Co-teaching can sometimes feel like a marriage: You’re stuck together all day and, depending on your dynamics, either finishing each other’s sentences or stepping on them. But co-teaching effectively can mean delivering a lesson that is better than either teacher could have achieved alone, so it’s worth experimenting with and practicing the most effective models.
Throughout my experience, the team-teaching model has proven to be most successful. In an ideal team-teaching situation, both teachers share responsibility for planning and delivering lesson content, which shifts away from having one teacher lead while the other assists. Team-teaching provides a way to differentiate instruction, allowing students to learn and hear two unique voices through the use of multiple modalities to provide better access to content.
I once had an English as a new language (ENL) co-teacher who used to sit in front of my desk each Monday and ask, “What are we doing for the week? Let’s plan!” At the time, HMH was our new curriculum, and I was inundated with creating new lesson plans. However, looking back, I can happily say that by working with my co-teacher to plan and review the week’s goals, our team teaching became synchronous and intentional. We took turns teaching different parts of the lesson and made sure to help our students by using several modalities — TPR (total physical response), modeling and pulling small groups. One of us could model while the other could reteach to students who needed clarification or additional support.
In one instance, my co-teacher and I switched off reading a folktale, “Two Legs or One.” During our dramatic reading, she continued to use TPR so students could make sense of the main message and its humor. Instead of having to manage everything alone, as co-teachers we had the room to respond to students in real time. If you walked into our classroom, our lessons were so seamless you would not be able to tell who was the ENL teacher and who was the general education teacher. That is what team-teaching should aspire to be.
Similarly, station teaching with more than one teacher in the room can be highly effective for providing guided support to specific students. Teachers can engage with students at different learning stations to target varying learning needs. Whether in an ENL or integrated co-teaching (ICT) classroom, both teachers can hold small groups to conduct mini-lessons or reinforce previously taught skills.
For some of our HMH lessons, my co-teacher would answer questions about the text using white boards at one station, while I retaught skills some students misunderstood at another station.
While these are the co-teaching models that have worked best for me, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. It’s important to experiment and keep communicating with your co-teacher so that both of you can be actively involved in delivering content and instruction throughout the lesson.
Mary Samuel teaches 7th-grade ELA at IS 25 in Flushing, Queens.