Well, as I've mentioned in previous posts, planning has been a bit of a challenge for me thus far. Mostly, this is because we haven't had a chance to plan out a big picture for the week and identify lessons activities I will take responsibility for, rather, each day has been a bit of a scramble to put stuff together on the fly and hope all goes well.
I am happy to report, that our meeting this morning with Jane Carroll provided an excellent framework to talk with Diane a bit about my feeling that we don't ever seem to have time to really map out a plan. I was surprised to hear that even she was beginning to feel frustrated by how haphazard things have been for the last two weeks. We have decided to try to set aside time on Fridays to make a big picture plan for the coming week. I think this should help me, because even if Diane doesn't want to do detailed planning for each lesson, if I know what's coming up in the week, I can take those books home and prepare myself.
We also discussed a bit about which content area I will begin taking over next week.
I am so relieved to hear that you've made forward progress with a plan to plan! You're exactly right about the possibilities this weekly "big picture" planning will have; even if Diane doesn't need to fill in specifics, you'll have the skeleton you needs to hang all kinds of details on. Eventually, when you've taken over all the planning responsibility, you can still use this weekly meeting to keep Diane up to speed and talk about different co-teaching strategies that fit your purposes.
ReplyDeleteIs today your first planning meeting since it's Friday?