Improving my understanding of Collaboration and Co-Teaching Part 4

 WHAT?

The final webinar session was all about troubleshooting co-teaching - when things go wrong and review the previous learning from the other webinars. Mark Osborne also shared tools that we could use during the bumps and humps along the collaborative journey.

The troubleshooting information was split into 2 separate categories - removing barriers and taking action

Removing Barriers 

The infrastructure is important and the image below illustrates what needs to be inplace to give co-teaching the best chance of succeeding.

There are a number of challenges that we will face together.

To manage each of these challenges we need to be mindful of the key skills needed to work through these challenges. Level 1 and 2 are the teachers in a co-teaching situation. 

Another aspect that as co-teacher we need to be aware of what builds relational trust.

Taking Action 

Approaching conflict depends on the reason for making changes if there needs to be any, or understanding of what happened before, or the person’s passion - a number of factors can come into play before you tackle the problem. 

The Conflict Resolution Instrument is a way to deal with conflict and understanding. It is a powerful tool for dealing with conflict as it gives you a framework, giving you a variety of ways and how you should think about approaching conflict. Remembering that conflict can be good for learning.

SO WHAT?

 

The infrastructure needs to be in place for us, the five pillars are essential to making this work. There is some real unpacking for each other, and making sure that we set up the foundations.

There are constraints within the common timetable that needs to have flexibility so that we all have the opportunity to share our creative ideas. To do this we will need to use the co-teaching cycle to guide us on our approaches.

 

Our roles and responsibilities will need to be discussed early on so we each know where we stand. We need to ask each other what is needed of ourselves - Level 2 - Contributing Team Member. Are these the skills we are using?

We will need to build relational trust with each other by sharing the praise and taking blame (mirror and window), visibly work to get better at your job, be direct with people on issues, seek to understand why people do what they do, be open to being wrong and provide opportunities to share their strengths.

As part of the team, we will need to think about how we deal with conflict so that we don’t destroy relational trust. There are pros and cons depending on the situation and hopefully we stay in the collaborating space most of the time so that everyone wins. Time can be a factor if a decision needs to be made quickly.

NOW WHAT?

 

I have so many questions for my colleagues and I am wondering how to meet the challenges that we will face when they have missed out on this PD. It is becoming more important that they really need to check out the first 3 webinars before we met to discuss where to begin.

What will we see in our environment? In the children’s books? that says that we are on the same page?

Where to from here? Getting my colleagues on the same page. Maybe make a time to watch the first couple of webinars together, giving them the opportunity to check it out beforehand. I will do this next week - give them the heads up (front loading) and make time for a chat (informal). Then create a time to watch together and make some plans for where to next.

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is a success.” – Henry Ford

Improving my understanding of Collaboration and Co-Teaching Part 3

 WHAT?

The third session with Mark Osborne, again started with a review of the culture of co-teaching and the positives and negatives of setting up the culture so that you have a way forward. 

In this next session, we learnt about the specific approaches of co-teaching. The tree metaphor was used again to help cement our understanding. 

Being in a co-teaching situation, it is important to complement each other’s teaching and to make the most of the fact there are 2 teachers in the space. So if one teacher is leading a direct instructional sequence, the other could be taking notes on the whiteboard, making a mind map, asking questions, refocusing, working with a student who is struggling to follow. If one teacher is giving out a set of instructions, the other teacher is writing out the instructions on the white board, sitting with students who need extra help writing the instructions in their book, organising materials and resources needed for the activity. We were then given the opportunity to work collaboratively using a google doc on the specific co-teaching actions to add to possible ideas on what we could do while one teacher is teaching the main group.

We were introduced to 8 teaching approaches for co-teaching.

There are 4 large (L) and 4 small (S) group approaches -

LG#1 - One teach; one observe (1T,1O). One teacher leads the learning while the other observes. The observer could be learning by observation, providing feedback to a co-teaching partner, or gathering data about the teaching or the class. This is a time sensitive approach - 20 minutes review of learning.

LG#2 - One teach; one drift (1T,1D). One teacher leads, while another drifts to support the learners. The drifter could be clarifying and answering questions, refocusing and supporting positive behaviour, extending and/ or checking understanding.

LG#3 - One teach; one support (1T1S). One teacher leads while another supports or assists. The supporter could be taking notes, writing vocabulary, capturing questions, mind mapping, summarising, holding the equipment or operating the technology.

LG#4 - Team teaching (TT). When both teachers take equal responsibility for the teaching of the group. They could both be demonstrating together, role modelling a conversation or Q&A, hot seating, or checking each other’s work (role modelling tukana teina).

SG#1 - Parallel teaching. Teachers are doing the same activity with the same text to ensure the whole group has consistency of experience, working with groups of mixed ability rather than differentiated or targeted groups.

SG#2 - Station Teaching. Teachers are teaching in a small group setting. The children are offered a variety of activities, manages limited resources efficiently, it utilises teacher strengths to facilitate different activities. The children will rotate through the activities.

SG#3 - Targeted teaching. The teachers are running clinics and workshops targeted at the learning they need. It is a way maximise engagement by ensuring students are working on a skill that is appropriate and tied to their next learning step. It is also a way to keep a tight loop between student goals and learning activities.

SG#4 - Alternative teaching. The teachers are offering targeting support for a smaller group or individual. One teacher could be teaching a larger group, while the other is teaching a smaller more specialised group, supporting those children with specific learning needs.

Mark also gave us a number of scenarios of co-teaching and possible actions of the other teachers. He shared his code for the different approaches e.g. 1T/1S/Alt - One teach/ one support/ one takes an alternative (asessment / clinic).

 

Mark also stressed that here are not prizes for using all these approaches. At best 2 -3 for each learning experience.

SO WHAT?

 

By filling in the specific co-teaching actions with my partners, it will help with our expectations of each other and won’t leave too much to chance.

 

There are strengths and cautions of all of these approaches. 

 

 

It would be great to use the code for these approaches in our planning so we can evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches and create deliberate acts of teaching. Also being mindful of the effective use of time to use with the large and small groups to gain engagement for our learners.

 

NOW WHAT?

 

I need to work with my co-teachers and share the latest video so that they know what I am going on about. I would like to incorporate the code into our planning or colour code so we each know what is expected and what the deliberate acts are and make changes during our feedback sessions.

Part of me feels that I can do this as this is what I have done with student teachers in the past but this time I need to be mindful that we are on the same footing as far as teaching as co-teachers.

 

 

 “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” ~ Socrates