Prior to 2019, Lakeview Middle School (LVMS) teachers participated in departmental PLCs twice a week.  During this time, teachers focused on creating weekly lesson plans and staying up-to-date on campus/district responsibilities.  Despite their commitment to routinely meeting, student achievement data and student engagement in the learning community continued to decline.  Teachers, students, and the community were beginning to become discouraged because the current reality did not reflect Lakeview’s historic reputation of safety and success.  

Building shared understanding began with a reality-check.  During our 2019 August Professional Learning, LVMS staff participated in a D-I-E (Describe-Identify-Evaluate) protocol that created a common understanding of our campus’ current reality, informed how we got there, and established a vision for what “we”, the staff of Lakeview MS, wanted for our students’ future.  The outcome of the process resulted in the development of two clear campus goals:  1) Create a culture and community of care and 2) Implement instructional practices and campus procedures that will positively impact student learning every day.

To ensure teachers maintained a focus on these goals, our faculty meetings during the 2019-2020 school year were focused on two topics:  cultural proficiency and instruction.  Each department was given the opportunity to present one impactful instructional strategy to their colleagues at a faculty meeting.  By sharing the leadership authority over the faculty meetings with the teachers, they found greater commitment to selecting, investigating, and  verifying the efficacy of their instructional practices.  This shared responsibility also helped focus PLC time on instructional design and contributed to creating a spirit of collective efficacy within the team.  

This work was also supported by several of the goals in our federally required Targeted Improvement Plan, as well.  One specific goal related to planning instruction through the PLC Model.  All teacher lesson plans attended to the 4 PLC questions:

1. What do we want all students to know and be able to do?

2. How will we know if they learn it?

3. What do we do if they don’t understand it?

4. What do we do if they already understand it?

Together our campus goals and our TIP plan help shift the type of work occurring in PLC time.  Throughout the year, campus administrators attended PLCs, reviewed teacher lesson plans, and provided feedback.  Analysis of their work in these settings identified a collective challenge of differentiating instruction.  Even though teachers planned for differences, students often all received the same instruction and/or learning activity.  The extension piece was a challenge, which often resulted in a failure to implement the work planned for questions 3 and 4.

At the beginning of the 2021 school year, we set a new campus instructional goal:  to be able to identify one specific academic strength and area of opportunity for all of our students.  This transition required teachers to begin identifying specific learning targets, establish a baseline and measure progress through multiple formative assessments, and design specific interventions and/or extensions for individual students based upon their assessment results.  The expectation for using data to inform instruction was upheld and supported in PLC time by all campus administrators.  To promote ownership of the work, each department was given the authority to design their data collection tool and assessment-instruction cycle as best fit their work.  The freedom to design the process allowed the teachers to experiment, explore, fail-forward, and try again, and it inspired true investment in the work.  At the end of each grading period, teachers would identify student progress on our PLC data walls to provide a clear illustration of which students are growing (and in which subjects) throughout the year. 

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Lakeview teachers design instruction founded in the LISD curriculum, which is grounded in the state-required TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills).  Lesson plans unpack the curriculum in a way that ensures the 4 PLC questions are addressed.  During 19-20 campus administration provided written feedback on teacher lesson plans.  Teacher-leaders were trained in the facilitation of collaborative protocols, and campus administrators attended PLCs  in order to monitor and ensure the fidelity of the work.  During the 21-22 school year, PLC time prioritized data analysis as a key component to lesson design.  Campus administration and the campus Data and Instruction Specialist regularly attended and participated in departmental PLCs.  Leadership participation was documented on our Leadership Responsibility Tracker to ensure fidelity of the work and lesson design.  Instructional alignment to the curriculum was measured through TREND walk-throughs completed by campus administration.

Every August teams meet to discuss and build a shared understanding of the curriculum for the upcoming school year. Teachers review the key standards, study curriculum documents, and discuss, analyze, prioritize, and make sense of the standards in order to build shared knowledge of the expected curriculum. Each month teachers unwrap standards into chunk size pieces of information.  They then develop a shared understanding of behaviors of  student mastery.  We monitor student success on a weekly basis using the 4 Critical Questions. 

During the 21-22 school year, teachers worked together to determine the standards they beleived to be important based on their experience, observation, and knowledge of data.  Allowing them the opportunity to have autonomy with this choice and witness the struggle of picking the right target to "tell the right story" helped create commitment to the work and make the process "sticky".  This year, the Guiding Coalition used this challenge as a lesson learned and concluded that the PLC teams would valued a structured protocol that guides their teams through the selection of essential standards; the standads their students must know in order to be successful at the next level.  We have a plan in place to partner with our district departmental faciliators in the selection of our upcoming essential standards.

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

During the 21-22 school year, teachers began using student data trackers to measure student understanding.  Teachers would measure student understanding through formative assessments and then implement an intervention or extension based on the results of the formative assessment.  The data trackers included student results and a specifically identified extension or intervention assigned to each student.  At the conclusion of the instructional cycle (after the summative assessment), teachers would discuss the impact of the instructional supports to determine their usefulness in future settings.  

In 21-22, this information, in conjunction with STAAR Interim (pre-assessment) scores, was used to develop “STAAR Boot Camp”, a time dedicated to personalized support for students prior to their state-mandated assessments.  All students were provided boot camp opportunities.  The opportunities were designed to address deficit skills during in-person sessions before and after school and to provide online extension opportunities for students who routinely demonstrate proficiency in assessed objectives.  All students were encouraged to participate through an incentive/reward system.  

This year, our Guiding Coalition has developed an intervention plan that will provide 45 minutes of structured, focused academic interventions for students during the school day seven times throughout the school year.  All students will be engaged in an academic intervention or extension learning experience at the same time and all staff will be involved in implementing this campus-wide support for learning.

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

We have a commitment to continuous improvement and maximizing team collaborative time at Lakeview Middle School. Our master schedule is built to allow each content team to have time to analyze, discuss, evaluate, and design instruction to best support individualized student learning.   We meet weekly as a departmental team.  All meetings are facilitated by teacher instructional leaders to discuss student growth and best instructional practices.

Achievement Data Files

• st-copy-of-lakeview-data-trackers-2021-22.xlsx
• lakeview-ms-_-accountability-comparisons.pdf
• lakeview-plc-data-sheet.pdf

Additional Achievement Data

Lakeview MS | Accountability Comparisons:  The data reflected in this document illustrates student growth on state accountability measures from 2019-2022.

ST Copy of Lakeview Data Trackers 2021-22:  This file contains a sample teacher data tracker from each core content from the 21-22 school year.  These are actual data trackers that were used to identify areas of strength and opportunity for each student at Lakeview.  These are included to illustrate our commitment to student learning through the PLC process during the 21-22 school year.

• 2020-2022 Common Sense Media School
• 2020-21 CREST Award
• 2021-22 CREST Award
• Energy Star Certified School
• 2020-2024 Raise Your Hand Texas Blended Learning Grant
• 2020 LISD Counselor of the Year
• 2019 LISD Secondary Teacher of the Year

2022 STAAR Distinction Designations

• Academic Achievement in English/Language Arts/Reading
• Academic Achievement in Scoial Studies
• Top 25%: Comparative Academic Growth
• Postsecondary Readiness
• Top 25%: Comparative Closing the Gaps

Files

• 6th-grade-elar-lesson-plans.pdf
• what-is-the-difference-between-a-plc-and-a-department-meeting.pdf
• lvms-plc-menu-22-23.pdf
• data-walls-artifact.pdf
• example--6th-grade-elar-plc-agenda.pdf
• collective-commitments-6305.pdf