I talked to fellow KC steering committee member, Laurie Milne (also in area V), and asked her to give me her crib notes from the area meeting of last week that I couldn't make. Here is her summary:
"Scott Fehr was the main presenter ( he is the System AP I think) and he spoke about PLC's ( professional learning communities) and how they address the needs of students from the "grass roots" level based on data driven information from the provincial achievement tests, pillar studies, and other input from the parents and school. The final goal is always to meet the 5 end statements of the CBE.
There are facilitators in place to help learning communities meet these goals. Their job is to meet with teachers in groups of any size in a learning community. Together they will brainstorm and come up with a plan to work on area's in which the students are not reaching the desired level of achievement.
For example, a grade 3 language arts PAT result with falling achievement in the area of writing organization could be addressed. The facilitators could work with the teachers in a PLC and decide that the best way to work with the students in this area would be by using smart boards in a group setting to show how to organize sentence and paragraph structure. There is an emphasis in the "no child left behind" philosophy, and serious problems or deficits are addressed immediately.
The example for this was a child who did not write anything besides the title on her story for the PAT. It was an interesting and interactive meeting, and helped me to understand how different areas of the CBE can work together. Parent input and parent/teacher communication is very important."
Big thanks to Laurie!
