Grade Level

1) Sometimes we have snack sign up and one person brings a snack for all to share. We provide our own drinks.
2) We rotate the classroom that the meeting is in. One week it will be in teacher A's room, the next time we meet it will be in teacher B's room, etc. This is nice b/c it is fun to go in other teacher's rooms and see what they have been doing. I get lots of good ideas this way. We can ask her questions about a project.
3) Our team leader asks us to bring something to share at each meeting. So, for example, she might ask us to bring a pumpkin activity to share with the team. We need to have enough copies/templates, etc. to give each person on the team. I have gotten some great ideas this way as well.
4) Our team leader puts a "reminder" note in our mailboxes the day before the meeting. It tells us the day and time and which room to meet in.
5) We have someone take "minutes" of the meeting, type them up, and distribute them to each team member and the principal. She likes to see what we have discussed/decided, etc. We usually meet at least once every other week...sometimes more often (once a week) depending on what is going on. Other things that we go over are committee (language arts, math, social, etc.) items that need to be discussed. Some years we have had the assistants attend the meetings, but the past few years we have not. They get a copy of the minutes. No one else usually attends our meetings unless they need to.

Hope this helps.

Our district is very specific about how grade level meetings are to be held. Our team leader passes out a typed agenda. The bulk of our meeting time we have to discuss instruction so we discuss what the math, language arts, social studies, and science curriculum will cover in the next week. We look at our scope and sequence and discuss what is coming up. At the end we do administrative stuff like discuss any open houses or testing dates etc. We are not allowed to split instruction, like give teacher A all the planning for Language Arts, teacher B all the planning for science etc. That is a big no-no in our district.We are also encouraged to do book studies, we have done one each year for the past 2 years. We meet a second time every other week for the book study, they were very beneficial. Last year we read Katie Wood Ray's About the Authors. I have been to other team meetings that were a complete waste of time. An administrator is supposed to attend at least one of our team meetings per year.