departmentalizing

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Home : 2006 : July : 23

departmentalizing
By bzetchr

I've done it in 4th, 5th, and with a 4/5 - with 2, 3, and 5 teachers - for several years and it has worked well. It does take some coordinating, but once set up everyone was pleased with the results.
-We assess the students
in the first few days, and used standardized scores. In math and reading we cluster group, based on needs of students. This makes differentiating the curriculum easier when you have all the students in the class at aprox. the same place, and able to work at about the same pace.
-In math and reading - depending on number of teachers - we had low, lo/med, med, med/high, high groups.

If you are doing 3 teachers - low, med, high; and 2 teachers low to low/med; and med/high to high.
-For Sci. , SS, and Written Language the students rotated with their homeroom class. Each teacher took a subject area and taught it 3 times (with 3 teachers). With 2 - we rotated for Sci. and SS and kept our own homeroom for written lang. and reading. With 2 we have also rotated for Sci. / SS; and Written lang. / reading - in other words teacher A taught Sci. and Reading, teacher B taught SS and Written Lang. We have always differentiated for math.
-In reality, no student had more than 3 teachers.

Advantages:
-You are only planning for 3 subject areas rather than 5 and can put more into those 3.
-You are teaching a subject that you are excited and passionate about - and the kids get that benefit. (EX: I'm not strong in Sci. but one of my colleagues is, in fact the Sci. mentor for the district... all the students had her for Sci.)
-If you have a student that drives you nuts ... you don't have him/her for 6 hours.
-If there is a student with an issue, all his/her teachers conference with the parents - they get the message from more than 1 person, then it is not just you saying it. We all do the progress conferences together on high maintenance students - usually we pick 6-8 in the entire grade level that need that and schedule all on 1 day so we can all be there. Has impact!
-It breaks up the students' day with little transitions between subjects and that "brain shift" helps keep them focused.
-Students have to get organized - not a bad thing ;)

Disadvantages:
-Scheduling the pull-outs and specialists was a bit of a pain at first, but after everyone got used to it, it worked.
-Parents get a little confused in the beginning, but the kids love it and that helps.

Advice:
-The teaching team needs to be together on things like discipline, consequences, expectations ...
-When it comes to progress reports, do them together, and trust your colleagues judgements. Sometimes it is hard to let that go ... When we conferenced - with the exception of a few mentioned earlier - it was just our homeroom kids, but we knew the other teachers' assessment of the student.

I know this is long ... hope I covered enough that you get the idea.:)