departmentalizing in 4th grade

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departmentalizing in 4th grade
By Kara

I am just completing my first year as a 4th grade teacher. I have previously taught 2nd and 3rd. 4th and 5th grades at this school are departmentalized. WE do however draw the line at the number of times we switch and
for how many subjects.
There are 4 of us and we are divided into 2 teams. Two of us teach Math and Science, and two teach ILA (Intergrated Language Arts)and Social Studies. This works really well for us. We meet as a grade level each week, so we all know what we are studying. We then meet by subjects taught to plan. All 4 of us have exactly the same homework on our boards as our teammate.

Consistancy is a key in making departmentalization work.

We switch classes after an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes for our first (homeroom) class. We try to take our kids out to run laps (PE teacher's jogging club), then switch classes. Our second group lasts for 2 hours.

We do a great deal of intergration when teaching our specific subjects. Sometimes we even cross over to what the other team may be covering in our use of graphing and problem solving in math.
All of us make use of computer technology intergration whenever we can. Many of our projects are done on computers.

Since our first group has a little less instructional time, we are able to make it up after lunch and resource in the afternoons. Planning is the key to making this idea work. I was leary at first, but have grown to like it.

Our 5th grade has 5 teachers, the 5th class splits between the two ILA/SS teachers, and certain students go to the 5th teacher for smaller classes of students or advanced math and science. The other two math/science teachers switch their entire class with the ILA/SS teachers. It works very well for them.

The only advice that I can give after living through this is if you decide to departmentalized, only split the subjects so each person is teaching two subjects. It isn't fair for one teacher to only teach one subject to all classes. That means entirely too much movement, which as we all know is a disruption to things running smoothly.

I hope this helps. Let me know what your grade level decides to do.