A Collaborative Approach to Inquiry: Level 3 Social Studies

This year, we have two year 13 level 3 social studies classes running at the same time.  We have never had two classes in level 3 social studies before and I'm excited by the challenge.  We have separated the group into two.  The class I will be teaching consists of all of the students that I'd taught at level 2 (plus a few stranglers).  The class my colleague is teaching will have students who are new to the subject.

My class have a good grasp of social science concepts and are used the class routines.  The other class did not do the level 2 course last year and are at a disadvantage.  We felt that by separating the classes this way, she would support those who need more help understanding concepts and building their confidence in the subject whilst I would support those needing the higher level learning. We have decided a collaborate approach to planning would allow me to support my colleague in teaching the skills and content of the course as well as help me gage where the students are at (and need to be) with their learning.  I am also interested in learning more about myself and my pedagogy by taking the collaborative planning approach to this course.

Our aim is to be consistent in our planning, so that we can be consistent in the delivery of that planning and to ensure that we can support the differing learning needs of our learners.

Our initial thoughts and plan to collaborate went like this:

• Organise a site/collaborative teaching plan online.
• Meet before the teaching week.  
• Discuss the outcome so we could plan the process
• Book in guest speakers
• Look at the kids that we have and place them in 'learning groups'
• Team teach during the double periods.
• Revisit our planning and outcomes at the end of each session.
• Revisit our planning and outcomes at the end of each week.

To make this happen, we will have to schedule in our meeting points, and limit our time for that planning to one hour.  (This is because my colleague and I are well-known to side track the task at hand and end up forgetting why we met in the first place!)

I am hopeful that what I can learn from this collaboration is to be more open to suggestions, ideas and feedback because I know at times I can be bossy and try to control things.  When I reflect on why I may think this, I figured that being the only teacher of this subject for such a long time has allowed me to be the expert (or so I think I am), so working collaboratively alongside someone may take some getting used to.  I'm open to the idea and need to put my 'active listening' hat on, so that we can make this work.