The Way We Work:
Professional Learning
Communities
What happens behind the scenes to enhance student learning
is more thoughtful and intentional than many realize.
Every student’s name – almost 160 of
them – was listed in a column projected
on a big screen.
Fourth grade teachers at Newman
Elementary were huddled over stacks of
papers, looking over results from their
latest common formative assessment in
math. Students had been asked to show
the value of numbers using numerals and
expanded notation. Some had excelled.
Others, not as much.
“It doesn’t seem like he fully under-
stands place value,” Aleshia Ruehl told
20 | FOCUS
her fellow teachers. “More practice with
pictures and manipulatives would proba-
bly be helpful.”
Armed with data from the assessment,
the teachers separated their students into
groups based on their needs and under-
standing of the learning objective, just one
of many standards outlined in the Texas
Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).
Students who clearly mastered the skill
formed one group. Students who strug-
gled the most were in another. The rest
fell somewhere in between.
“I need her confidence to be built,” said
teacher Amy Wilson, suggesting one of
her students receive additional instruction
and go into one pile – and column – rather
than another.
And so it continued until all students
were divided into a group and assigned to
Fourth grade teachers at Newman
Elementary divide their students’
assessments into piles to create groups
for math enrichment or intervention.