Online collaborative planning complements coaching activities
Community Review for Common Curriculum
My Take
The collaborative Common Curriculum planner allows teachers to organize and plan their teaching units with a look towards how things fit both into the unit as well as within the school year. This gives a whole new meaning to pacing as you have the chance to actually see what you were unable to finish during a class and move those activities to another class period further into the school year. The drawback is that collaboration is limited to view only. While it’s ok for my purposes, co-teachers might prefer the ability to edit each other’s planners as well. Also the limitation for one collaborator per class means that if the teacher wants me as their coach to view and comment on their planner, then they can’t add their principal as well without incurring the $99 fee.
How I Use It
As a coach, I have set up my Common Curriculum planner with the classes that I plan to be in the most this year. I have extended an invitation to the teachers who teach those classes to collaborate with me so that we can plan what should be happening in their classes from day one. Also, I can share what I am planning for the lesson when I will be in the teacher’s class. Building my own lesson templates and unit plans allows me to share how I envision the curriculum and class activities with the teacher. So now I not only have the chance to model when I go in the class, but can model what work I do to prepare before I get to the class as well. I am currently working with a social studies teacher, planning some project-oriented activities. I love the fact that I can plan the lesson with him and add the documents that we'll need for the lesson. When we are done planning, my teacher then can just drag the lesson (documents and all) into his planner for the appropriate dates.
More community reviews for Common Curriculum
Excellent tool for collaborating with colleagues!
