Team It Up: Co-Teaching
and Collaboration
I CAN demonstrate an understanding of coteaching terminology, law and methods of
effective strategies in an integrated
classroom.
Agenda for today 
1. Welcome
2. Co-teaching terminology
3. Co-teaching success factors
4. Co-Teaching Methods
5. Panel Discussion
Rate Your Terminology
Co-teaching
Accountability
Integration
Collaboration
Benchmarks
Alignment
Tracking
Intervention
Inclusion
Enrichments
Co-teaching Vocabulary
Inclusion – “all students” are included as part
of the learning.
2. Collaboration – more than one person works
together to plan instructional objectives and
lessons
3. Integration – students are aligning to one – a
merging of educational components
4. Co-teaching – When a general education
teacher and the special education service
provider (either a special education teacher or
related service provider) participate in lesson
or activity planning together
1.
What Co-Teaching is not…
O http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYjUqi5c
4-s
Stages of a Co-Teaching
Partnership
1. Blind Date – First time to work together –
May last up to 6 weeks.
2. Dating – May last for 9 weeks or more than
a year
3. Engagement/ Professional Marriage – May
take more than one school year
Success Factors
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Co-teaching teams require common planning time. It is
recommended that each team have a minimum of 20 minutes of
common planning per week.
Co-teaching is one option for serving students. The IEP must be
followed when developing school or class schedules. Students with
disabilities may be in a co-taught classroom for only part of the day.
Special education services may be within a resource classroom or
general education classroom depending on each students LRE.
The professional literature suggests no more than 1/3 or ¼ of the
classroom be students with IEP’s.
Parents, General Education, Special Education staff and
administrators must have a basic understanding of what coteaching is and is not.
Best practice is to schedule the special education students before
non-disabled students.
The co-taught team should be doing self-evaluation and the
administrator should be coaching the team with walk-throughs and
other formative assessments.
Success Factors
Mutual Goal
Divide Labor
True Partnership
Must have communication
Cooperation
Contribution of both members
Blending of teaching styles
Dedicated to one another
ULTIMATE GOAL
A PERFECT MATCH:
FAMILY
THE PERFECT MATCH
What are your likes and dislikes in the classroom?
One way to encourage a successful collaborative
experience is to understand the needs and
preferences of content and strategic teachers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pnxst7dkLk
Eight Co-Teaching Approaches
Window Pane
One Teach, One
Assist
One teach, one
observe
Alternative
Teaching
Speak and Add
Speak and Chart
Skill Groups
Eight Co-Teaching
Strategies
Station Teaching
Parallel Teaching
Scenarios for Co-Teaching
1. During a Formative Assessment Lesson (FAL) a whole group discussion is held. One teacher leads the
discussion. While using the SMART board the other teacher records the student's names and responses.
______________________________________
O
2. A few students are not doing very well in this class. Sam is not handling his homework. Ben, Joe, and
Jennifer appear to be struggling with the current unit. The co-teachers decide more data is needed to
determine individual needs of some students. For the next lesson one teacher will lead the instruction and
the other teacher will collect data to see what these targeted students are doing during class time.
______________________________________
O
3. A lesson is planned on collecting data on student long jumps and to determine the average for the
group. The co-teachers plan to divide the class in half and do the same collection of data in two different
parts of the room. ______________________________________
O
4. We are beginning our unit on analyzing data and making inferences based on graphs, measures of
center (mean, mode, median), and measures of spread (range, standard deviation). After pre-testing
students, a group of six students who did not understand some of the vocabulary was identified by the
content teacher. One teacher will take that group for about 15 minutes at the beginning of the class and
teach the unit vocabulary while the other teacher begins the bell-ringer activity with the rest of the class.
______________________________________
O
5. In English II, we are studying analysis of theme. After a brief introduction lecture, the class will be
divided into three groups and each group will rotate through three stations. One station will be theme in a
short story, another station will be theme in a poem, and the last station will be theme in a short story. The
special education teacher will lead one group, the content teacher will lead a group, and the third group will
be independent work.
______________________________________
O
Scenarios
6 During science, two students have difficulty following directions and getting assignments recorded
in their agenda. One teacher teaches the class and the other supports those students by keeping
them on task and prompting them throughout the lesson.
______________________________________
O
O
7. The class has been working on solving equations and simplifying expressions. After the end-of-unit
assessment, some students demonstrated mastery of the content and others didn't. Some students
didn't seem to have an understanding of properties (commutative, distributive, etc) and a few
students lacked basic multiplication and division skills. For the next lesson, the students will be
placed in groups based on analysis of the assessment for re-teaching or extending their learning.
______________________________________
O
8. The students need some extra practice crafting opening sentences that grab the reader. Why don't
we play a game with them where we both make opening sentences about a particular topic? I will
chart their responses and then we can have the students vote on the one they like best and tell why.
______________________________________
O
9. Students will understand this science experiment better if they can get closer, see better, and are
able to talk more informally about what is going on in the experiment. We have 25 students in the
class. What if we divide them in half and do the same experiment in two parts of the room? We can
answer questions and have the students do their lab reports in smaller groups. Both groups are
doing the same activity with no modifications. ______________________________________
10. In Social Studies, we are studying various forms of government. After a brief lecture, we will
divide the class into three groups and each group will rotate through three stations learning about
various forms of government in each group. The special education teacher will teach one group, the
content teacher will teach a group, and the third group will be independent work.
______________________________________
O
How Does Co-teaching make
YOU feel?
O Move to the poster or picture that best
represents your feelings about co-teaching.
O Be prepared to discuss with your group
members why this picture best represents
your feelings.
O Then, create a simile statement using the
picture as the ending part. For example,
Co-teaching is as ________________ as a
teddy bear.
Panel Discussion
O http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=cote
aching+gone+wild&view=detail&mid=EBABA
2D2026C5780F8C1EBABA2D2026C5780F
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