TEA Collaborative Learning Group
Annual Report

Llong
2002

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How did your work with your team help you meet the professional growth goals you set for yourself?
One of the goals in our science department is to implement the inquiry process into our lessons. Many of us use this already but can implement more lessons as well adjust current lessons. By setting times to plan together which has not been done in the past, I have been able to spend less time implementing new ideas as each teacher is bringing in new ideas as well as making adjustments that each of us can take advantage of. Once this is finished it will be beneficial to go back and critique our year as a whole and to view problematic areas. We are also trying to incorporate the use of Vernier probes into our curriculum. Our science departments in our school district met together and purchased teh Vernier software program. As a group we have met and tried different probes that we then transfer to lessons in our classrooms.

How did your work with your team impact your content knowledge and pedagogy?
Much of the time we have spent together has been for curriuclum and lesson alinment. In the process of planning we have shared past ideas as well as brainstormed new ideas. I believe my teaching this year has improved drammatically do to the efforts of our whole team.

What materials / resources / workshops did you use / produce / host with your team members over the last year?
Much of our time was spent setting up new lessons based on the inquiry lessons. We used a workshop from the MN Science Museum on using the Inquiry approach in science. I hosted a 'scientists in teh classroom" workshop for our school with Karen.

Based on the past year, what ideas do you have to improve the effectiveness of your team interactions?
We, I, are not great planners for upcoming meetings. We often wait until we feel that each person could benfit by one. This has worked out to be about every two weeks. As TEA progresses along I hope to have TEA as more of an agenda were as of now it has taken a back seat as each person is interested in direct curriculum issues.

Total hours of collaboration with each team member:
Beth 25.5 Barb 27 Karen 19

Additional reflections: