also above average in growth for the ESSA.  

Files

• plc-learning-community-evidence-of-effectiveness.docx
• plc-ces-agenda-template.docx
• plc-application-wy-topp-data-3595.xlsx