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Every week until the end of the 2022-2023 school year, The Troup County School System highlights a Professional Learning Community from a different school.

The Professional Learning Communities aims to meet regularly and discuss standards-based approaches, common assessments, student work, student-level data, interventions, and instructional improvement strategies.

This PLC highlight is from Berta Weathersbee Elementary School, written by Willie Cooks, Principal of BWES.

Implementing PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) has played a vital role in the progress at Berta Weathersbee Elementary School.

Teachers are actively reviewing data (formative and summative), engaging in dialogue concerning student progress, and adjusting instructional plans to meet the needs of their students best. Each PLC session is focused on determining how students progress toward mastery of pre-established power standards. In order to move students to mastery, teachers analyze student performance from classroom observations, teacher-made assessments, common assessments taken in Mastery Connect, and quarterly district assessments administered through iReady, Ready Math, and Acadience Learning Online. 

Once data is collected, teachers meet weekly to determine which standard/s their students have mastered and celebrate success before moving to the next step – determining where focused work needs to occur. Teachers then notate standards needing to be retaught and develop action plans to include when/how the remediation will occur, when/how the standard will be retested, and what assessment measure will be used for the retest.

Content teachers, EIP teachers, small group teachers, and exceptional education teacher plan instructional activities to assist students in mastering the standard. Teachers incorporate information gained from iReady and Ready Math diagnostic results, such as addressing any prerequisite skills needed for math and phonics/word work skills needed for ELA. In addition, specific remedial lessons from iReady Ready Math are part of the remedial action plan. For students who have mastered the standards, the same process is used in collaborating with a small group and a discovery teacher.