We jointly agreed that the whole classroom environment was not conducive to both of us
teaching separate lessons at the same time. Some of our students were highly distractible
due to various health conditions or behavior issues, and we felt that a separate learning
environment might prove to be more productive. We decided to teach and present the
same content, using the same materials; however we would each use our own
instructional styles in two separate classrooms. By reducing the student-teacher ratio, I
was also able to target the skills and strategies that the small group of students needed
and Elisa was able to allow for more student participation and monitoring in her
classroom by having a reduced teacher-student ratio. The overall goal was to provide
small group instruction only when it was deemed necessary and to maximize our use of
time and resources in the large group setting.
At this point we had unwittingly moved to the next level of co-teaching, parallel teaching.
Student choice was added when some students expressed concern about the group they
were assigned to. Many students preferred the small group because they could “talk
more” or “get more help.” Other students felt that we were doing something more
exciting than what was being taught in the regular classroom or were simply curious
about the alternate classroom setting. We allowed students the option of leaving a group
mid-lesson if they felt the group assignment was not appropriate for them, but this was
only exercised a total of five times across three quarters. In four of the instances,
students concluded that the pacing of the lesson was too slow for them; in the other
instance, a student chose to leave due to a potential social conflict. By including student
choice in our instructional model, students became partners in the educational process by
self-assessing and communicating their skill needs on a daily basis.
Midway through the second quarter, we noticed that some students were excelling at
solving algebraic equations while others needed more practice. We created a “3 groups”
strategy; one group received enrichment problems, the second worked on basic to
medium-level problems, and the third on basic problems. Group assignments were
flexible, and Elisa and I took turns working with each group. Having three groups and
two teachers required one of us to work with two groups.
As we neared the third quarter of the school year, Elisa and I had become very
comfortable working with each other. Dialoguing daily about content and how the
students were progressing became routine. Even though we shared a common lunch and
planning period, we weren’t always available to meet. We had to make time to discuss
issues such as discipline, pacing, and grading, even if it was in the few minutes before
school started. We both felt confident in our abilities to team-teach daily, but we felt that
the needs of our students this year were best met alternating between small and large
group strategies. Small group instruction a few days a week allowed us more
opportunities to work with students on an individual level and it also led to a decrease in
behavior problems. Whole group instruction on the remaining days was used for
introduction of new material, to demonstrate instructional techniques while the other
instructor observed, or for hands-on math labs or projects that required a large number of
students.