Manya Boutenoff, Ed.D , the former Director of the Regional Bilingual Education Resource Network (R-BERN), worked with teachers at WOS, CLE, SOMS and TZHS to focus on various Co-teach Models, and how to leverage these resources to meet students individual needs. Teachers defined co-teaching models, and discussed how to co-plan, co-instruct, and co-assess students with diverse learning needs. The three models: Station Teaching, Alternative/Pararallel Teaching, and Team Teaching were explored. Teachers listened to a lesson about the planets in Russian. They quickly realized that being given the ability to communicate with each other in their own first language, English, helped them understand the lesson better.
Station Teaching (Centers): Teachers work at two stations with small groups of students and two additional stations are for students to work independently or in partnerships or a small group. Students rotate through the stations.
Alternative or Parallel Teaching: One teacher leads instruction for a large group of students while the other teacher leads a small group for a specific instructional purpose.
Team Teaching: Both teachers are working with all students. Teachers share the responsibility of planning and leading instruction.
We discussed leveraging the Content expert (Regular Classroom Teacher) and the access expert (Special Education or ESL Teacher) expertise to provide high quality differentiated instruction. We do not use ability level (Fixed Mindset), we use a proficiency level (Growth mindset) approach. Small groups are pulled routinely based on need so that students don’t feel labeled.
