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Thursday, October 25, 2012

Co-teaching Strategy

One co-teaching strategy that we have used in our room is parallel teaching. I was excited to try this strategy because I thought the students would be able to get more attention and feedback this way and it would be nice to teach a smaller group of students. We tired this co-teaching strategy in science and social studies. The science lesson worked out okay. I was able to monitor one side of the room and make sure students were successful with their science kits and Jane was able to monitor the other side and answer questions. When we tried the co-teaching strategy again in social studies it did not work out so well. We divided the room in half and had students move their desks into two groups. I taught one side of the room and Jane taught the other, we both tried to teach the same activity. The problem was our space. It was difficult to have two lessons going on in the room at the same time. If one group of students got too loud, the other students were distracted. Also, with two voices talking it was sometimes hard for students to concentrate. I think this strategy could be a good one if we had more space or could take one group of students to another room. I hope to get some opportunities to try different co-teaching strategies in middle school in the next couple weeks. It will be interesting to compare my experiences with co-teaching in elementary school versus middle school.
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2 comments:

  1. Suzy Kaback & FamilyOctober 27, 2012 at 5:07 AM

    It's interesting to read these nuts-and-bolts realities about trying to implement co-teaching strategies. I can see how space would be an issue in your classroom. Although it's large, you have 34 students! The noise alone of two teachers instructing, and two groups of students responding/working, could sabotage the objectives of the approach. Still, as we've discussed a couple of times now, the benefits of trying to work with smaller groups of students is worth experimenting until you get that right balance. I wonder if when you tried parallel teaching, you did a content lesson to the whole group, then split them into 2 smaller groups to monitor and assist, or if you and Jane were instructing to the small groups, then assisting. Just curious.

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  2. Nicole ZeltingerOctober 27, 2012 at 7:09 PM

    In science it was a lesson to the whole group, then small group monitoring and assisting. In social studies we were both instructing to two smaller groups.

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