My classroom that is. Yep, the kids come the 27th and I still have not even been able to get in my room to start setting it up. I did go by my classroom again this afternoon after we finished our collaborative planning, and boy was I impressed. Not only did they have the new air return system completely installed, but they also had new carpet in my room too! That was a big surprise. Thank goodness we did get new carpet because the other was ruined from the construction, but it was still so exciting!
I was told by the technology gurus today that they will be setting up in our classrooms as soon as they get the ceiling tiles back in. Hopefully that will be tomorrow! :) I left a sweet note for them hoping that they will place my computers where I would like them, but that might be wishful thinking.
Today was our last day of collaborative planning and I am pretty pleased with how it went. Last year I really just did my own thing and there was very little collaboration between myself and the other teachers. I honestly think that this is going to hold me more accountable and it will also make me stay on top of my lesson plans. I got a little lazy with them by the end of last school year. How does your district or campus do lesson planning? Are you required to plan collaboratively, or do you do your own thing?
It depends upon the school where I am. Mostly YES we are expected to collaborate.
ReplyDeleteAt my current school we usually meet as a grade level team weekly to go over where we are and what we're going to be doing. We don't always stay 100% on track with each other due to specials or absences, etc but we try to make sure we do our assessments around the same time and whatnot. We have a monthly data meeting (in lieu of a staff meeting) so we can get together and focus solely on our DATA for the month that way we don't have to do that during our normal weekly planning time. It's nice because if you get behind or someone else does, you know about it quickly so everyone else can adjust and supplement/extend to allow the other person (or yourself!) to catch up.
At my school, we are required to have a grade level meeting once a week in which the time is spent lesson planning and evaluating data. We also have a half day PLC meeting once a month in which the grade level teams can do some more intense planning. We write lesson plans as a grade level and although we pretty much stick to the content in which we are teaching and when, the way in which we each teach it can be different.
ReplyDeleteI hope this helps.
Ann
I teach 4th grade and we are not required to collaborate, but we do. We departmentalize our subjects and share the same students so it's really important for us to plan together. I teach the reading/writing portion, another gal teaches math, and a guy teaches social studies/science. We do our own things in our classrooms, but we love to collaborate just to be sure we are all on the same page and making things as smooth and consistent as we can for our students.
ReplyDeleteI'm in the same boat as you on classroom issues. We start back with meetings on the 16th and 17th, open house on the 20th, and school on the 21st....we aren't even allowed in our building. I have no idea what my new room looks like!! We were originally supposed to get in this Friday, but now we've heard Monday the 13th or maybe not until Friday the 17th....one weekend to unpack every single thing I own, put it away, put together a classroom, and plan for open house night.....I'm freaking out!!!
Good luck on your room and a great school year!!
Lisa
Super Pig and Tyrant King
We plan collaboratively and I love it! Of course, not all grade levels work as well together, but my partner teacher and I are a great team...we plan everything together.
ReplyDeleteNew carpet! I am SO jealous!
ReplyDeleteCollaboration...hmmm...I am the only 6th grade LA teacher at my middle school and collaborating pretty much goes on with the 7th and 8th grade LA teachers. This year I will be in a long distance PLC with two amazing 6th grade teachers over Adobe Connect. These teachers are in an elementary setting and have completely different materials and demographics as me, so it will be interesting to see what happens.
Honestly, I've gained more "collaborative" ideas from reading blogs and being involved in blog book studies this summer than from anything else. The web world is pretty much dang awesome.
Hello! I am a fellow 6th grade teacher and stumbled upon your blog through Laura at Will Grade for Coffee's Awesome 6th Grade Blog Link Up! As a newbie to the blog world, I really enjoy how your blog is set up and the questions you pose to your readers! I am your newest follower and I hope you will hop on over to my blog, Teacher Wife, and check it out!
ReplyDeleteMegan :)
teacher-wife.blogspot.com
Hello! I teach 6th grade ELA as well and have learned that there is nothing more important for our 6th graders to be successful than grade-level collaboration. I don't lesson plan collaboratively with my 6th grade math, science, or social studies teachers but we do unit plan collaboratively. As an MYP IB school we plan many "inter-disciplinary units". I love it because it keeps the kids all on the same page. We debuted an amazing Hunger Games unit last year that was a collaboration between ELA and math. We focused on the unit question, "When are the odds in your favor?" Math took the focus of statistics and odds and probability and ELA took the focus of perspective and poverty. It was such a fun and powerful unit because we were able to keep everything focused and fun. This year we will be expanding it to Social Studies where they will look at the aspect of political propaganda and statistics as well, freeing up math to focus more on what statistics are as opposed to how statistics can be manipulated. We ended the unit with our own Hunger Games and the kids LOVED it!! We're planning more of these types of units and couldn't do it without collaboration.
ReplyDeleteShannon
willteachforcupcakes.blogspot.com
I can't way to see your classroom! We have math PLC on T/Th and alternate F. This year we are implementing a new curriculum and really trying to collaborate on our planning. Collaboration has not been a strong point with our group in the past and I am hoping that this year it improves.
ReplyDeleteLast year was my first year of doing some REAL collaboration with teachers of the same year (grade) level. There were 6 of us Year 5/6 (composite classes) teachers, and we had 1 full day a term to plan for the next term (during school hours - the school planned out subs and 'specials' schedules to cover the morning, and the last 2 hours the kids, 150 of them, were supervised by a specialist teacher or admin to watch a movie).
ReplyDeleteWe made a skeletal plan for the next term, with week by week learning points so that we were close to being on the same teaching points each week. (You can't plan for the group of kids who just 'don't get it', and you can't move on to the next concept, but there was room to move). We also each put in some ideas of activities, etc. Some we HAD to do, some were just suggestions. So with the skeletal view, we still had to teach certain concepts, but we had room to move so we could do it our own way (which is good, considering we had 3 'hip' teachers, and 3 oldies, so our teaching styles and use of tech were completely different, but all had value in planning and helping the others out).