Day -2: The One With the Laminated Group Roles

Staff development week is quickly winding down. I’m fairly certain that two days ago (Wednesday) will mark the day I was actually over my head, followed by yesterday (Thursday) as the day I started breaking all my School Year’s Resolutions to leave by 6, followed by today (Friday), where I will hopefully adhere to leaving by 6 out of a sense of guilt and hope.

(Yes, the week before school causes all the emotions)

Photo: Laminated Group RolesCurriculum partner and I are revising curriculum from 2 years ago rather than writing our own, which is much less stressful and is helping us to really think about past lessons and rework them so that they (hopefully) accomplish what we actually want them to do.

It’s also been a weird walk down memory lane back to my first year of full-time teaching. The way we plan and think about lessons has changed quite a bit and so many of our structures are different (though we’re also trying to revive a lot of them). Some of my lesson plans are filled with less relevant details and even less relevant formatting (Me: “What is this?” Curriculum partner: “I think I wanted to tell you not to waste time on formatting, but figured you’d get the idea after doing it once or twice.”* *They were really nice about it and totally right.)

First-Year-Teacher-Me also went and laminated 4 different versions of Complex Instruction group roles***. First-Year-Teacher-Me was kind of a naive dweeb. That being said, Third-Year-Teacher-Me is now taping down those laminated roles, so…good work First-Year-Teacher-Me?

(Complex Instruction is a structured form of groupwork aimed at helping all students to contribute to the learning of the group. One way to do this is to assign each group member a different role. Some teachers tape the roles to the table so that all Group Managers sit in corresponding positions, all Resource Managers sit in corresponding positions, making it easier for the teacher to identify and reenforce roles in Complex Instruction. One of our goals this year is to authentically use roles, so…)