Freedom Elementary (2024)

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

Freedom has been building a shared understanding and commitment to the PLC at Work process for many years. Over the last 3 years, we have focused our efforts on the six essentials of a PLC to ensure that we were doing ‘PLC right’ and not ‘PLC Lite’. 

  • Collaborative Culture: Our collaborative culture is centered around trust and reciprocal accountability.  We have collective commitments (values), mission and vision that all faculty members helped develop.   We use every opportunity we can to celebrate the success we are seeing in our work - at the grade level, on the school level, and at the district level.   Last month we collected data and learned that 96% of our teachers believe all students can learn at high levels. 

  • Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum:  Our teams have identified essential standards for ELA and Math.  Teachers routinely update the tier 1 instruction for these essential standards based on data from common assessments as well as on new learning they receive during professional development.  

  • Student Learning Goals:  Our guiding coalition and school community council use data to create literacy and math priorities each year.  Our teacher teams use these priorities to set literacy and math goals for their teams.  These goals are designed to show proficiency on end of year assessments.  Our teams then create student learning targets for each essential standard.  

  • Common Formative Assessments:   Teams have created and use common formative assessments for the learning targets they have identified.  The data they collect from these assessments allows them to refine instruction and ensure that all students master the essentials. 

  • Intervention and Extension: Building shared understanding and a shared commitment to intervention and extension started with building capacity with grade level teams, our guiding coalition, and our student success team.   We attended a Solution Tree RTI conference and the Student Success Team received district training about RTI.  We then created a schoolwide tier 2 intervention system.   Administration provided the support and resources teacher teams needed to ensure all students received tier 2 intervention on every essential standard.   Before long this routine became part of Freedom’s culture.  The following year we decided to implement a schoolwide tier 3 intervention system for reading.   Teams are now discovering systematic ways they can help answer the 4th question - what do we do when students already know the material.  

  • Results Orientation and Collective Efficacy:  The work that we do at Freedom is determined through the lens of results orientation.  Our Master schedule is determined by the guiding coalition and focuses on ensuring that instruction and invention for essentials for every student is of utmost importance.  Our SST team receives data from every grade level that is formatted the same way and is easy to understand. We use that data to recommend student group priorities to our guiding coalition and then help grade levels set goals for those students. Our Social Emotional Wellness Team uses data from our district connection survey to recommend a connection priority to the guiding coalition, and then they help the grade levels set connection goals, and provide an opportunity for students to set individual goals surrounding the grade level goals. We look at student data on a regular basis and make changes to our systems and routines as needed.   Our teachers leave data dives feeling energized and ready to tackle new challenges.  These practices have helped increase their collective efficacy.  In our last employee culture climate survey, 96% of teachers reported believing that they and their team can have a positive impact on student learning. 

We are facilitating a culture of continuous improvement at Freedom in many ways.  First, our guiding coalition uses data from surveys from teams and teachers to determine next steps for growth.  Next, we have created a culture of reciprocal accountability for teachers that allows them to accomplish goals while having the support they need to do this without feeling overwhelmed. When we reviewed the data from our last employee culture climate survey, we learned that 78% of employees had enough time to carry out their responsibilities during the day and 85% had a good work life balance.  We are also working to ensure our systems become sustainable and are part of our culture.  Our goal for the faculty and staff at Freedom is that they ARE a professional community who are committed to high levels of learning for all students regardless of the name on the administrator’s door.   In addition to collaboration time, our teacher teams participate in embedded weekly professional development.  Freedom is not  afraid to look at data and change practice and procedures and even systems as needed.  We are always learning and improving!

 

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Professional Learning Teams at Freedom do several things to ensure and implement a guaranteed and viable curriculum for all students.  These processes are repeated as new curriculum and standards are introduced and as data shows a need for revision.  Learning about the standards in other grades is a key component for our teams as they determine essential standards for their own grade level.  After this, teams started to look at the district essential standards as well as the requirements for proficiency on district and state assessments.  They collaborated as teams and determined the standards they felt were essential for students to be ready for the next grade level. Once standards are determined, the team works together to create a series of learning targets (ladders) for each essential standard.  The team identifies a research based curriculum that addresses these learning targets and then designs lessons and common assessments that teachers use in their classrooms.  During summer collaboration the team determines a scope and sequence that includes suggested dates for instruction so that once the craziness of the year begins, teams can stay on target with instruction. 

Our weekly collaboration meetings led by the team lead and our guiding coalition meetings are the crucial meetings that ensures teachers teach the curriculum in a timely manner as well as allows teams to monitor learning on a regular basis.   Because teams have a scope and sequence for their curriculum, little time is spent during these meetings determining ‘what’ is going to be taught.  Instead, teams review ‘how’ they are going to teach the curriculum and bring data to see whether or not students have learned the material.  If 80% of students on the team master the learning targets, the teams create a tier 2 plan to address the needs of the 20%.  Teams decide what will be done to intervene, who will intervene, and when progress monitoring will take place to see if students have mastered the content. They review the tier 2 plans weekly to see if students are mastering concepts.  Once 90% of the students have mastered that target, we close the plan and teachers work individually with the rest of the students to ensure mastery.  If 80% of students have not mastered the learning target, teams spend time determining how to revise tier 1 instruction so that they can meet their 80% goal.   At our guiding coalition meetings team leaders report to the rest of the team about student progress on the essential standards.  They celebrate with the team and ask for support as needed. 

In addition to reviewing data on learning targets weekly, we also have data dives 3 times a year.  During these meetings teams look at how students are performing on district and state benchmark tests.  They use this data to determine if they need to revise tier 1 instruction, provide more intervention for students, or ask for support from the Student Success Team. 

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

Freedom has carefully designed systems of intervention and extension so that students have additional time and support for learning.   Our guiding coalition decided that we wanted two different types of intervention times for our students.  One intervention time focuses on tier 2 support for essential grade level standards in reading and math. The other time focuses on tier 3 reading support as well as extensions. We designed our master schedule so that all students would have access to tier 2 and tier 3 intervention as well as extensions without having to miss new tier 1 instruction.  

Teams determine the need for tier 2 intervention by looking weekly at common assessment data from learning targets during collaboration time.  After 80% of the grade level has mastered the learning target, the team creates a tier 2 intervention plan for that learning target.  Every grade level in the school uses the same form to record the intervention information (see RTI Plan attachment).   Grade level teams determine when this intervention will occur in their schedule.  Teams follow up weekly in a collaboration meeting to see if students have mastered the skill or if they need additional support.  Once a student masters the skill, they no longer receive intervention.  Students who do not need intervention on a skill participate in grade level designed extensions.  Last year,  as a school we provided intervention for 156 learning targets in reading and math.   Both our on grade level and above grade level students are showing significant growth in literacy and math on end of level state assessments, proving that our extensions are also helping those students learn at high levels.  

Teams determine the need for tier 3 intervention based on the results of a statewide reading assessment.  If students score below grade level, then we administer a screener from a research based reading intervention program to discover the areas the student needs to master in order to be able to read on grade level.  The students then participate in 15 day intervention lessons on those skills and are assessed to determine mastery.  All of this data is recorded on the same RTI form.   This time is organized by grade level but the time it takes place is determined by the guiding coalition.  These intervention groups are taught by our paraprofessionals and other certified teachers who have breaks in their schedules.  Our regular education teachers provide either tier 2 intervention or extension for the rest of the students.  We have named this time WIN time - What I Need time.  

During collaboration and data dives, teams review the data from tier 2 plans and tier 3 plans to make sure all students are learning.  If they are not responding to the interventions, then we refer them to our Student Success Team (SST).  Since all of our data is recorded and shared electronically, the SST team can review the data and then assign a case manager to work directly with the teacher to create another plan to help the student.  After working with the student, the SST team and teacher review the data.  If the new interventions are working, teachers continue with those interventions.  If they are not, SST refers the student to Special Education to see if they are eligible to receive specialized instruction and accommodations so they can access the tier 1 curriculum and learn at high levels. 

 

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

Our teams rely on three basic things to help them focus on improved student learning for all students:  a schedule, data dives, and being able to design a system of resources that will allow them to do their jobs well. 

Our schedule is one critical piece to our success.  Our guiding coalition developed a daily schedule that ensured that all students would receive tier 1 instruction on essential standards as well as tier 2 and tier 3 interventions as needed.  This schedule is critical because teachers need enough uninterrupted time to deliver tier 1 instruction, but they also need time to intervene.  We also realized that we needed help from faculty members throughout the building to ensure students could receive individualized intervention.  General Ed, Special Ed, and Specialty Schedules all had to coordinate.  We also developed a schedule for teachers that maximized the district allocated collaboration and professional development time that happens before the students arrive.  We have two hours of collaboration and one hour of professional development time weekly for grade level teams to collaborate.  During collaboration time, teachers design tier 1 instruction for essentials, bring data from common assessments, analyze the data, and determine if tier 1 instruction was effective.  This work ensures that every student in the grade level is accounted for and doesn’t get lost.  During the one hour a week of Professional Time, our teachers purposefully choose areas to build their capacity that relate directly back to the curriculum they are teaching and expecting students to learn.  They access district classes, support from our innovative learning coach or PLC coach, other teams in the school or in the district to learn the things they need to learn to be more effective teachers and in turn our students learn at higher levels. 

Our grade level data dives are another thing that helps our teachers focus on improved student learning.  Three times a year our coach and administrators help our teams dive deep into benchmark data to make sure that students are on the right track to show proficiency and growth at the end of the school year.  We also use this time to evaluate whether or not our instruction and common assessments were rigorous enough for our students to show proficiency on benchmarks.  Working as teams during our data dives builds teacher’s capacity and efficacy.  

Another important thing our teams do to be able to focus their efforts on improved student learning is to ask for and access resources that will help them help students learn.  Each year our guiding coalition and school community council gather input about what resources teachers need to be able to address the needs of their students.  We then create our budget for the following year so we can obtain both the physical resources and the human capital that teachers need to ensure student success. The coalition creates accountability expectations for the use of these resources, and the results have been phenomenal.  Teachers believe they can affect student learning because they have the support and resources they need to do their  jobs.  

State recogition for completing required progress monitoring with 100% fidelilty on Acadience Reading Assessment for every reporting period in 2022- 2023 and the first reporting period in 2023 -2024.  

3rd grade team recognized by ASD Assessment Team for outstanding proficiency in state Acadience Reading scores (89%), for outstanding growth in state Acadience Reading (84%), and for outstanding proficiency on the state math assessement (78%) for the 2022-2023 school year

4th grade team recognized by ASD Assessment Team for outstanding proficiency on the state math assessement (76%) for the 2022-2023 school year

 

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