Collaboration Planning
Good course
design is fundamental to effective teaching and requires thorough,
thoughtful and careful planning. This becomes even more important
when you are team teaching because of the inherent need to
coordinate. When team teaching includes the need to coordinate,
integrate and collaborate between content and basic skills, planning
may be what truly makes an effective, integrated learning community
rather than several stand-alone classes, operating independently
with little or no integration and cohesion. Teachers who prepare
and teach a course together find it a synergistic learning
experience.
What follows are
some suggestions on how to go about collaboratively planning
an I-Best course. These suggestions presume that the team of a
content instructor and a basic skills instructor is in place, the
classes are identified, and the certificate has a name.
I. Identify
the outcomes for each course and integrate them.
The more course
outcomes you can integrate, the better. This reflects careful
thought and planning. There may be a few outcomes that are unique to
an individual class (Basic Skills or Content), but even pure content
courses should have a basic skills component, and Basic Skills
should be contextualized to the content. Some thoughts to consider
when integrating outcomes include:
-
What should students be able to do with the knowledge and skills
gained in the course?
-
Job skills
-
Academic skills
-
Preparation for further courses
-
Preparation for particular testing/certification
-
What portions of the content of the various classes are central
to the learning goals (knowledge and skills gained in the
course)?
-
In what ways will students be better thinkers when they finish
this course? In other words, what critical thinking skills will
they need to develop?
II. Jointly plan activities and
assessments.
What
activities or assessments will students perform in order to meet
course outcomes? As you consider these activities and assessment
tools, think about ways that these might be combined. That is, both
instructors might have the same assignment but would grade it
looking for different skills and accomplishments.
Some sample activities are:
-
Assignments- summarizing readings, research skills
-
Guest speakers - planning interview questions
-
Group projects or presentations - effective presentation or
collaboration techniques
-
Exams - test-taking techniques, vocabulary from context
-
Field Trips - writing journals/observation reports
III.
Choose textbooks and other required materials.
This step should be done prior to recruitment
so that you can set appropriate entrance requirements for your
students.
When choosing texts and other materials, keep
in mind both the content and basic skills levels of your student
population. Textbooks in the same content area can differ greatly in
the reading skills required to decipher the information. Try
to choose materials that deliver the required content in a clear
manner appropriate for your population - slightly above where their
reading skills are upon entrance. Also consider the outcomes
targeted by these materials - will they be required to analyze the
material or simply memorize the information? If analysis is
required, the reading level should be a bit lower or more assistance
should be given with the material so that students don't have to
struggle so hard to understand.
IV. Schedule weekly meetings.
Build into your schedule a time at least once a week when
instructors meet outside of the course to assess how the course is
going and how the students are doing.
·
What is working well?
·
What needs to be changed?
·
How are the student-teacher relationships developing and how
can these be fostered to maximize the success of the individuals and
the learning community as a whole? Are there students on the
“fringes” that one or the other can reach out to?
·
It is useful to keep some thoughts on how the course
is going in writing as these thoughts make great planning materials
for the next time the course is offered or to share with others who
may teach the course in the future.
This
video shows a sample
meeting between a basic skills and a content instructor in which
they debrief a specific class. The conversation progresses
from 'what not to say' to a truly collaborative, student-focused
plan-of-action.
V.
Write your syllabi.
This
will have some familiar feel to planning a single class alone, but
it is an important process to work together on this document since
it defines the contract between student and teachers. While
writing, consider balance with respect to the content instruction
and ABE/ESL.
Some
points to include:
§
Combined course outcomes and any unique “class” outcomes
§
Explanation of course format and process especially as
it may differ from traditional “stand alone” classes
§ Joint
expectations and responsibilities for the students
§
Joint policies with respect to due dates, late
assignments, attendance etc.
§
Combined course assessments and any unique “class”
assessments
§
A schedule of class dates and topics including weekly
reading assignments
§
A mechanism to clarify when the focus and is on content, when
on basic skills and when the two are clearly connected. (Students
like to know when they can expect one or more instructor(s) to be in
the classroom.)
For tips on co-teaching in the classroom,
click here.
Last updated:
July 30, 2008
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