In this Guide for Teachers, we'll talk about how Cc can simplify collaboration routines, so that teachers can co-plan and review exemplary plans from their colleagues. We'll also focus on how SPED, ESOL, and GenEd teachers can strengthen their planning routines.
Pre-work: As a bit of pre-work, you'll want to be sure that you've set up an account and that you have created your first planbook. If you haven't done that, take a look at our Cc for Teachers video on Planbook Set-Up. This guide also assumes that you are connected with your colleagues through a Cc Pro for Schools account.
In this guide, we'll focus on:
Various use cases for shared planbooks:
Co-teachers
ESOL/SPED and GenEd collaboration
Contained Classrooms where teachers divide the work, with each teacher creating plans for one subject area
So let's get started:
If you work with co-teachers, you can create a shared planbook and complete all of your lessons together.
To do this, you can click "Create a Planbook," set it up with your classes, schedule, and templates, and then share the planbook with your co-teacher. You can do this by clicking "Sharing and Class Website," selecting "Collaborate with an Individual," entering your co-teacher's school email address and choosing how you would like to share your planbook.
Similarly, this process is an excellent solution when ESOL/SPED Teachers co-plan or provide push-in/pull-out for a GenEd teacher.
When a General Educator shares editing access, ESOL and SPED teachers can add in daily accommodations, student-specific modifications, as well as provide links or attachments to differentiated assignments or practice sets. Shared planbooks also streamline planning routines for contained classrooms.
Let's imagine an elementary school, where 5 instructors have their own contained classrooms. Though each instructor is responsible for teaching all subjects, these teachers can use one shared planbook to divide the work.
After creating a single planbook with every different class—we'll say, Math, Science, ELA, and Social Studies—a teacher can share the planbook with their colleagues and divide up lesson creation for each subject. The result is that teachers can lean into their content expertise and reduce their planning time, which leads to higher-quality lessons and stronger facilitation in the day-to-day.
And there you have it: using Cc for collaboration is a great way to unite with your co-teachers, cut down on planning time, and learn from the strengths and the experience of more veteran colleagues.