Timpanogos Middle School began its PLC Process six years ago. During that time, it has had periods of moderate effectiveness, but we had also fallen into some “PLC Lite” practices, and our students’ results reflected this. In the fall of 2020, and dealing with the ramifications of a pandemic, we decided to renew our commitment to the PLC process.

Laying the Foundation

One of our first steps was to create a Guiding Coalition. Using the formula from Taking Action, we created out team. For many in our team, this was their first exposure to the work of Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, Thomas Many, and Mike Mattos. With our Taking Action and Learning by Doing books in hand, we were able to begin the groundwork for the PLC culture shift and to create the necessary collective efficacy. TMS had a mission of "Everyone at TMS will be inspired to achieve at high levels and create a sense of community". One of their first actions was to revisit that mission statement.

This process led to a great conversation about high levels of learning, and we were able to as a faculty define high levels of learning as grade level work or higher. We recognized that if students were not learning at grade level or higher, than our results would always be less than we wanted. We also had great conversations about the difference between a mission and a goal. We changed our goal setting process to look at individual students to set goals vs. random numbers. Our teams looked at end of year results and identified students who were already there, students who could be there with a little help, and then we set our goals based on who we felt should be at grade level work with solid tier 1 and tier 2 instruction. We also created plans for students who were more than a year behind that we will discuss in our intervention section.

In Fall of 2021, the school Guiding Coalition working as the voice of Timpanogos Middle School, established a new Mission and Vision: "All students will achieve at high levels and all students prepared to excel at Wasatch High School". It was important to our team that everything we did moving forward be tied to our Mission:  As a team, we collaboratively worked to ensure that all students grow.  We focused our work in our collaborative teams on questions 1 and 2: What do the students need to know and be able to do and how will we know when students have learned it? During pre-planning, collaborative teams established norms, SMART Goals, and learning targets for their first unit of study. We used grade level teams throughout the year for professional learning and feedback on the process. As collaborative teams began working together, the Team Leads and the Admin team sat in collaboratives to help guide them in the process. We made a goal for each collaborative team to develop a common formative assessment based on their first Essential Standard.  

Making the Tight, Tight

We used the books Learning by Doing and Taking Action as foundational pieces for our learning together. Our value statement became, “We will use the principles associated with the books Taking Action and Learning by Doing to achieve our Mission.” As a faculty, we also read the article, “The Futility of PLC Lite” by Rick DuFour, and we examined our practices against the five areas of tight laid out by the article. We then used the tight areas to guide our process for creating our collective commitments as a faculty. We talked about what each of the tight areas would look like in our school, and we turned them into if then statements. Finally, we discussed what artifacts would show evidence of tight, and we created an artifact calendar based off those things.

As the year progressed, the Guiding Coalition move on to answer Question 3 of a PLC school. They developed a system wide program to imbed Tier 2 time that guarantees all teams have a dedicated time for Tier 2 instruction. We call this SHIELD time

Also, in year two, we started working on integrating all four guiding questions of a PLC with a targeted look at firming up our essential standards and working them into common Unit Plans. We utilized the framework from Taking Action. We also established a Site Based Intervention Team to begin developing our systems of intervention to support question 3: What will we do when student have not learned it? 

Additionally in year 2 we hired a PLC coach to work specifically with teacher teams to create and strengthen unit plans, CFA's, essential targets, etc.

In year three, Guiding Coalition agreed upon a common score board that all teams began to utilize to house their progress and data. We call this the CLIMB form. It has systemized how our school interacts with data.

With our Climb Form we are able to track the effectiveness of Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. It allows us to get specific and who needs intervention and how well the interventions are working. 

Our next steps are wrapping our counseling services and community liaison to build systems to help those students who have barriers regarding home and health.

 

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Guiding Coalition has established a common Unit Plan template that all teams use to create their guaranteed and viable curriculum. These Unit Plans templates were developed from both Learning by Doing and Taking Action. The key to making these Unit Plans actionable is the assessment calendar. This artifact sets the dates for common assessment and dates for data discussions. The Unit Plans work in concert with the CLIMB forms to house the data from the common assessments.

 

Multiple times a year the teams will spend a day with the instructional coaches to review their plans and assess the viability of the Unit Plan as well as the rigor of the tier 1 instruction. The coaches guide the teams to determine how well the plans are answering the essential questions of a PLC. The coaches also help the team collect, interpret, and execute a plan based on the data.

We have a dedicated day before each term for the teams to set new goals and refresh the unit plans in preparation for the upcoming quarter.

Three times during the year we also give screeners to all students to monitor their progress regarding Literacy and Numeracy. The results of those screeners initiate tier 2 and tier 3 interventions.

All teams have a common agenda template that focuses collaboration time into the guiding questions of a PLC. It also includes protocols on analyzing data.

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

Our intervention process replicates the RTI pyramid in Taking Action. We start with the master schedule and the bell schedule. In the master schedule, we allocate staff resources to effectively provide Tier 3 instruction that doesn’t pull students from their Tier 1 classes. Secondly, we build into our bell schedule multiple opportunities each week for Tier 2 time. We call this SHIELD time, and it occurs four days a week. Priority status is given to core subjects on a rotating basis; however, any teacher has ability to intervene on a weekly basis. SHIELD time is dynamic and changes every two days. Teams meet on Monday to determine the SHIELD needs for the rest of the week. 

SHIELD time is not only for interventions but can also be used for extensions. Teams review student needs each week to determine the ration of intervention and extension needed.

With intervention time embedded into the schedule, we use universal screeners to determine the academic needs in the school. We have screeners for literacy and numeracy. We utilize attendance data and counselor referrals to screen home and health issues.

We have a site-based intervention team that meets every other week to assess the effectiveness of our interventions and create new interventions based on current realities. Members of the site-based intervention team are assigned based on recommendations from Taking Action.

On a quarterly basis, the intervention team reports to guiding coalition on the state of our interventions and our current needs.

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

One of our early obstacles was trying to create a system of data keeping that kept accurate and up to date data on student progress. It needed to be easy to read and manage while also being robust enough to give teams all the data they need to make decisions and know how a student is performing. We knew that a scoreboard was essential for teams to be effective. Through various drafts, the CLIMB form was created. This form is adaptable enough to house unique data points for individual teams and rigid enough that all teams have access to pertinent information to set goals and make decisions. As the CLIMB form continues to improve, so does the timely responses of the teams.

Each team meets at a minimum of once a week for collaboration time. This is the time to review CFA and CLIMB form data and plan for the next few instructional days after this time. We have staff dedicated to keeping the CLIMB form current so that teams do not need to spend a lot of time compiling data.

The CLIMB form has trend data that show how students are progressing through the school year. It identifies which students are part of the teams’ goals, how close students are to achieving mastery and which students need extensions.

Achievement Data Files

• tms-achievment.pdf

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