Week 6: Co-Teaching Strategies and CRI Testing

Co-Teaching Strategies to Use with Math Instruction

Co-Teaching is a method of delivering instruction where general and special educators share responsibility for planning, delivering, and evaluating instruction.
Strategies
- One Teach, One Observe: One teacher teaches the whole group, and the other teacher observes the group, determining who may need extra help and support to contribute and perform well in class. 
- Team Teaching: Teachers share total responsibility for planning and delivering academic instruction, teaching side-by-side.
- Alternative Teaching: One teacher teaches a small group of 3 - 8 students while the other teacher focuses on the whole class, helping to form small groups for more individualized, intense instruction. 
- Parallel Teaching: Both teachers split the class in half and teach both halves the same lesson at the same time, planning lessons together, allowing for more individualized attention with a smaller group. 
- Station Teaching: Teachers divide responsibility for instructional content, dividing class into groups of different activities, achieving the learning goals for all students. 
- One Teach, One Drift: One teacher facilitates instruction while the other floats around the classroom, able to check for student understanding and provide one-on-one help to struggling students.
Pros and Cons
- Pros: Allows for teachers to help all students, provides more individualized instruction, two teachers bring their ideas, general educator brings knowledge of curriculum and special educator brings specific strategies for certain needs
- Cons: May not match all academic topics or ages/grade levels, strategies for teaching may be limited, it may be difficult for both teachers to get on the same page and find planning times

Field Placement - Beginning CRI Instruction
I began my CRI Instruction with my designated student during my third week of placement. My teacher frustrates me a bit because of her teaching and classroom management style. It does not seem like she respects the assignments we have to complete, as her practice reading test as well as her other routines lasted about an hour and a half of my 2 1/2 hour timeframe in her classroom. As she began her morning Daily 5 with the students, I approached my student to begin the tests, as I only had about an hour left to even get started. As I started talking to him, my co-op asked me to wait until after her guided reading session with the student. I was left with about 20 minutes total by the end of their first Daily 5 rotation and guided reading. After reviewing the Interest Inventory, I noticed that Mario, the boy I work with, very much enjoys Scooby Doo and watching lots of cartoons on TV. He has a big family and loves to play Xbox with his older siblings. We did not get through many of the tests, so next time I go to placement I plan to get through the rest of the test battery and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of Mario to hopefully begin planning lessons. It may be difficult to find a place to facilitate the lessons as students are scattered all over the classroom for the Daily 5. Each week there will need to be a lesson planned to perform all 6.