A crucial part of this new Ontario Kindergarten program is that I would be working with an Early Childhood Educator (ECE) in my classroom. I mean 'our' classroom. The province of Ontario envisions a partnership between the two educators in the classroom. They wanted us to plan, program and assess together. I have always been interested and willing to co-teach so this was a great opportunity. But I was extremely worried about how we could effectively plan together on a weekly/daily basis. Many times when teaching the best laid plans often took a detour along the way. An unexpected assembly, an impromptu fire drill, the dreaded unscheduled illness, or a sudden teachable moment steering me off course temporarily. How could we possibly find a way to plan that worked for both of us and provided the shared access that we required.
Surfing the Internet last summer lead me to the solution.
An online planing tool that we both could access at home or at school! Hooray! There was a small membership cost but it was well worth it to me. We set up our weekly templates and could plug our lessons into the slots. If we were working on a particular skill all week we could extend it for the entire week. We could also bump a lesson to the following day if we didn't get to it that day for some reason. Best of all I could save a copy of my daily or weekly plans and attach it directly to my electronic request for a supply teacher. All my supply teachers raved about how easy the plan was to follow. Happy supply teachers means they will agree to come back and teach again.
This year I will not have an ECE in my classroom because I'm no longer teaching kindergarten. But I will definitely be extending my membership at planbook.com. The ease of use and the fact that my plans are stored online means I can access them anytime, anywhere. Anyone else use an online planbook like this one? What did you think of it? Please leave a comment.
Thanks,
No comments:
Post a Comment