Creating and Fine Tuning the Lesson Plans

Goal: To create the five days worth of lesson plans and to collaborate with teachers from different grade levels to refine them.

Action Steps:

1. Review AVID 7th grade Weeks at a glance to pull out lessons that teach the steps of taking Focused Cornell Notes.

2. Meet with Paolina Schiro, RIMS AVID coach, to review the combined lessons to make sure they still align with AVID curriculum.

3. Get three elementary, three middle school, and three high school teachers to review and critique lessons.

4. Make corrections and finalize the Five Days to Focused Cornell Notes Lesson Plans.

Reflection:

For this part of the project I was able to collaborate with three elementary teachers, six middle school teachers and one high school teacher. In order for this part of the project to be a success, I definitely had to enable others to act. The first key to this practice is developing cooperative relationships amongst the people I work with. Since I am a middle school teacher and AVID coordinator it was fairly easy to find middle school teachers that I have built relationships with over the years to review the lessons. Several of the reviewers are members of the AVID site team at my campus and the others were fellow AVID coordinators. These teachers all shared a common interest in the project and were willing to give their time and ideas to reviewing the lessons. The elementary teachers were personal friends of mine that I have made through a community service group I belong to. They were also very willing to be a part of the project and were excited about the possibility of using the lessons at their schools in the future. I had the most trouble finding high school teachers to help review the material. Since I am not at the high school level, I have not developed many relationships with high school teachers. Fortunately, through TLCA, I was able to connect with the AVID coordinator from Santiago High school who was able to review the material for me. I also collaborated with Dr. Paolina Schiro, who is a RIMS AVID coach and co-author of several of the AVID curriculum books, on improving the lessons.

Another obstacle that I ran into was simply timing. My school is still year round and as I was gearing up for my final month of school, most of the elementary and high school teachers were already on summer vacation. I feel that this greatly contributed to the lack of cooperation from the other high school teachers I asked to review the material.

In regards to the wonderful group that did review the material, I stressed how important I thought their input would be and that I was open to making any changes that they felt would make the lessons more engaging and enriching for students. I made sure that they knew that I respected their ideas. Most of the team reviewed the material and did not have any changes to make. I was a little discouraged at first because I thought that their lack of critiques might have indicated that they did not really give the lessons enough time and attention, and may have only skimmed them. But the more I spoke with them about the lessons, the more I was assured that they were just genuinely impressed by the materials and did not have anything to add to improve the lessons. Dr. Schiro asked me to try to make the lessons more interactive and to remember the 10-2 model, in regards to allowing at least 2 minutes of process time for every 10 minutes of information. Dr. Meyers-Wagner, one of my elementary school reviewers, also had several changes to make for each day of the lesson plans. I met with her and made most of the changes she suggested. I was really glad to get her feedback and critiques, especially because she has an elementary back ground. I felt that her input made the lessons more versatile and well rounded, and I made sure she knew that her ideas were supported and would be changed for the final lesson plans. All in all, I felt this stage of the process went very smoothly and we ended up with very interactive and powerful lessons.