Page 61 - Learning for All – A Guide to Effective Assessment and Instruction for All Students, Kindergarten to Grade 12, 2013

Learning for All through Professional Learning • 59
Raising the bar and closing the gap can occur when school boards, schools, and individual educators focus their planning, instruction, interventions, and responses on the following four key tenets:
• Knowing your students and supporting them in getting to know themselves as learners
• Knowing where students are in their learning
• Knowing where students need to go in their learning
• Knowing how to get students to where they need to go in their learning
When the planning initiatives of the ministry, school boards, schools, and educators are aligned in a concerted and strategic manner, we can build a seamless continuum of student- centred learning and optimize student learning and achievement.
As noted in the introduction, the Ministry of Education has put certain tools in place to promote school board planning aimed at improving learning outcomes for all students, as follows:
• K–12 School Effectiveness Framework: A Support for School Improvement and Student
Success (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2013c), available at http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/ eng/literacynumeracy/framework.html
• Board Improvement Plans for Student Achievement, Kindergarten to Grade 12 (templates distributed annually to Ontario school boards)
Aligning Learning for All with Other Initiatives
• One school board aligned Learning for All with other initiatives through a focus on assessment for learning and differentiated instruction in the board’s Teaching-Learning Critical Pathway (TLCP) cycle.11 Each school participated in three learning cycles, each of which was eight weeks long and had a focus tied to goals in the Board Improvement Plan, the School Improvement Plan, and the School Effectiveness Framework (SEF).
• Some school boards reported that they planned to perform a three-stage needs analysis using Learning for All and the board and school improvement planning process. They would review what the data told them about the students in their classes (using Learning for All tools), the classes in their schools (using SEF), and the schools in their boards (using BIPSA).
Learning for All, K–12 presents approaches and tools that can be used in classrooms, schools, and school boards. These approaches and tools serve as an important starting point in a consistent and integrated process of gathering student information, providing personaliza- tion and precision in instruction, and tracking student progress over time. Through the work of professional learning communities, school communities build instructional leader- ship at the classroom, school, and board level; plan from the strengths and needs of students by engaging students, parents, and communities; and improve practices to help every student reach his or her potential.
11. The term Teaching-Learning Critical Pathway (TCLP) is no longer used by the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat (LNS). The process has evolved and is now called Collaborative Inquiry (CI).