Early Planning

Diane and I are working together on a unit that explores Elie Wiesel's book Night. The target audience is ninth grade English.

For our planning, we will attempt to create an inquiry based unit plan. Our main planning categories are Final Product, Learning Objectives, Content Standards, Resources, and Process. We will begin by identifying what we want our final product to be. From there we want to determine what the students should learn along the way and coordinate that learning to the content standards that are addressed. After that we will both gather resources and organize a time line for accomplishing each task.

This is the broad scope of our planning process intended to explore the new things I am learning about collaborative planning as a school library media specialist (SLMS). The reason we are trying to create an inquiry based plan is because this method has been identified as the most beneficial approach to teaching that enables students to have the most meaningful learning experience. The initial categories we have selected are very basic when in comes to inquiry planning. The reason is to give us room as collaborators to discover for ourselves what needs to be more specific as we explore the planning process. It gives us room to ask the questions how and why as we proceed.

My hope is that we will have a variety of ways to assess student learning during this unit. I would like to give students the opportunity to work in such a way that their specific gifts and talents might shine in the end product. I am certain that we will develop a rubric for the students and us to use as a guide in the creating and grading process. One specific area I would like to access is the students' abilities to ask good questions that lead them into the researching process.

Thus far, we have not had a major hindrances to our collaboration process. Our only challenge has been timing. Diane has spent this last week in Kosovo on a mission trip to teach teachers. If you would like to connect with us in a different way, check out what they did this last week here.

Pre-Planning

Diane and I are really excited about taking this collaboration journey together. We have both taught at Southfield Christian School. Diane teaches high school English and I taught high school Biology and Science. I consider Diane my mentor in many ways and I am looking forward to the insight she will offer me during this process.

In some ways our strengths may also be our weakness. Diane and I love to talk with each other which will eliminate many potential communication issues that one might experience when collaborating with someone he/she does not know well. On the other hand, our friendship may make it more difficult to stay on task. One of the main benefits of our relationship is that we do not have a fear of being honest with one another about what we think. In light of that, I think our collaborative unit will be a work of high standards.

While we agree on many things in the area of teaching practice, we will face some challenges. My background is in science, which means I will have to process the benchmarks Diane is striving to reach. Also, my teaching style is different than Diane's which will influence some of our decisions as we plan.

I am excited to work with Diane because I know she desires to be on the cutting edge in the classroom. She also values the potential outcomes of a good collaboration. When we were teaching at the same time we began talking about cross curriculum collaboration. We are both excited to finally have the opportunity to follow through with a collaboration unit.

We have chosen to collaborate for an English 9 class.