Teaming Flow, Teaming Energy

Bonnie Putman
Third-grade ELA teacher, Moseley Elementary School, Putnam County, Florida

I began my teaching career in the early 1990’s and have seen a lot of teaching methods come and go and was somewhat skeptical of LSI and academic teaming. After spending the first few weeks of school struggling to keep the students’ attention and leaving exhausted at the end of each day, I met with our school’s coach and received a quick tutorial on how to form teams, assign and implement team roles, create standards-based success criteria and learning goals, and how to begin to transition my classroom from being teacher centered to more student-centered routines. Working weekly with our school coach and the other 3rd grade reading teacher on learning targets, success criteria, and rigorous team tasks has allowed me the freedom to dig deeper into the standards, analyze student data and track student progress. My students have been taught how to respond to one another when working on a team task and with the success criteria, they are in control of their learning and academic success. And as a bonus, teaming allows me to quickly handle any discipline issues without stopping the flow of the students working on a task. I’m no longer leaving school well after student dismissal, dragging myself to my car. Yessss!!!!