What questions should you ask before co-teaching with content teachers? Ones that inform collaborative teaching and bring language into focus.
Co-teachers who take risks together, grow together.
Poorly implemented co-teaching practices may be taking the “special” out of special education, say many who train teachers and districts in collaboration.
Here are 10 co-teaching tips for classroom teachers, intervention specialists, and anyone in an inclusion-type educational setting at school.
Co-teaching strategies to help general education teachers and special education teachers work together in a classroom. Includes tips for establishing routines, common planning time, discipline, grading, and teaching strategies.
Co-Teaching can be one of the most rewarding, yet challenging experiences. The co-teaching partnership is kind of like a marriage and usually it's an arranged one! Often, two teachers are partnered up without knowing much about each other. Administrators dealing with staffing issues may not be able to look at teaching styles and personalities before pairing teachers up. Here are some tips on how to make your co-teaching relationship a successful one! 1. Get to know your co-teaching partner. It takes time to develop a rapport. Get to know your partner over the summer, if possible. Attend trainings together. Go out for lunch and chat about your family, interests, likes, and dislikes. The trust built over the summer will make the entire year run more smoothly. 2. Discuss expectations before the situation arises. Talk about what your expectations are for the year and set boundaries. Do you expect to plan everything together? Do you expect to work before or after school? How will you address grading and report cards? Do you prefer to be contacted at home with a question or would you rather wait until returning to school? Discussing your expectations before the school year starts will make your partnership more cohesive. 3. Be open-minded to your partner's ideas. Think about the general education teacher as the curriculum specialist. Chances are, they are more familiar with the grade-level curriculum and expectations. The special education teacher is the modifications expert. They will have great ideas of how to modify the classroom environment and assignments to fit the various needs of the classroom. Each of you brings great things to the classroom. You each have different experiences and training that has gotten you to this point in your career. You may be used to doing things differently than before you started co-teaching. Just like in a marriage, your co-teaching relationship is a give and take. You will learn a lot and gain a lot if you are open-minded. 4. Share your space. Share your students too! Whether you share one space or you each have your own “home base”, it is important for both of you to truly feel at home in each space. Within the main classroom, you each should have a desk or other personal space. The classroom signs should include each of your names. My classroom signs always include the names of both teachers, all of the teaching assistants, and all of the related service providers that play an active role in our classroom. It is important for everybody to feel a part of the team. To avoid using the terms “my room” and “your room”, I named my assigned room the “Learning Lab” and refer to the co-teaching classroom as just our “Classroom”. When you split up into groups, it might be a good idea alternate which teacher leaves to use the other space. Banish the phrases “your kids” and “my kids” and replace it with our kids. Both of you are equally responsible for the students assigned to your classroom. Your students should not feel a sense of belonging to one teacher over the other. When you split into groups or assist 1:1, alternate which teacher works with the different levels of kids. The same goes for working with parents. Communication should come from both of you. 5. Stand united both in the classroom and out! Just like in a marriage, you need to appear to be united. You might not always agree with the other teacher, but it is important to put on a united front and then speak about those differences in private. You always need to back each other up and also support your paraprofessionals as well. Your students will pick up on any disconnect between you and will try to use that to their advantage. Always speak positively about your partner. You need to work together for at least the entire school year so your relationship needs to be strong. The staff lunch room is not a place to talk about your issues. If you do not have anything nice to say, do not say anything at all. A few years ago, a friend of mine was having some trouble within her classroom. Her team of paraprofessionals were disjointed and often went against each other in front of the students. She reached out for some advice and it inspired me to create a product geared towards helping classrooms with multiple adults to work together collaboratively in harmony. I have found it quite useful in my own classroom which has four paraprofessionals. Whether you are new to co-teaching, new to your partner, or have been paired up for years, I hope you find this these tips helpful. If you want more information about co-teaching, you can find just about everything you need in my Ultimate Co-Teaching Start-Up Kit. Thank you for stopping by today!
5 tips that will help you grow a strong, positive co-teaching relationship.
Did you know that the average school-aged student learns between 3000 to 5000 words per year? That means they learn eight to 12 words per day (Biemiller & Boote, 2006). Most children are like little sponges soaking up new information. Unfortunately this isn’t the case for students with language disorders who have limited word knowledge. Students...
Teaching partnerships need to be cohesive in order to function and be successful in the classroom. Get my tips and advice to make co-teaching work.
Explore examples of co-teaching models for ELLs and non-ELLs alike. There are 6 models that content and English language teachers can use when co-teaching.
When done well, co-teaching offers benefits for both students and teachers. When not done well, it can be confusing or downright frustrating for all involved.
I have recently joined the wonderful world of co-teaching! From my one year of experience, I have found that detailed planning is essential for making the collaborative relationship work. This 3 page PDF form allows you to plan the following: - who creates each activity/assignment - who is responsible for leading each activity/assignment - essential questions (common core friendly!) - student difficulties/opportunities for enrichment - detailed planning page including: task, co-teaching model, time, teacher duties - reflection page I have also included an editable 5 page Word document of the form we use when we group our students. (We find this very useful for stations, parallel teaching, and alternative teaching.) I teach middle school math, but think this form could be used for any co-teaching partnership. I hope you find this form to be as useful as I do! Thanks for viewing! :) ***UPDATE 8/2014 - I added the editable word version of this document. The font that I used was "Vingy" and can be downloaded for free here: http://www.searchfreefonts.com/free/vingy.htm Artwork credit: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Audrey-Matheney
New to coteaching and feeling nervous? Not sure how to start or what to say? Look no further than this set of 15 Special Education Scripts - the ultimate time-saving tool for busy educators! Whether you prefer a "done for you" print and go option or want to customize the scripts to fit your needs, t...
6 Effective co-teaching models, the pros and cons to each one, and advice on when to use them.
The next topic in my series in Communication is with the teachers you work alongside everyday. Let me begin by reintroducing myself: I am Mrs. H, I am a special education teacher, and COLLABORATION is my middle name. :) This year will be my tenth year teaching and I have been in special education all ten years. Every year keeps getting better and I feel more and more confident in my ability to deliver special education services to children in their areas of weakness, all while building on their strengths. One of they keys to make this possible is great collaboration. I have been fortunate to work with some outstanding teachers throughout my tenure and it has made collaboration and co-teaching a joy and most importantly beneficial to students. There are 5 Classroom Models of Co-teaching: Below you will find pictures of each co-teaching model and my simple definition for each model: The delivery methods and the lessons are obviously incredibly important, but the planning and outside of the classroom collaboration is as equally important. I created Co-teaching team weekly planning forms to help you and your co-teachers plan and stay organized together. Click on the picture to download from my TPT store. In this pack you will find forms for making co-teaching effective and efficient. The forms include: Weekly Co-Teaching Planning Sheets Classroom Teacher IEP Input Sheet Daily Lesson Plan Planning Sheet Note Cards (You can use these to send notes to parents, other teachers, administration, etc.) My suggestion is to copy several copies of each sheet for each teacher that you co-teach with and place in a binder. You will always have the binder to take with you to your planning meetings. In my effort to go paperless and reduce the amount of binders I have to keep up with: I have a little tutorial to share with you.... But you have to wait until tomorrow! :) To be prepared...if you have an iPad download: Evernote, Dropbox & GoodReader apps You can find me linking up with Fourth Grade Frolics fro Monday Made It!
An education blog with strategies, tips and information for teachers about teaching students with disabilities in the inclusive classroom.
If you're a regular reader, you already know I hang out in classrooms a LOT! If you're new here, check out my previous blog posts about how I provide therapy in the general ed. classroom here,
Hello! It's Nicole from Learning Lab again! Co-Teaching can be one of the most rewarding, yet challenging experiences. The co-teaching partnership is kind of like a marriage and usually it's an arranged one! Often, two teachers are partnered up without knowing much about each other. Administrators dealing with staffing issues may not be able to look at teaching styles and personalities before pairing teachers up. Here are some tips on how to make your co-teaching relationship a successful one! It takes time to develop a rapport. Get to know your partner over the summer, if possible. Attend trainings together. Go out for lunch and chat about your family, interests, likes, and dislikes. The trust built over the summer will make the entire year run more smoothly. Talk about what your expectations are for the year and set boundaries. Do you expect to plan everything together? Do you expect to work before or after school? How will you address grading and report cards? Do you prefer to be contacted at home with a question or would you rather wait until returning to school? Discussing your expectations before the school year starts will make your partnership more cohesive. Think about the general education teacher as the curriculum specialist. Chances are, they are more familiar with the grade-level curriculum and expectations. The special education teacher is the modifications expert. They will have great ideas of how to modify the classroom environment and assignments to fit the various needs of the classroom. Each of you brings great things to the classroom. You each have different experiences and training that has gotten you to this point in your career. You may be used to doing things differently than before you started co-teaching. Just like in a marriage, your co-teaching relationship is a give and take. You will learn a lot and gain a lot if you are open-minded. Whether you share one space or you each have your own “home base”, it is important for both of you to truly feel at home in each space. Within the main classroom, you each should have a desk or other personal space. The classroom signs should include each of your names. My classroom signs always include the names of both teachers, all of the teaching assistants, and all of the related service providers that play an active role in our classroom. It is important for everybody to feel a part of the team. To avoid using the terms “my room” and “your room”, I named my assigned room the “Learning Lab” and refer to the co-teaching classroom as just our “Classroom”. When you split up into groups, it might be a good idea alternate which teacher leaves to use the other space. Banish the phrases “your kids” and “my kids” and replace it with our kids. Both of you are equally responsible for the students assigned to your classroom. Your students should not feel a sense of belonging to one teacher over the other. When you split into groups or assist 1:1, alternate which teacher works with the different levels of kids. The same goes for working with parents. Communication should come from both of you. Just like in a marriage, you need to appear to be united. You might not always agree with the other teacher, but it is important to put on a united front and then speak about those differences in private. You always need to back each other up and also support your paraprofessionals as well. Your students will pick up on any disconnect between you and will try to use that to their advantage. Always speak positively about your partner. You need to work together for at least the entire school year so your relationship needs to be strong. The staff lunch room is not a place to talk about your issues. If you do not have anything nice to say, do not say anything at all. A few years ago, a friend of mine was having some trouble within her classroom. Her team of paraprofessionals were disjointed and often went against each other in front of the students. She reached out for some advice and it inspired me to create a product geared towards helping classrooms with multiple adults to work together collaboratively in harmony. I have found it quite useful in my own classroom which has four paraprofessionals. Whether you are new to co-teaching, new to your partner, or have been paired up for years, I hope you find this these tips helpful. If you want more information about co-teaching, you can find just about everything you need in my Ultimate Co-Teaching Start-Up Kit. Thank you for stopping by Classroom Tested Resources today! For more ideas, stop by my blog, Learning Lab, or follow me on Instagram (@Learning_Lab). Instagram is my favorite way to share quick ideas! See you again next month!
Spelling. My teaching nemesis. I’ll admit, I’m not a fan of teaching it – probably because I haven’t found anything that works. However, one thing that does seem to stick (f…
Feeling like an overpaid teacher’s assistant in your new role as a special education teacher in a co-taught class? It’s not just you; co-teaching is taking the difficult task of teaching to a whole new level. It took me years to come out from the teacher’s assistant shadow even though I’ve always been proficient when ...
Provide explicit instruction on how to use Talk Moves during conversations and engage every student with this simple strategy.
Too many classroom icebreakers require students to take big social risks with people they barely know. Or they don't really help students get to know each other. Or they are just plain cheesy.
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Every English language arts teacher needs a variety of successful, student led discussion strategies that will provide opportunities for student learning.
32-characteristics-of-high-performing-classrooms Via Dan Kirsch
How do you typically measure learning? Check out the infographic for ideas on how to mix and match assessment techniques for your next training program.
