Long range planning

When I did my internship with the second grade teachers at my school, they did all of their lesson planning as a team. One teacher would write reading lesson plans, for example, another would do math, a third would do science, and so on. It worked well for them, and I thought it was a great method. For someone who had never done this professionally, I thought it was great to have my lesson plans written for me, for the most part.

However, once I got my own classroom, I was informed that the fourth grade teachers don't plan together. Every now and then, one of them told me, they'd get together and check each other's progress, and make sure they were all sort of on the same page, but other than that, nope, no team planning at all.

I was scared to death.

But over the past two years, I've grown to really appreciate writing my own plans. Sure, it's more work, but it lets me focus on what I think is important - not what other people place emphasis on. I can also tailor my lessons to what my own students need, so if they're having a hard time with multiplication, we can spend an extra few days on it, rather than being forced to move on, regardless.

So that brings me to this year. I'm grade level leader for the new fourth grade team. That's kind of exciting, and I'm pleased that my principal feels that I'm prepared enough to do that in my third year of teaching. However, in our six person team, three are new to fourth grade. There are two who have expressed an interest in planning together, and they are basically scared to death to teach a brand new grade (one of them has taught second grade for fourteen years - quite a change!). I feel that as grade level leader, I need to help them out, while at the same time, not letting myself get bogged down in what they need.

I mentioned in a couple of posts already that I'm interested in readers/writers workshop. I can see how that might be intimidating to someone who is doing this for the first time (it's still intimidating to me!). I can understand that at this point, they'll probably rely pretty heavily on the textbooks we're given. What I'd ideally like to do is plan out my year in detail, then provide anyone who is interested with a copy of those long range plans. If those teachers are interested in following the same format as me, that's great. If they're not, they certainly won't be made to do it.

Still, planning for an entire year is a pretty big goal, and to be honest, I haven't really done it before; not well, or in depth, anyway. I really don't know where to start or what the best way to do it is. I'm open to any and all suggestions; I'd love to learn some of your techniques for planning.