N15: How has our ILT been bringing our Professional Learning Plan (PLP) to life since July’s ILT Institute? Add links to share your work! by Elizabeth Perretta

eperez176 — 2025-09-16 13:58:59 UTC

Sample School: Our ILT has started leading our first learning cycle on aligning the rigor of student work to the intended rigor of the learning target from our HQ curriculum. After doing some learning about teacher moves that maintain the intended rigor, teachers have co-planned two lessons from our HQ curriculum together during GLTs and are about to start peer observations to see each other's great work in action. Check out our PLP to see how we're building towards our Q1 PL Outcomes: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jJUsuQqP1DBnTQoIGtr0uOweuV3R3zXh5yC0r2D_Yyk/edit?gid=736987633#gid=736987633

2025-09-18 14:37:49 UTC

ILT co-constructed clarity around the year’s focus—refining grading and assessment practices to ensure feedback for growth and equity. This gave all members a common anchor for professional learning. Building Coherence: Each ILT meeting has been intentionally structured to connect professional learning to department-level work. Members have been asked to refine summative assessment rubrics within their departments, aligning them to our shared focus.

Using Data for Direction: The team engaged with last year’s Cultivate survey data to identify gaps in feedback, belonging, and clarity. That data has been used to prioritize deliverables and shape PD design.

2025-09-18 14:38:38 UTC

During Zero Week, teachers engaged in professional reading around action research (which we are revisiting from SY25) and met in small groups to learn from one another's best practices. In ILT, we have covered what the cycle of learning looks like for individual teachers, what the scope of work looks like for TCTs and departments and how they are connected. At this point, teachers are refining their action research goals and we are planning for safe practice, classroom observations and Looking at Student Work over the course of the learning cycle.

2025-09-18 14:39:33 UTC

During this learning cycle, we are taking time in department meetings to discuss how interdependent tasks look in each content area, and develop tasks to bring to grade levels for cross-curricular feedback.

We are also continuing to refine grading practices using standards-aligned rubrics.

2025-09-18 14:39:37 UTC

Solorio is trying something new this year: mixed grade level/content PLCs (based on period off) facilitated by ILT members monthly. This helps us to customize coaching and support to small groups based on our CIWP goals. It's been going well! See our adult LTs linked above.

2025-09-18 14:40:04 UTC

Alcott: This year we introduced a new teacher collaboration structure that connects staff across departments and grade levels. The PLP process allowed us to plan strategically for this new structure while also highlighting the ways it connects with and reinforces the other collaboration opportunities available to teachers

2025-09-18 14:40:14 UTC

Our ILT was unable to attend the July institute, but we have been catching up by reviewing teacher feedback and adjusting our instructional focus to form a new targeted instructional area. From there, we looked at reading data and ways to bridge school-wide goals with our high quality curriculum and effective instruction that the institutes have been focusing on.

Our Q1 goal so far is focusing on teacher practices - specifically active reading strategies in every classroom. Our data point for this quarter is the IXL BOY Benchmark.

2025-09-18 14:41:19 UTC

During Q1 we are working on the focus of ILT/Department Chairs as they have been collapsed into the same team where as previously they were two separate teams. We are focusing on PLCs that are focused on feedback for growth for students while still focused on HRL. We have been strategic about the alignment of the work our ELPT and DL Department has been doing to ensure focus and alignment with CIWP goals.

2025-09-18 14:41:25 UTC

Our ILT is continuing to adopt the proficiency scales in our school. We are making sure that our teachers in our departments are creating scales that include learning targets/standards to make sure we are assessing the mastery of the skills in our classrooms. Teachers are creating assessments that align to the learning targets and standards in our Proficiency Scales. This allows us to differentiate and include the diverse needs of our students.

2025-09-18 14:42:07 UTC

Ogden-Jenner:

We have been bringing our PLP to life by training teachers in the use of rubrics for standards-based grading in order to strengthen our approaches to feedback for growth. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-GYshiP3a6wmfmWOykjkPamsZEpbinMiV1cr84XVM5Q/edit?usp=sharing

2025-09-18 14:42:13 UTC

We started Week 0 engaging our teachers in HQC implementation with integrity and the backwards planning process. We encouraged teachers to give pre and post assessments to track growth. We developed a tool for teacher "planning with purpose" to guide backwards planning, with the emphasis on alignment to the rigor of the standard. We are using ILT and department time to look at alignment between task and learning target. In ILT we are supporting our members in their own leadership development through activities and reading (Dare to Lead)

2025-09-18 14:43:42 UTC

Walter Payton is developing a theory of action focused on strengthening student confidence, agency, and curiosity.

2025-09-18 14:43:46 UTC

Curie High School: We hosted a summer institute, pd during Week 0, and instructional PD last week all around the steps of the learning cycle with the focus of common summatives and formatives (there should be a shared task every 5 weeks). At this point, we are finishing our first cycle next week and we will use the PD day to reset and gather feedback to determine the supports needed and how to make the work more meaningful to all of our teachers.

2025-09-18 14:44:14 UTC

-Douglass HS (ILT) created intentional instructional plan around ACT focused reading skills!

Douglass HS (ILT) Created 5 week implementation of new ACT reading skills focused on student personalized instruction & differentiation to meet all student needs.
Douglass HS (ILT)Conducted an atlas protocol to review star360 data to determine necessary interventions to meet students individualized needs. (First learning cycle October)

2025-09-18 14:44:17 UTC

This year we have taken the time to align everything our ILT does with our PLP and CIWP. This way, we are all on the same page and working towards a common goal. This will help us support new teachers and continue to build on veteran teachers' strengths.

2025-09-18 14:45:13 UTC

Each ILT member has modeled strategies from the summer institute, such as:

Do Now/Exit Slip Alignment: Ensuring every lesson begins with a standards-aligned check for understanding and closes with data we can use to adjust instruction.
Common Frameworks: Embedding “Everybody Writes,” CUPS peer review, and theme reference sheets into English II & IV classrooms.

2025-09-18 14:45:54 UTC

Our ILT team has been practicing unit internalizations, modified for IB, to prepare a roll out to teachers where teacher leaders feel fluent in its use and how it can benefit our teachers and therefore our students.

2025-09-18 14:47:36 UTC

Our ILT received feedback from teachers at the end of SY24-25 that suggested interest in more learning walk opportunities and a shared school priority for our learning cycles.

This year we are focusing on Productive Struggle as our school wide instructional priority. All teachers will have the opportunity to observe each other at the beginning of the year. They will then work within their departments using the learning cycle framework to try different strategies to support our students.

We are utilizing the Rigor Walk 2.0 rubric to support learning walk look-fors and "The Power of Student Teams" to support our learning as an ILT.

2025-09-18 14:52:00 UTC

Whitney M. Young Magnet High School: Differentiation Focus: Identify 2–3 practical ways departments can embed differentiation in Quarter 1 (e.g., flexible grouping, tiered assignments). To begin this work, our ILT is hosting a school-wide professional development to focus on helping teachers expand their abilities to individualize instruction using Google Gemini. We want to expand our support of all students, especially our diverse learners, ensuring that their accommodations are met in a way that makes them feel successful. This will also help students feel that their learning styles are being taken into consideration, making their experience feel more autonomous. This PD will be teacher-led and offer time for departments to brainstorm together in order to make strides toward immediate inclusion into their planning and teaching process.

2025-09-18 18:13:52 UTC

Social Justice

Since July, we have taken some time to visit classrooms and review data to determine what the true focus our professional learning plan should be. Currently, we think a focus on planning instruction through the learning target is a high-leverage focus to help us meet the goals of our CIWP.