Splitting Lesson Sets (Lower El / Upper El or Across Classrooms)
When a school starts, they are given one shared lesson set for all Primary classrooms, and one shared lesson set for all Elementary classrooms (both Lower and Upper).
This means as any guide adds, removes, renames, or changes a lesson, it affects all classrooms at that level. We like to start with this because it's easy to give classrooms separate lesson sets than combine different lesson sets later.
We are happy to separate either Lower and Upper lesson sets for you (we'll make a copy, and then you can hide the lessons you don't want or need), or make it so that each classroom has its own lesson set. Before doing that though, there are a few pros and cons you'll need to consider so you can make an informed decision about what's right for your community:
Sharing lessons (as it is now)
[pro] When a child graduates from lower el to upper el, there are no additional steps that an upper elementary teacher needs to take to see what a child has done. The upper elementary teacher will see a child's progress from lower el along with their progress with upper el lessons.
[pro] If a child were to transfer from one classroom to another at the same level, all of their history is seamlessly transferred, because the classrooms are using the same lessons.
[pro] It is easy to give an older lower el child more advanced upper el lessons and vice versa.
[pro] Sharing lessons creates consistency across classrooms for planning and reporting purposes.
[con] You see more lessons than you usually need (and have to scroll through them in Progress & Plan) if you're working in only lower or upper elementary.
[con] If the trainings teachers attended were very different, someone or everyone will have lessons that don't match up with their training albums.
Splitting Upper & Lower
[pro] There are already many elementary lessons, so if you can get rid of ~1/2 of them for each classroom, recording and planning may seem more manageable, less existential overhead, etc.
[pro] Splitting lesson sets means the changes that upper el teachers make won't affect the lower el teacher's lesson set and vice versa.
[pro] As an upper el teacher, it is still possible to see lower el progress for each student.
[con] There are more steps to view a student's progress with a split lower el lesson set. To add to it on a day-to-day basis or alongside upper el progress, the upper el teacher will need to go to the child/progress page and switch to lower el, and then have another tab open to upper el if both need to be visible.
[con] The line between lower and upper isn't clear-cut, so there may be overlap with lessons, which can be problematic in a split lesson set. Teachers will have to look at the lower elementary lessons and then manually copy progress for a child to the upper elementary lessons when a child moves from lower to upper.
Splitting lessons for all classrooms
[pro] Teachers almost always need to customize their lessons, and splitting them means you can each have your lessons named and organized just the way you want them.
[con] When students are transferred between classrooms, their history will NOT automatically be visible in the new classroom lesson set. There will be a manual step of copying the child's history across similar but potentially not exactly the same lessons (if you need to do this, the [Progress & Plan] page is a good place to look).
Ultimately, the decision is up to you, but keep in mind, it's much harder to combine them later. Please let us know if you need any support while considering what makes the most sense for your community, or if you need us to split lesson sets, please send us an email at info@transparentclassroom.com.