rotation

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rotation
By Julianne

My partner and I split the day. I work afternoons, she works mornings. We share a full-time contract. We often are in the classroom together, but rarely have to teach at the same time. We do split up the reading schedule,
however. We have between 4 and 6 reading groups in a class of 18 to 20 kids. I take one group for afternoon instruction while she takes the bulk of the students in the morning. We did this because our ESL students go out in the morning for language instruction and it's difficult to pull them together for reading. Most of them are beginning readers, so it makes a good group for me

to work with in the afternoon. We try very hard to give each group 3 to 4 guided reading sessions per week. I handle journal writing time in the afternoon. Though sometimes she plans a journal entry with them in the morning. On those days I don't do afternoon journaling. I also do a lot of shared writing with them in the afternoon. We write about our science experiences and about social studies topics. These lend themselves to group writing and doing it in the afternoon frees her up to concentrate on spelling and word work in the morning.

BTW, I think your principal is wrong to keep teachers from teaming just so they can be evaluated. I would think she would want them working with a more experienced teacher their first year. But this is one of the things that's wrong with education - we'd rather evaluate than support!