Team Teaching Part 2

I realised after yesterday's post that I should explain more fully how we operate the Team teaching in Learning Team 4 at Freeville. In some circles "Team Teaching" means two or more teachers sharing a class but only one of them is actually in the class at a time. I understand this as job sharing but it isn't what we are doing. This year we have 64 children in the class. There are two of us responsible for the learning of these children. We treat them as one class and they break up into different groups for different parts of the day. Sometimes it might be mixed groups of year seven and eights. Other times it might be reading or spelling groups based on their current level. On occasions there could be an all girls group or an all year 8 group etc etc. The flexibility this gives means we can meet the children's needs with two of us contributing to planning, assessing and coaching the learning. The children carry with them a weekly planner which they refer to throughout the day to help them be in the right place at the right time. It is only week two but I have been really impressed that most of them have been able to get themselves organised and in the right place for each lesson.
Today I took a session with half the class (while the others were at art) on Thinking Maps. These are a really powerful learning tool to add to the tool box.
It has also been really cool to be able to use some of the ICT tools I have been showing to teachers in the last few years with a group of children. In the first week of school we have

• graphed on excel our spelling test results and our beep test scores,
  
• taken photos during maths,
  
• contributed to Photo365 an internet project,
  
• researched greetings on the internet,
  
• played maths games online,
  
• made powerpoint presentations on "What Change Means"
• created pivot animations showing "Change"
• downloaded music from freeplaymusic
  

The thing that really excites me about this is that the focus for these activities was the learning not the technology. Fun fun fun!