6th Grade Planning Meetings

At the beginning of the quarter, Mrs. Harris invited me to observe a sixth grade “team”

meeting. I was very excited to do so because I had always wondered how the meetings played

out. We all met in Mrs. Shivers’ room and got to work. Each grade is required to have a team

meeting and discuss how the year is going. From my understanding, Mrs. Baughman, sends out

an online form for each grade to fill out. This acts as a progress report and it allows the teachers

to look back to see how things are changing. The first thing they discussed was student

behavior. At the time of the meeting, we were having a lot of problems within the grade. There

were two separate groups of girls that could not get along. They talked about what we could do

to help improve the morale in the classroom because the arguments were creating an

uncomfortable learning space. We talked about many things surrounding the sixth grade as a

whole. It was really interesting to see how Mrs. Harris, Miss Reynolds, and Mrs. Shivers

interacted with each other and how they were able to, in a way, read each other’s minds.

The second “team” meeting that I observed took place on November 11th. For this

meeting, we all met at the Crumbaugh Library. This meeting was to plan the next unit for the

mathematics portion of the day. They had a math planning specialist, Janet Moore, come in and

work with them. She did a lot of miniature example lessons to demonstrate how the lessons are

supposed to look to the students. She provided them with learning aids and tools to engage the

kids and make learning a little more interesting. Mrs. Moore talked the teachers through each

lesson and showed them how to present the information so that the students do not get

confused. It was really amazing to see how knowledgeable she was about how the students will

perceive the information and how they will react. She had the teachers introducing new material

to the students in a way that they could all understand.

 After looking back at these two meetings, I have taken away two big things. The first is

that, when you are a teacher, you are apart of a team. Whether, it is a sixth grade “team” or all

of the teachers as a whole. You are all there to make sure that the atmosphere the students are

provided stays positive and welcoming. You are there to make sure that each student is

comfortable and aid them in reaching their full potential. The second thing that I took away from

the meetings was that even when you have graduated from college, you have your degree, and

you have your own classroom that you have to figure out how to run, you are still going to have

some guidance. There are other teachers around that are in the same position. You are not just

going to be left to your own devices. There are people around that will help you.