The Three Big Ideas and Four Essential Questions

Richard DuFour's work around effective PLCs has identified three big ideas and four essential questions to help guide professional learning discussions to keep students, student needs, and student success at the forefront of PLC work.  As teams delve into refining their collaboration, keeping these principles at the heart of the work ensures that students stay in the forefront.  You can learn more about the three big ideas and the four essential questions of PLC work from this All Things PLC resource from Solution-Tree.

Creating Norms

Whether working with an established team of colleagues or just starting out as a PLC, it is crucial to establish clear norms for your time together.  Patterns of behavior can quickly form and habits that derail or sabotage the work of your team (i.e. bird walks, complaining, discussion about nuts and bolts type items, etc.)  can inadvertently come to the surface without thoughtful norms to hold each other accountable in place.  As you create your norms as a team, consider utilizing a tool such as this Learning Forward Creating Norms protocol to help guide your decisions.

The Seven Stages of Professional Learning Teams

A first step in creating an effective PLC is taking time as a team to reflect on where your strengths and areas of growth around effective collaboration.  A resource for this work is The Seven Stages of Professional Learning Teams rubric which outlines practices and potential next steps for teams as they dig into their work together.  Periodically taking time throughout a school year to assess and reflect using this tool can help to ensure that your PLC members have a common vision and goals for their work together.