Collaborative Common Planning for Literacy Coaches

On Thursday, I presented to my colleagues at an Instructional Coaches Academy about effective collaborative lesson planning. I posted previously on the pre-planning stage. Today, I will post about what goes on in a common lesson planning session at our school. As stated in the last post, I email our teachers beforehand so they know ahead of time exactly what theme, pages, or novel we will be working on. I also ask them to write down pertinent information from our pacing guide, such as the benchmark we are covering, the page numbers, vocabulary, and essential question. Each teacher is required to have these components from the pacing guide in their lesson plans, so it saves us time if it is completed ahead of time. If there are any resources I have that are well suited to what is listed in the pacing guide, I email them ahead as well, so that teachers can look them over prior to our session. And lastly, teachers bring any resources they want to use for the upcoming plan. Once we are all together, we get straight to work on our plans to maximize our time together. I make sure to provide extra copies of our lesson planning template and our higher order question stem cards. This reduces the excuses for not being able to plan together. I try to always have a back-up plan for any excuse. I also refer to any resources I requested for the teachers to bring. It brings value to the resources, so they will continue to bring what you request. Because we have streamlined the process, there is now time (for the most part) to review student work samples, interactive journals, model a new strategy, or create rubrics and anchor charts. Our common planning is jam-packed, but I love it! We have moved beyond venting sessions to really honing in what our kids need.

Stay tuned for the After Planning