A Quick Overview of The DuFour PLC Model
/What’s a PLC? Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are groups of educators who meet regularly to share expertise, analyzes student work, plan instruction and collaborate to improve teaching skills and the academic performance of students.
What makes the Du Four model different? The Du Four model is based around four questions and four pillars. We use the four questions to plan instruction, assess student progress, and respond instructionally.
Here are the questions:
What do we expect our students to learn?
Guaranteed aligned curriculum across grade levels and vertically from one grade to the next.
Common Core, learning targets, standards in student work and rigor
How will we know they have learned it?
Use our assessments, observations and data to monitor student learning.
Common assessments, quick checks for understanding, formative assessments, summative assessments, results analysis
How will we respond when some students do not learn?
Teachers collaborate to understand student learning needs and respond
Re-teaching, classroom interventions, specialist or tutor interventions, home connections
How will we extend and enrich learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency?
Acceleration and/or enrichment
Whole class or in Small groups, individual differentiation, student choices
The Pillars help us to structure our work according to the values we hold as a school community. Here are the pillars:
Mission – Our mission helps us define our purpose and answers the question, “Why do we exist?”
Vision – Our vision gives us direction for how we will accomplish our mission and answers the question, “What must we become?”
Values – Values help us define our mission and vision, set goals, and decide on the non-negotiables that are important to our work.
Goals – Goals help us to define measurable action steps with data we can collect to measure our progress toward meeting our mission and vision[FRL1] .
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