The two schools in which we implemented this session were School 1 (Mataró) and School 2 (Sant Boi de Llobregat). They are very different schools, so we had to adapt our session to each one.

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                                                Mataró                                    Sant Boi de Llobregat

                                State and high-complexity                Semi-private school, with a

                             school, with a high percentage          low percentage of immigration,

                                of immigration and a low              middle-upper class families and       

                                           English level.                              quite high English level.

                                             (6th grade)                                           (4th grade)

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Implementation in School 1 (Mataró)

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Implementation in School 2 (Sant Boi de Llobregat)

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Final reflection about co-teaching

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While implementing both sessions, the main thing we realised was that by being two teachers in the class (in School 1 we were even 3 because the English teacher was helping us too)  it was much easier to help and guide students while they were working and asking questions. Thinking about doing the same activity with just one teacher in the class seems much more difficult, at least with young primary students who can’t write everything on their own and they need help even to search the right word on the Internet. However, by doing co-teaching, it was easy for us to implement the sessions and we felt that we could reach all the students’ demands.

 

Regarding attention to diversity, we made heterogeneous groups in order to make it possible for students to participate in some way and be helpful for their respective groups. Moreover, the fact that we were two teachers in the class (in one case even three) made viable for us to reach all the groups somehow help them when they needed.

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However, we could also find an important drawback of co-teaching, and it’s the amount of time needed to plan, design and assess the activity cooperatively. We decided to do it together and face-to-face, because we thought it was better, but it meant having to meet extra times in order to do everything. In fact, it was only one session what we had to plan, but if it had been a lot of sessions it would have required a huge amount of time.

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Of course, it has also a positive part, and it’s the cooperation between the two teachers and the combination of their ideas and knowledge. We felt more confident about the activity we had planned because it had been consensuated by the two of us. The fact that we were two different teachers with two different styles made us change the way in which we explained the activity, each one of us knows her students better than the other and for that reason we adapted the way of making explanations. In fact, it was effective as students understood us pretty easily.

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We also think that in order to improve a co-teaching session, it’s better that the two teachers know the students and the other way around, because then it would be easier for the teachers to know their strengths and weaknesses, the amount of help they need, etc. We tried to compensate this by explaining each other the reality of each group, but of course it’s not the same as knowing them better in advance. For example, we could tell the other one that a kid had a special difficulty in our group, but then in the class it was difficult sometimes to know who that kid was. Also the fact of not knowing their names was a difficulty for us, because when we needed to tell something to some student we could not call them by their names.

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We consider that co-teaching gave us the opportunity to create an activity that done with only one teacher would have been really difficult. It helped us realise how much planning should be dedicated to this type of tasks in order to work in both schools. But it also made us see the different products students can create at the end.

 

The activity being done in two different schools helped us realise how different a task work can be depending on the students and the resources and, also, it made us understand better the reality that our partner had been living for the past 8 months and the difficulties and problems she could have faced when implementing her teaching unit.

 

Finally, co-teaching is also a way for students to see how two adults collaborate and serves as an example to collaborate among themselves as well. Of course it can be easier (or not) to plan everything on your own as a teacher and not having to agree or decide anything with another teacher, but the kind of activity you can plan will not be as enriching as if it’s carried out by two teachers and students will not benefit from the same help, scaffolding and level of learning than two teachers can offer them.

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If you wish to read the whole report written by my classmate and me, you can click here.

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Peer-assessment

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In order to improve our performance as teachers while doing a co-teaching activity (as we are not really used to it yet), we reflected about it after the implementations and wrote down some ideas for improvement.

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It was the first time that my partner and I implemented a co-teaching session, so it was something new for both of us. After implementing it, we thought that we had done a great job, but of course that there are some things that could be improved, as always. Here I state some of them:​

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• Knowing students better

• Trying to make students understand things without translating them

• More practice

• Better planning

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If you wish to read the whole peer-assessment task, you can click here.

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