Simone, Elizabeth and I met to design our schedule by assigning instructional minutes for Social Studies, Math, and Language Arts for both sections of 4th grade. For the first time ever, we were able to schedule 330 math and 330 language arts minutes, with an additional 40 minutes dedicated to Word Study (not including Library and Social Studies minutes). We also assigned 180 minutes each week to Social Studies and brainstormed different ways we can approach who is teaching each section. It makes sense for each of us to "lead" a subject: Simone/Language Arts, Elizabeth/Social Studies, and me/Math. We think this will streamline planning and create a balanced team.
We then discussed ways we could be creative with the schedule so that Elizabeth can present the Social Studies lessons to each class. This took a lot of time and we revisited our curriculum map to determine what time is needed to successfully implement our first Social Studies unit. We decided on a way to start the year, but will revisit it after a couple weeks to see if it works for everyone, most importantly, for the students.
This time set us up to start the year with all of us on "the same page," especially having time to discuss how the team will operate with 3 lead teachers.