Tamara Griffith
Collaborative Planning
"The most valuable resource that all teachers have is each other. Without collaboration, our growth is limited to our own perspectives."
~Robert John Meehan
Early in my career as an educator, I operated on an island, preferring to work independently. While it was possible to create lessons and units on my own, the quality of these lessons suffered. I quickly realized, however, that if I were to make it in this profession, I was going to need to trust and rely on others in order to best meet the needs of my diverse students. Good collaboration with others not only benefits the quality of students' educations, but also allows me to better serve as a role model for students. If I expect my students to work together cooperatively, then it needs to be evident that I, too, can work cooperatively with a variety of individuals. Moreover, effective collaboration helps me design and jointly deliver learning experiences that meet students' unique learning needs. Additionally, collaboration has helped me acquire and access resources that support my students' learning.
Collaboration with Colleagues:
My current district values collaboration and stresses the importance of collaboration so much so that collaboration time has been included in our master schedule. At least three times a week, our morning meeting time, designated from 7:00a.m. - 7:30a.m., is reserved for common planning. During this time, we are encouraged to work with our departments and/ or grade levels to collaborate. In addition, I have the same planning period as the other 6th grade language arts teachers to foster collaboration. Even though my district has given us these supports, authentic collaboration cannot be forced. In order for collaboration to be meaningful, it must be voluntary; we must choose to work together, share ideas, strategies, and resources in ways that allow us to plan more effective lessons and units that support students' learning. Once I finally made the choice to trust my colleagues, recognizing that they, like me, entered into this profession for similar, if not the same reasons, the quality of my teaching improved and so did my students' performance.
The photo above depicts a collaborative meeting with my instructional coach, Ms. Beaudoin.
Each week, I meet with my instructional coach, Ms. Beaudoin, to refine the lessons and/or units I have planned to ensure they are standards-aligned, differentiated, and appropriately rigorous. With Ms. Beaudoin's help, I was able to identify that while I have had great success with growing my Level 1s, 3s and 4s, my level 5s have dropped, a trend that I may not have recognized on my own. As a result, we consistently work together to refine my lessons and units, guided by the Language Arts Florida Standards and Achievement Level Descriptors to ensure that all of my students, including my Level 5s are working with appropriately rigorous content that will allow them to make learning gains as well. In addition, I have invited Cathy into my classroom to observe me teach, later applying the feedback she has given me to plan for better delivery of instruction that better meets the unique needs of my students.
Collaboratively planning with my instructional coach is but one way that collaborative planning influences my teaching. I also collaborate with my other colleagues regularly -- not only during our school's proscribed common planning time. Collaborative planning, especially with my department, allows us to create shared responsibility -- students move beyond "my kids" or "her kids" and truly become our kids. Since we have a shared vision of making a difference in students' lives and growing them academically over the course of the year, authentic collaboration allows us to work toward these mutual goals in ways that improve instructional and academic outcomes for kids. Not only are we able to plan lessons, disaggregate data, and create and modify assignments, but we also help each other problem-solve our various needs. For example, I was struggling with how to best administer the accommodation of reading test questions and answers for my special education and English Language Learner populations because I have upwards of 6 students receiving this accommodation in one class. Reading every question and answer choice was onerous, moved too quickly for some students, and created an environment that was too noisy for some learners. Ms. Hare, a special education teacher on campus, was able to share a strategy that had proven effective in her class that was also non-intrusive to the testing environment of others. Rather than read every question and answer aloud, I could teach my students a nonverbal gesture, such as a hand signal, that allowed them to communicate to me that they needed something read to them. Having applied this suggestion in my classroom, independent classwork assignments and tests run much more efficiently and smoothly.
Another way that collaborative planning manifests within my teaching experience is in creating assignments that will push students' abilities to think critically about texts and make inferences in ways that will be meaningful and that will encourage growth over the course of the year. Because our current textbook and other resources do not meet the rigor demanded my the standards, we are encouraged to create our own materials using the Achievement Level Descriptors and Webb's Depth of Knowledge taxonomy to create rigorous assignments for students. Given the demands of teaching, collaborative planning allows me to plan more effective text dependent questions and the corresponding scaffolds that will ensure students' mastery of the standard. Typically, my strengths lie in creating rigorous questions for students. By working collaboratively with other teachers, we were able to develop the scaffolds necessary for lower-performing students to be able to answer more challenging text dependent questions with some level of success. The image to the left depicts the notes I took at one of our common planning meetings. One of my colleagues suggested adding a t-chart to the assignment to help scaffold students' understanding of the differing characterizations of two characters within our novel study, Freak the Mighty. As a result, the subsequent assignment we created much of a much higher quality than anything I would have created independently, and it better supported students' needs.
The photo above depicts sample text dependent questions and assignment ideas generated during common planning.
Once a month, I collaborate with my fellow 6th grade language arts teachers at Pryor and the 6th grade teachers at Meigs Middle School, a neighboring school in our district with similar demographics. During this time, we share strategies, resources, and work together to create lessons to implement one of our district's professional development strategies. Having the opportunity to work with twice the amount of teachers teaching the same content and grade level allows us to better develop lessons that are inclusive of many different perspectives, thereby enhancing student learning.
This collaboration allows me to incorporate the different strengths, skills, and expertise of a variety of teachers into future lessons. Working with other teachers allows me to learn and grow my repertoire of skills by embedding the insights I glean from our collaboration into future instruction. By working together, we are able to generate and refine numerous strategies to best meet the needs of our diverse learners. For example, while I am the only 6th grade advanced language arts teacher at Pryor, this opportunity for collaboration gives me access to work with another 6th grade language arts teacher; together, we are able to plan lessons that include include rigor sufficient to challenge our highest students and problem-solve any misconceptions that may arise during the lesson. Together, we are able to forsee misconceptions that may have been missed when planning individually. Thus, planning for these misconceptions inevitably leads to stronger lessons that are better adapted to students' needs.
These two photos depict scaffolded text dependent questions developed collaboratively with fellow 6th grade language arts teachers from both Pryor Middle School and Meigs Middle School.
In addition, I also collaborate with colleagues who do not teach language arts. I frequently work with the 6th grade advanced social studies teacher to better develop connections and share strategies between our two content areas. This collaboration takes a variety of formats: collegial conversations, common planning, and email collaboration. An example of this cross-curricular collaboration is included below.
Collaboration with Parents:
Collaborating with parents is another way that I seek to improve my instructional planning. In order for the plans I create to be effective, they need to keep in mind the unique needs of my students. Parents are a vital source of information about the unique needs of my students. While I may have students in my class for a school year, parents (usually) have access to students for their entire lives. Consequently, collaborating with parents allows me to glean key insights about how to differentiate and plan learning experiences that will keep students engaged and grow them academically. Typically, I collaborate with parents through conferences, parent nights, and email/ Remind 101 correspondence.
This image depicts my collaboration with teachers from two different schools.
This image depicts my collaboration with teachers from two different schools.
This image depicts my collaboration with teachers from two different schools.
Each year, every school in our district creates a School Performance Plan, or SPP. Within that SPP, each content area delineates how they will best meet the needs of their students in the upcoming school year. Each lesson that is submitted to administration for review needs to contain how it is aligned to the SPP. The lesson below, created collaboratively by Pryor and Meig's language arts teachers and myself, contains elements of an Everyday Instructional Read, a key component in both Pryor and Meig's SPP. Not only did we ensure that students would be engaging with a variety of scaffolded text dependent questions, but we also developed a varied learning experience to ensure that students could be successful with the rigor called for with these questions.
This email correspondence is an example of one of the ways that I collaborate with teachers who teach different in different content areas so that students can more meaningfully make connections between contents.
The ultimate goal of our standards is to graduate students who are college and career ready; in order to reach this goal, students need to be able to apply skills autonomously in a variety of settings. By collaborating with teachers in other contents, I can effectively create and plan for specific opportunities for our students to practice transferring their skills in a multiple ways. This allows students to realize that language arts does not exist in isolation, but is instead connected to other content areas, which fosters deeper learning and academic achievement.
In sum, collaborating with my colleagues has helped me grow professionally. Doing so creates shared ownership that builds investment in planning lessons and creating assignments that better meet and support my students' unique needs. The lessons and assignments I create with other educators are higher quality and meet the needs of more of my diverse learners than the lesson and unit plans I create on my own, thus enhancing student learning. In addition, collaboration exposes me to new ideas, strategies, and methods of differentiation that allow me to explore ways of teaching that are inclusive of different perspectives and other innovative ways of teaching. As a result, I am able to contribute to and appreciate a supportive school culture that supports student learning.
I set up my classroom to create a welcoming environment.
These are given to parents to foster collaboration. Parents filled out a card to express ways that I can specifically assist their child throughout the year, and I gave them a one-pager of what they can expect from my class throughout the year.
This is another way that I sought to create a welcoming environment for parents.
I set up my classroom to create a welcoming environment.
Click on the image above to view a slideshow showcasing samples from parent nights I have hosted.
Face-to-face collaboration with parents through conferences and parent nights allows me to discuss the overarching goals of my class with parents in ways will build their investment in students' acquisition of my content's required knowledge and skills. This experience also gives parents the opportunity to share their expertise of how I can best service their son or daughter instructionally. Often, these conferences are centered around an individual student. In learning how parents interact with their children, I can better frame my interactions with students to mimic their interactions with their parents; this conveys the message to students that their parents and I are on the same page. When parents demonstrate investment in collaborating with me with regard to their child, I can better adapt instruction and plan learning experiences that cater to students' unique needs. Additionally, these opportunities allow parents to give me feedback on different aspects of my class. This allows me to adapt future instruction to both my learners and to their parents' expectations.
Another component of collaborative planning with parents includes assisting them in helping students with their homework. Typically, I do not give homework that students are unable to complete without my guidance; however, sometimes students take home assignments they are unable to finish in class. When this occurs, parents can text me using Remind 101 to get timely feedback on how to complete their homework. By strategizing ways to assist students' learning and engagement with my content at home, parents effectively become partners in students' learning process, which facilitates student investment and acquisition of content knowledge and skills.
In order to effectively establish parents as collaborative partners, I communicate with them regularly and for a variety of reasons, definitely not just for negative behaviors. Solely reaching out to parents in response to students' negative behaviors will alienate them from investing in an equal partnership. By instead seeking parents' feedback on how to best meet the needs of their child instructionally, parents are more effectively established as equal, collaborative partners. By offering several methods of communication -- in person, by telephone, through email and Remind 101 -- I can streamline the ways in which parents can communicate with me to ensure that they are routinely updated on students' progress and to ensure that we can regularly strategize ways to more effectively meet and support their child's instructional needs.
Click the navigation arrows above to view a slideshow of parents' notes to me about their child, which I use to plan for instruction.
Like my students, some parents prefer to collaborate with me through written communication. As a result, I created this questionnaire to survey parents. These short surveys allow me to assess students' interests which I can incorporate into lesson plans. They also allow me to determine students' strengths that I can build instructionally and areas of growth that will need to be developed throughout the planning process. Based on this information, I can ask parents about specific strategies that have worked with their children in the past and write down recommended strategies to include when planning instruction. Doing this allows me to determine parents' expectations, hopes, and/or fears, which allows me to communicate students' progress in a more effective manner and allows me to develop targeted learning experiences based on parents' feedback.
In addition, I also collaborate with parents via email. Regular and routine communication with parents ensures that parents are invested as stakeholders and equal partners and provides me with insight as to how to best reach certain students. For example, when I began telling this student to "slow down" like her mother does whenever she makes a mistake, I was able to effectively get her to check her work, which improved her mastery of the content.
This is a sample parent communication taken from Remind 101.
