C.C. Hardy Elementary (2023)

  1. PLC Story
  2. PLC Practices
  3. Achievement Data
  4. Awards
  5. Resources

In 2021, CC Hardy was recognized as a Model PLC school.  Beginning in May 2021, Susan Fossler was named the principal at C.C. Hardy Elementary.  During the Summer of 2021, Mrs. Fossler brought together a group of core teachers and the leadership team to analyze the PLC process on the campus thoroughly.  Based on the information, it was discussed that more strategic and intentional Agendas, Unit Plans, and consistency with collaboration needed to be done.  The Guiding Coalition developed a new vision, mission, and collective commitment to guide this growth as a PLC campus.  This was the first year that the campus had used Unit Planning to ensure that teachers were providing thoroughly designed units that genuinely focused on what the essential standard was required for students understanding.  The team then took their learning and guided their teams and the campus through unit planning, data protocols, and pacing out the standards.  Teachers were ensuring that a backward design was being done to ensure that we were reaching the rigor of the standard and that there was a clear understanding of what the mastery of the standard would look like.  As teachers went through the unit plan further, they noted that to ensure student success that CFAs and checkpoints needed to be conducted to ensure that students were showing success toward mastery of the essential standard, thus taking apart the pieces of the standard to see where the misconceptions and the break down of learning could occur.

In February 2022, the campus took a core team to the RtI summit in Austin, Texas, where the team came up with the idea of TREA time to ensure that we support ALL students in their growth and meet them where they were.  During the summer of 2022, the new members of the guiding coalition came together and decided how this would roll out.  We discussed knowing which students were already receiving interventions and remediation and looking at those that needed enrichment and acceleration.  From there, teachers were given these names so that on the first week of the school year, students were already receiving needed support to grow where they were.  All students, K-5, were placed in groups from initial data.  As students received support, teachers tracked their growth through checkpoints in their groups to check mastery of the standards marked in their individual reports utilized from the universal screener (MAP data).  Beginning in September, students were given a new screener for the year, and based on the data, teachers utilized the student's reports and the learning continuum in MAP data to create strategic groups that worked on needed intervention, remediation, enrichment, and acceleration.  Students were grouped based on Reading, Math, Language Arts, and Science.  Teachers were intentional in these groupings, as some students could receive enrichment in one subject but may need intervention or remediation in another.  

 As teams began tracking CFAs and CSAs, students were tracked on their progress toward mastery and given the appropriate support needed to grow all students.  Teachers were intervening before the CSAs to help support students' mastery of their standards.  The teams utilized the concept that if at least 80% of the class did not show mastery of the standard, then it was standard that they needed to go back and look at Tier 1 instruction to ensure that the standard was taught to the fullest.  These conversations happened during the data protocols, where teachers discussed classes with a higher percentage and then shared strategies to support students' success.  When deciding on which teacher would take specific groups, the teacher with the highest mastery would either take on a small group that needed support or, in some cases, the teacher would teach the whole class of a peer, thus fostering the concept that ALL students are ALL our students.  

This year, the leadership team has been supporting and growing our Guiding Coalition to help support the growth of their teams in the PLC process.  We utilized two resources to support this growth (Powerful Guiding Coalitions by Bill Hall and Make It Happen by Kim Bailey and Chris Jakicic). The two tools have allowed the Guiding Coalition to dive deeper into our district SIG and ensure we are tightening up our collective commitments and holding each accountable to doing the work to support student success.  In addition, the campus has increased by 200 students along with extra personnel.  With this addition, it was decided that we needed to grow our new members' understanding of the PLC process.  It was also noted that our story had to be changed based on the needs of the campus changing.  With that in mind, in January 2023, the campus thoroughly looked at our Vision, Mission, and Collective Commitments.  As a whole campus (teachers, leadership team, and paraprofessionals), we needed to take time to see who we are now and where we want to go.  As a campus, we decided to change our Mission to incorporate more of who we are.  With that change, the campus needed to see if we were truly living and breathing our collective commitments.  There were some that we realized we were not giving our whole commitment to, and we needed to ensure that we held each other accountable for these commitments.  Our Vision remained the same, and as a whole, the campus saw a clear flow of how our Mission and Collective commitments would lead to our Vision's success.

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Our teachers go through the state standards to create student-friendly learning targets to guarantee that students are learning their essential standards to their full potential.  We utilize a Unit Plan that ensures we look at the standards in depth to understand what the students are learning clearly.  We then utilize a backward design to ensure the curriculum and assessments accurately reflect the learning essentials and targets through the creation of our common summative and formative assessments.  This allows us to agree upon the level of mastery for the standards and teach the rigor needed for success.   Once this is completed, teams discuss what they will do when students don't understand and what they will do if they do so that they can differentiate their lessons.  The team takes the next step and paces out the learning within what data has shown that was needed for their students.  Teachers also plan for checkpoints so that when their students take a CFA or CSA, they already have provided intervention before assessing their growth.  Based on the data protocol that teams do for their scheduled CFA and CSAs, teachers identify students needing tiered support based on the data from our assessments within a 48-hour window and create groups to intervene or provide enrichment within 1-2.  

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

As a campus, we saw a great need to ensure that time was held sacred for supporting students; therefore, we created a specified time in our master schedule to provide intervention, remediation, and enrichment for our students.  We used data from various resources to develop specific plans for students and their needs.  Every student received a folder that they took to our TREA time to have their teacher for their intervention or enrichment to document what was being done and the progress.  Our groups moved fluidity due to data from CFA and CSAs that allowed us to narrow the needs of students.  Several students would move from intervention to enrichment in the same subject due to what standards they mastered or show the need for support.  All interventions and enrichment were research-based and were given by the teacher whose data revealed the most success.  Teams were open and honest with one another about what the data showed for who was to teach the specific skills needed for mastery of standards.

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

Ample professional development opportunities for all staff on the PLC process, as well as on content and learning essentials.Then through data protocols and collaboration,  teacher teams support each other in learning through strategy shares, peer observations in the classroom, and campus instructional videos of current teaching staff demonstrating essential components of the lesson cycle in practice, not in theory.

During our Vertical alignment time, teachers were able to discuss the essential standard that we see across the campus and grades that we see as a great area of growth.  Then teachers bring strategies and activities that they have seen be successful so that all can see ways to either intervene, remediate, or enrich their students.

In order to continue supporting our growth as a PLC, we meet biweekly with our guiding coalition team and discuss ways to grow ourselves as a collaborative team and a PLC campus to ensure that we continue to focus on the 4 essential questions, along with fine-tuning our process to measure students success.  Our guiding coalition team then goes back to their CTT and grows their team in this knowledge.

Finally, we utilize the district SIG to gain feedback from the leadership team and district to get an outside perspective of where our teams are at to help support our growth in the PLC process.  We also use the SIG to do a self-assessment to see where we see ourselves and how we can grow as a team to reach the "Gold Standard."

 
 

Achievement Data Files

Additional Achievement Data

CC Hardy Elementary has shown an upward trend with its MAP data.  This school year (2022-2023), we gained 200 more students on campus and continued to support growth in all our students. With the utilization of several programs and the fidelity of our intervention time, our campus has shown growth in students mastering their essential standards. MAP data shows that we are reaching the expected growth of most grade levels and, at times, surpassing the expected growth.  

Our student achievement gap is closing, as all our students are progressing towards reaching their goals.  As our team takes our learning from NWEA that was given in the Spring, we see more significant gains as we have learned more ways to support student goal setting and utilizing the data from MAP results to create even more intentional action plans for students' needs.

Model PLC Campus 2021

 

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