Departmentalization

[bluebonnet]

We had grand plans to fully departmentalize next year, with our principal's blessing, and just found out that the district is eliminating one of our grade level positions. Any suggestions how we can departmentalize with only 5 teachers?? We're baffled. (We had two open positions, so we're not losing a colleague. Whew.)

[xzochye]

Can a subject be combined?

[Black Jack]

2 reading'/LA, 2 math, 1 science and social studies is done in homerooms. You could also combine social studies into reading and use a lot of ss text and incorporate the reading skills/TEKS into ss content.

[bluebonnet]

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2 reading'/LA, 2 math, 1 science and social studies is done in homerooms.

How do the rotations work?

[Yve]

Or, take LA or Math (whatever you think would need to be intensive) and each teacher handle that as homeroom, then switch classes for science, social studies, and the other core subject. If lunch is later, then change classes in morning and have kids come back to home base for end of day...or the other way around.

Or combine Social Studies with ELA, and still have separate math and science.

[corgifan]

Just curious, is this 5th grade?

[FieryPrincess]

It doesn't have to be. This is the system used in the district where I grew up. We started changing classes in 1st grade. The split was: Language Arts (writing/spelling/reading) and Math/Science/Social Studies

When we got to 4th grade, we had three teachers: One for all the aspects of language arts, one for Math and one for Science/Social Studies.

Some of the schools in that district do that and some of the open concept campuses do not. (There's another survery idea or two in there)

I think it is such a positive thing for so many reasons:
You get teachers who teach in their strongest areas
Kids get a little moving around time
The transition to middle school isn't nearly as abrupt.

[bluebonnet]

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Just curious, is this 5th grade?

Yes, 5th grade. We're starting to discuss the idea of going with a "middle school"-type schedule, i.e. 5 "periods." One teacher would teach the math lesson, the 2nd math teacher would teach a follow up on the same concepts. One teacher would teach a reading lesson, the 2nd reading teacher would focus on a social studies lesson. The fifth teacher would teach science. One thought behind this is that one teacher isn't solely responsible for math STAAR results and one isn't solely responsible for reading STAAR results.

We'll have to figure out how to group the kids. Last year we were partially departmentalized (math and reading only), and grouped the kids so that we could flood the interventionists into the classes. It was awesome. For our lowest babies we had 4-5 adults in the room working in small groups, and we also had interventionists in the higher classes as well (all except the highest group).

[lan_carter]

We did it at our campus, I taught fifth grade. Reading and social studies was combined, math, science, and l.a. was taught separately. One day a week, we all taught social studies and the rest of the week, I incorporated it within my reading class. It worked extremely well for us, the school has been exemplary ever since.