PLC+Agendas+and+Minutes

 Members in attendance: Carol, Cassie, Sue, Pam, Lynne, Marianne, Kirsten, Heidi Title 1 Carol and Cassie—Mary Howard Conference Targeted Services
 * Jan. 13th PLC Minutes**
 * Document Parent Involvement
 * Tuesday at 10s
 * Check in at conferences
 * Share the Family Contract with families—doesn’t need to be signed—but shared
 * keep a list of students who receive the contract
 * Title doesn’t have a budget to do evening activities
 * Possibility of invited parents to attend the training with Lisa Boland-Blake
 * Before school things and invite parents in to share about things that are going on with reading
 * Gave a pamphlet to all members
 * Title ratios—surprising, but needs to be adhered to more closely
 * “Read While You Wait” tables
 * Universal Word walls
 * Cut apart books and laminate them and put them on the wall
 * Student Notebook
 * If you are pulling students out of science or social studies, then you should be teaching with science or social studies passages/non-fiction text
 * Our district model is to split groups. In order to maximize the instructional time, we put them into groups based on needs. The struggle comes when students need additive time.
 * OHA’s discussions have looked at essential components of literacy and time devoted the time.
 * Will need to look at the data on the MAPs and see if the data indicates changes that need to be made.
 * Middle School is looking at pulling from social studies by using social studies texts.
 * Students who are struggling in reading often times struggle in Spanish.
 * The reality is that when you reach a certain size with a group of the neediest groups—the academic engagement decreases.
 * Can isolate the growth of kids who are getting different types of instruction. This can help inform grouping and scheduling.
 * OH only has 3 teachers that have expressed interest—so they are looking at maybe doing just 3rd grade.
 * Look into getting Subs to teach a section?

School-wide testing
 * OH is going to do the entire school for CBM benchmarking in the Fall and Spring.
 * By cutting out sections of students, it will depress the AIMSWeb norms.
 * Heidi will check with AIMSWeb if the data can be entered but not counted in AIMSWeb norms.
 * In the future—we need a firm decision rule to keep students from winter benchmark testing. If a student is above a certain point, then he/she is exempt from testing.
 * OH is doing MAP testing whole school in the spring. Winter will only be for students who have been identified.

Save the Date Cards for our testing. Get the dates set up a year in advance.


 * 

Dec. 17th Meeting Minutes **8am in the Reading Room at WW Members Present: Judy L., Marianne R., Cassie H., Sue C., Pam R., Carol S., Terry T., Heidi S. 
 * Reviewed the goal again to decide when we will not be counting students as part of our goal. It was decided that students who enter our direct service after Feb. 1st will not be included as part of the total number of direct service students stated in our goal. Judy will adjust the PLC goal and resubmit it to include that detail.
 * Pam and Sue are being trained on YPP this Friday (YEAH!) It will be implemented asap after winter break.
 * CBM dates are set for both OHA and WW. WW will be testing by homeroom on Jan. 12-14. OHA will be testing by literacy block on Jan. 15, 16, 20, 21. OHA mentioned that they will not be testing the two highest groups in each grade (?) for fluency.
 * Carol and Cassie attended an RTI workshop last Monday and will be sharing that material with us at our next meeting.
 * Heidi mentioned that the RTI conference in March is still a possibility--Sue expressed her interest. Judy and Heidi will probably get to attend the conference for free because of Reading Corps. More on this to come in the future.
 * The focus of future meetings was also discussed. Terry said that he really liked the data meeting that WW had on Tuesday and would like to have them start at OH as well. It was nice to talk about individual students and needs and see how all the data that we collect gets put together and used. Based on that Judy suggested that our meetings be data/student focused from this point on and our PLCs can be "Data Parties." Since we meet twice a month--we can focus one on reading and one on math and share our ideas about how to accelerate growth for our students. There seemed to be an overall agreement that this would be a good direction to head.
 * An informal discussion happened at the end that talked about needs and things that need improvement--I think they are important enough to make a list of and revisit them at other times:
 * DEAW-Drop Everything and Write--this would really cause students to show what they are learning.
 * 45 minutes at the end of the day that all classrooms have open and there can be pull out for interventions and other needs such as orinizational needs.
 * Reading Corps application is filled out and we are hoping to fill positions for both OH and WW for next year. In the future we should talk about RC at our meeting and how is works.
 * The need for 90 minute literacy blocks and additional time for those students who are struggling. Literacy blocks seem to really be working here at WW, but at OH maybe there does need to be an alternative way of doing literacy blocks--so that students can get the individual attention above and beyond literacy blocks. I would like to see if there is a way to do this at WW also--for example students are in homeroom for the main Anthology work and then we break into skill groups for 60 minutes each day. I feel like that would allow more time for individual pull-out interventions that many students need. (I admit, this last rant wasn't at our meeting--but I felt like I wanted to add it so I don't forget.)
 * **Let's also invite the principals/main scheduling people to a PLC this year in MARCH (?) and put in our input to scheduling ideas.**
 * 

Oct. 28th Meeting **Minutes 8:00am in the Conference Room at OHA--45 Minutes Members Present: Judy L., Marianne R., Cassie H., Sue C., Pam R., Carol S., Terry T., Heidi S., and Shannon S.
 * The whole meeting was spent hammering out the goal on the Home page of this WIKI. In the Discussion Tab on the Home page there are other questions/concerns/comments that came up about the goal.
 * 

Oct. 8th Meeting ** Minutes 8:00am in Room 3 at Wildwood--45 Minutes Members Present: Judy L., Marianne R., Cassie H., Sue C., Pam R., Carol S., Lynne V., Shannon, --Mark H. stopped in.
 * Review Group Norms (10 min) Reviewed the norms and decided on majority for making decisions. Please check the "PLC Norms" page.
 * WIKI Inservice (10 min)   Quickly reviewed the site and it's purpose, please ask for help from Judy if needed. We will be using this as a tool for discussion and communication.
 * Draft a PLC Goal (25 min) Looked and edited the goal--please see the "Discussion" page for our work in progress. Please add to the discussion by pondering the questions and adding your thoughts. We will follow up these discussions at our next meeting.
 * Finalize the next meeting time and place (1 min)--Oct. 28th at OH, 8am

SMART BOARD Version of our meeting

Tabled for another meeting: [|www.nwea.org] for another meeting:
 * Look at NWEA Primary Grades Instructional Data and Dynamic Learning Tools (10 min.--Just an Introduction to the tool)
 * If there is time--Interactive Read Alouds and benchmark books (literacy side)