Chapter 1,2 & 7

Two things that stuck out from the readings were: syllabus and peer coaching. The way that I read creating a syllabus was to plan out the year for the students. When we did that for math, it made teaching math easier to plan (this will be my second year using it). The district format is called "mapping" and in it we have several maps to teach writing, science and social studies. One of the things I like about mapping is that it gives me a whole year's view on a week by week basis. I'm not too sure that when they say "syllabus" they mean for one subject for one grade level, but that's what it meant to me as I was reading.
There was another section in chapter two about peer coaching. This is something our school has attempted to do, but not very successfully. I think because we feel we need to be in our classroom all the time. There were several new teachers in my room last year who came in not necessarily for peer coaching but for observation. At the start of the school year, we were highly enouraged by our principal to put the practice of peer coaching to work this year. I know at this stage in my teaching career that that's probably a good move. Sometimes we get into the rut of teaching and I believe I've reached that point and need additional points. Having the SIOP class was helpful indeed, but it's difficult at this point to put practice to work. I'm thinking since I've planned out math that it would be easy to use my "essential questions" and turn them into content and language objectives. I think also it would be much easier for me too to try to map out grade 4 social studies/science class also.
It's difficult to think of a "whole" curriculum when you teach one or two classes. I want to ask, are we to look at whole curriculums in this class and not so much the grade level we currently teach? Chapter one talked about the beginnings of teaching and knowing English in the 1950s and the importances of doing so. The Yugtun language doesn't have a global need and I know that the regional need is not the strongest right now. I guess knowing these two differences makes it hard to grasp the idea of "whole curriculum". Help anyone?