Grade level and co teaching questions

[rapeljei]

The elementary schools in my district want to have one grade level page shared by all the teachers. In other words, all fourth grade teachers will have editing privileges and divide the work between them. 

This “shared” page is apposed to each teacher having their own page and having to upload all the grade level lessons to their individual classes, or copying from commons.

i have a couple of concerns about the shared page,

1) if all teachers have editing privileges then one teacher could cause havoc for all the other teachers

2) how do teachers separate out assignments in the grade book? Do they need to cross list the classes or create different groups/sections for each teacher

3) we have the potential to transition from fully online to hybrid model with students attending school on different days and the current template is based on weekly lesson plans and each group would be out of sequence.

So my main question is, is it worth it to combine all the teachers by grade level into one “shared” class with editing privileges to reduce teacher workload or would it be better to keep each teacher separate and have each teacher upload the shared lessons to the separate classes. I hope that makes sense. I would love to hear your thoughts before we move forward.

[KristinL]

Oh! Lots of questions. 😍

I totally understand the objective. Teachers want to collaborate and help distribute the time required to create content. That makes a lot of sense! That will free them up to do more classroom management and relationship building. 

While it is possible to enroll teachers and students into one giant course with permissions set so they can only interact with their section (or class), I can see that being problematic. It could make it difficult for teachers to put their own voice into some of the assignments or always agree on the unified format. Additionally, unless you have a system in place that someone edits a title and adds their initials, saves, and then reopens an item for building, you may crisscross editors. That would be frustrating as well.

I think it would be better to share into a common "curriculum home" from the individual classroom courses. It allows the individual teachers to really be intentional about their shares while not needing to worry about when their colleagues are building materials. It also encourages teachers to customize or put their own style into lessons that they copy into their classes. I think it's okay that the lessons are close but not identical to the other classrooms in the grade level.

I think this is my biggest idea for you: Have you looked at Canvas Commons? There is a way that you could set up a group within Commons for each grade level. Then, when a teacher has completed a module/unit or activity, they could share the content to Commons. It would be available for everyone to download at their leisure, and it's much more straight-forward than a Canvas Course Copy. It would still allow for customizing content AND due dates when everyone may not be meeting in the same spaces on the same days.⭐

What is Canvas Commons? 

How do I import and view a Commons resource in Canvas?