ENGLISH

LANGUAGE PANEL
2015

PROFESSIONAL
LEARNING
COMMUNITY
SMK PUTRAJAYA PRESINT 11(2)
NO 1 JALAN P11C PRESINT 11
62300 PUTRAJAYA

ROBIATUL ADAWIAH BINTI

HAMZAH
KETUA PANITIA
BAHASA INGGERIS
GURU CEMERLANG BAHASA
INGGERIS

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY FRAMEWORK

Ensuring That Students Learn
According to Richard Dufors article published on Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development online webage, the professional learning community model
flows from the assumption that the core mission of formal education is not simply to
ensure that students are taught but to ensure that they learn. This simple shiftfrom a
focus on teaching to a focus on learninghas profound implications for schools.
School mission statements that promise learning for all have become a clich. But
when a school staff takes that statement literallywhen teachers view it as a pledge to
ensure the success of each student rather than as politically correct hyperbole
profound changes begin to take place. The school staff finds itself asking, what school
characteristics and practices have been most successful in helping all students achieve
at high levels? How could we adopt those characteristics and practices in our own
school? What commitments would we have to make to one another to create such a
school? What indicators could we monitor to assess our progress? When the staff has
built shared knowledge and found common ground on these questions, the school has a
solid foundation for moving forward with its improvement initiative.
As the school moves forward, every professional in the building must engage with
colleagues in the ongoing exploration of three crucial questions that drive the work of
those within a professional learning community:

What do we want each student to learn?

How will we know when each student has learned it?

How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning?

The answer to the third question separates learning communities from traditional
schools.
Here is a scenario that plays out daily in traditional schools. A teacher teaches a unit to
the best of his or her ability, but at the conclusion of the unit some students have not
mastered the essential outcomes. On the one hand, the teacher would like to take the
time to help those students. On the other hand, the teacher feels compelled to move
forward to cover the course content. If the teacher uses instructional time to assist
students who have not learned, the progress of students who have mastered the
content will suffer; if the teacher pushes on with new concepts, the struggling students
will fall farther behind.

IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES OF PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY

What typically happens in this situation? Almost invariably, the school leaves the
solution to the discretion of individual teachers, who vary widely in the ways they
respond. Some teachers conclude that the struggling students should transfer to a less
rigorous course or should be considered for special education. Some lower their
expectations by adopting less challenging standards for subgroups of students within
their classrooms. Some look for ways to assist the students before and after school.
Some allow struggling students to fail.
When a school begins to function as a professional learning community, however,
teachers become aware of the incongruity between their commitment to ensure learning
for all students and their lack of a coordinated strategy to respond when some students
do not learn. The staff addresses this discrepancy by designing strategies to ensure that
struggling students receive additional time and support, no matter who their teacher is.
In addition to being systematic and schoolwide, the professional learning community's
response to students who experience difficulty is

Timely. The school quickly identifies students who need additional time and
support.
Based on intervention rather than remediation. The plan provides students with
help as soon as they experience difficulty rather than relying on summer school,
retention, and remedial courses.
Directive. Instead of inviting students to seek additional help, the systematic
plan requires students to devote extra time and receive additional assistance until they
have mastered the necessary concepts.
The systematic, timely, and directive intervention program operating at Adlai Stevenson
High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, provides an excellent example. Every three weeks,
every student receives a progress report. Within the first month of school, new students
discover that if they are not doing well in a class, they will receive a wide array of
immediate interventions. First, the teacher, counselor, and faculty advisor each talk with
the student individually to help resolve the problem. The school also notifies the
student's parents about the concern. In addition, the school offers the struggling student
a pass from study hall to a school tutoring center to get additional help in the course. An
older student mentor, in conjunction with the struggling student's advisor, helps the
student with homework during the student's daily advisory period.
Any student who continues to fall short of expectations at the end of six weeks despite
these interventions is required, rather than invited, to attend tutoring sessions during the
study hall period. Counselors begin to make weekly checks on the struggling student's
progress. If tutoring fails to bring about improvement within the next six weeks, the
student is assigned to a daily guided study hall with 10 or fewer students. The guided
study hall supervisor communicates with classroom teachers to learn exactly what
homework each student needs to complete and monitors the completion of that
homework. Parents attend a meeting at the school at which the student, parents,
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counselor, and classroom teacher must sign a contract clarifying what each party will do
to help the student meet the standards for the course.
Stevenson High School serves more than 4,000 students. Yet this school has found a
way to monitor each student's learning on a timely basis and to ensure that every
student who experiences academic difficulty will receive extra time and support for
learning.
Like Stevenson, schools that are truly committed to the concept of learning for each
student will stop subjecting struggling students to a haphazard education lottery. These
schools will guarantee that each student receives whatever additional support he or she
needs.
SMK PUTRAJAYA PRESINT 11(2)
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY 2015
SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES
Based on this concept, during the 1st English Language Department Meeting 2015,
the English Language Panel was granted a two free periods every Wednesday
(8.50am 10.10am) to implement various activities planned.
Under the guidance of SISC+ officer from States Educational Department Pn Asmah
Binti Abu Hadzim, the activities planned are as follows:
No.
1.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES DURING PLC

BUILDING ITEM MODULES (HOTS/LOTS/I-THINK/PT3/SPM)

2.

LESSON STUDY (1ST TERM 3 SLOTS/2ND TERM 3 SLOTS)

3.
4.

BUILDING & SHARING LESSON MATERIALS (TEACHING MODULES

DIFFERENTIATE TEACHING & LEARNING MODULE)
SHARING BEST PRACTICES IN CLASSROOM (REFLECT & EVALUATE)

5.

ACTION RESEARCH (STUDENT SURVEY TOOL)

6.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE MONTH/WEEK PROGRAMME

7.

CO-ACADEMIC ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAMME

IMPACT IN FOCUS
A Culture of Collaboration
Educators who are building a professional learning community recognize that they must
work together to achieve their collective purpose of learning for all. Therefore, they
create structures to promote a collaborative culture.
Despite compelling evidence indicating that working collaboratively represents best
practice, teachers in many schools continue to work in isolation. Even in schools that
endorse the idea of collaboration, the staff's willingness to collaborate often stops at the
classroom door. Some school staffs equate the term collaboration with congeniality
and focus on building group camaraderie. Other staffs join forces to develop consensus
on operational procedures, such as how they will respond to tardiness or supervise
recess. Still others organize themselves into committees to oversee different facets of
the school's operation, such as discipline, technology, and social climate. Although each
of these activities can serve a useful purpose, none represents the kind of professional
dialogue that can transform a school into a professional learning community.
The powerful collaboration that characterizes professional learning communities is a
systematic process in which teachers work together to analyze and improve their
classroom practice. Teachers work in teams, engaging in an ongoing cycle of questions
that promote deep team learning. This process, in turn, leads to higher levels of student
achievement.
Collaborating for School Improvement
Professional Learning Community with neighbouring schools
Collaborative conversations call on team members to make public what has traditionally
been privategoals, strategies, materials, pacing, questions, concerns, and results.
These discussions give every teacher someone to turn to and talk to, and they are
explicitly structured to improve the classroom practice of teachersindividually and
collectively.
For teachers to participate in such a powerful process, the school must ensure that
everyone belongs to a team that focuses on student learning. Each team must have
time to meet during the workday and throughout the school year. Teams must focus
their efforts on crucial questions related to learning and generate products that reflect
that focus, such as lists of essential outcomes, different kinds of assessment, analyses
of student achievement, and strategies for improving results. Teams must develop
norms or protocols to clarify expectations regarding roles, responsibilities, and
relationships among team members. Teams must adopt student achievement goals
linked with school and district goals.
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Therefore the English Language panel of SMK Putrajaya Presint 11(2) are proud
to announce a professional linkage with SMK Agama Putrajaya, our next door
neighbor. The EL teachers from their panel would also contribute or participate in
our enlisted or suggested programmes thus improving the efficiency or the
targeted results of this particular programme.
Removing Barriers to Success (A Success Criteria)
For meaningful collaboration to occur, a number of things must also stop happening.
Schools must stop pretending that merely presenting teachers with state standards or
district curriculum guides will guarantee that all students have access to a common
curriculum. Even school districts that devote tremendous time and energy to designing
the intended curriculum often pay little attention to the implemented curriculum (what
teachers actually teach) and even less to the attained curriculum (what students learn)
(Marzano, 2003). Schools must also give teachers time to analyze and discuss state
and district curriculum documents. More important, teacher conversations must quickly
move beyond What are we expected to teach? to How will we know when each
student has learned?
In addition, faculties must stop making excuses for failing to collaborate. Few educators
publicly assert that working in isolation is the best strategy for improving schools.
Instead, they give reasons why it is impossible for them to work together: We just can't
find the time. Not everyone on the staff has endorsed the idea. We need more
training in collaboration. But the number of schools that have created truly collaborative
cultures proves that such barriers are not insurmountable. As Roland Barth (1991)
wrote,Are teachers and administrators willing to accept the fact that they are part of the
problem? . . . God didn't create self-contained classrooms, 50-minute periods, and
subjects taught in isolation. We didbecause we find working alone safer than and
preferable to working together. (pp. 126127)
In the final analysis, building the collaborative culture of a professional learning
community is a question of will. A group of staff members who are determined to work
together will find a way.
A Focus on Results
Professional learning communities judge their effectiveness on the basis of results.
Working together to improve student achievement becomes the routine work of
everyone in the school. Every teacher team participates in an ongoing process of
identifying the current level of student achievement, establishing a goal to improve the
current level, working together to achieve that goal, and providing periodic evidence of
progress. The focus of team goals shifts. Such goals as We will adopt the Junior Great
Books program or We will create three new labs for our science course give way to
We will increase the percentage of students who meet the state standard in language
arts from 83 percent to 90 percent or We will reduce the failure rate in our course by
50 percent.
When teacher teams develop common formative assessments throughout the school
year, each teacher can identify how his or her students performed on each skill
compared with other students. Individual teachers can call on their team colleagues to
5

help them reflect on areas of concern. Each teacher has access to the ideas, materials,
strategies, and talents of the entire team.

Educators who focus on results must also stop limiting improvement goals to factors
outside the classroom, such as student discipline and staff morale, and shift their
attention to goals that focus on student learning. They must stop assessing their own
effectiveness on the basis of how busy they are or how many new initiatives they have
launched and begin instead to ask, Have we made progress on the goals that are most
important to us? Educators must stop working in isolation and hoarding their ideas,
materials, and strategies and begin to work together to meet the needs of all students.
Hard Work and Commitment
Even the grandest design eventually translates into hard work. The professional
learning community model is a grand designa powerful new way of working together
that profoundly affects the practices of schooling. But initiating and sustaining the
concept requires hard work. It requires the school staff to focus on learning rather than
teaching, work collaboratively on matters related to learning, and hold itself accountable
for the kind of results that fuel continual improvement.
When educators do the hard work necessary to implement these principles, their
collective ability to help all students learn will rise. If they fail to demonstrate the
discipline to initiate and sustain this work, then their school is unlikely to become more
effective, even if those within it claim to be a professional learning community. The rise
or fall of the professional learning community concept depends not on the merits of the
concept itself, but on the most important element in the improvement of any schoolthe
commitment and persistence of the educators within it.
END NOTE
Hopefully the implementation strategies would successfully achieve the targeted result
of the PLC programme and manage the develop the use of the English Language in
SMK Putrajaya Presint 11(2) as being called to action in the MBMMBI Policy of Ministry
of Education, Malaysia.

References
Barth, R. (1991). Restructuring schools: Some questions for teachers and
principals. Phi Delta Kappan, 73(2), 123128.

Marzano, R. (2003). What works in schools: Translating research into action.

Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

SMK PUTRAJAYA PRESINT 11(2)

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION CHART

PRINCIPAL
PN AMINAH BT BADIUZZAMAN

SENIOR ASSISTANT OF ACADEMIC

PN ABIDAH BT SIDEK

EX- OFFICIO
SISC+

HEAD OF DEPARTMENT
PN NOR AIZAH BT ISMAIL

PN ASMAH BT ABU
HADZIM

HEAD OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE PANEL

PN ROBIATUL ADAWIAH BINTI HAMZAH
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS
PN ERNI IRAWATI BINTI ROSLI
PN ROOSLIZAL BINTI AHMAD ZUHDI
PN FATMAWATI BINTI SAHARIN
PN PAMINDAR KAUR A/P SURINDAR SINGH
PN ANIS SURIATI BINTI ANUAR

Professional Learning Community Working Flow Chart

SMK PUTRAJAYA PRESINT 11(2)

11(2)PLC TEAM WORKING FLOW CHART

ISSUE
(PLC
MEET)

REFLECT
(EVALUATE
DATA)

ASSESSME
NT
(DATA
ANALYSIS)

STRATEGY
(RESEARC
H
METHODS)

IMPLEMEN
T
(MODULES
)

SMK PUTRAJAYA PRESINT 11(2)

STUDENT LEARNING COMMUNITY
11(2)SLC I.S.I.A.R IMPACT REPRESENTATIVES
(ENGLISH LANGUAGE SOCIETY MEMBERS)

ISSUE
(ELS MEET)

STRATEGY
(DISCUSS
WAYS TO
OVERCOME)

REFLECT
(EVALUATE)

IMPLEMENT
(CREATE
AWARENESS/
ONLINE
COMMUNITY)

ASSESSMENT
(SURVEY/
FEEDBACK)

I.S.I.A.R IMPACT
10

PREPARED BY:

CHECKED BY:

_____________________________
(ROBIATUL ADAWIAH BT HAMZAH)
ISMAIL)
HEAD OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE PANEL
DEPARTMENT

________________________
(PN NOR AIZAH BT

VERIFIED BY:

VERIFIED BY:

___________________________
(PN ABIDAH BT SIDEK)
BADIUZZAMAN)
SENIOR ASSISTANT OF ACADEMIC

__________________________
(PN AMINAH BT

HEAD OF LANGUAGE

PRINCIPAL

11