Building Teacher Capacity

The benefits of a strong standards-based curriculum are not fully realized without the single most important factor for producing student academic achievement gains – teacher capacity.  Growing teacher capacity and effective professional learning community teams are essential building blocks for creating successful schools; schools with a sense of family, where respect and support are the factors that allow all students to take “intellectual risks.”  Successful teaching teams build a common language and shared understandings to employ best practices and formative assessments.  Teachers learn to analyze student work and formative assessment data to drive instruction – instruction that is not only driven by academic needs, but by social and emotional needs, too.  The result is a school where rapport between the teachers, students, and parents is visibly evident.

OnPoint provides teachers and administrators with training to employ research evidence best practice strategies and tools that build teacher capacity and promote a sense of efficacy.   When teachers learn how to effectively employ research evidence balanced literacy best practice and use formative assessments such as the Developmental Reading Assessment (reading fluency and comprehension), the Development Spelling Inventory (word study, K-9), and a wide variety of rubrics, they guide students to become self-directed learners and make significant academic achievement.

Professional Learning Community

Teachers are empowered to meet and collaborate on regular basis – weekly – throughout the school year to self-direct their professional growth and build their “teacher capacity” to meet the needs of all learners. 

Five essential questions and norms for engagement guide their efforts.

Five Essential Questions

1. What do we want students to learn?
   (Standards-Based Learning)
2. Which best practices are most effective to achieve the identified learning outcome?
   (Research-Evidence Learning Activity Aligned to Standards)
3. How will we know when students have learned?
   (Rubrics and Assessment For Learning)
4. What interventions will we use when students have not learned?
   (Differentiated Instruction – Scaffolding, More Time, More Practice)
5. What extensions will we use when students have learned?
   (Differentiated Instruction – Higher Level Extended Learning)

Meeting Norms

1. Meet for 1 hour 30 minutes weekly
2. Commit to making 90% of time on topic with PLC Essential Questions
3. Teachers come prepared with notes, minutes, student work, and professional resources
4. Goals for meeting are set/communicated prior to the PLC meeting; goals for the next meeting are set prior to leaving the current PLC meeting
5. An Annual Agenda for PLC Goals, including professional reading, is set in September
6. Annual PLC Goals are focused on standards-based lessons, common formative assessments, and response to intervention to meet the differentiated needs of all students
7. Minutes for accountability are taken and submitted to administration

The Professional Learning Community model is anchored by the assumption that teachers are committed as lifelong learners to growing their “teacher capacity” through the critical triangle for expert teaching: content, methodology, and rapport with students.