ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the framework of components necessary to successfully start and guide the Professional Learning Community (PLC) meeting process. Pacing guides, curriculum guides, and learning targets play an important, but vastly underrated, role in the PLC process and can be quite beneficial in helping teams to stay focused. Establish a pacing guide for the subject or content area to be discussed, for example Math, Language Arts, Science. A district-provided pacing guide should be exactly what the name implies: a “guide”; it should not be considered a law or an unbreakable decree. Curriculum guides are supposed to be just as the name implies: a guide to the curriculum. Learning targets should be referenced at both the start and end of a lesson, with possible periodic references throughout the lesson. Designing and sharing learning targets allows teachers to better plan and implement high-quality instruction by providing a clear and attainable goal that describes exactly what each lesson will teach.
