Coteaching Reflection

Through two meetings on the Thursday and Friday before the week of coteaching, I
met with Lynne to discuss where her class was in the English language arts curriculum. We
decided that teaching digraphs in a cotaught model would be the best way to meet the
needs of all the students, specifically the two students who are much more behind in letter
and sound identification than their peers. We decided that we would split up the opening
and closing for the first four lessons when introducing new concepts, so to not over burden
the students with too many directions and conversations. During the procedures of the
lesson activities, we took turns presenting the two different whole class activities sorting
words and reading the story to the students. One teacher presented these activities at a
time because student input was the focus of word sorting activity and the other activity
was purely sustained reading by the teacher. Each teacher also gave directions for the
different activities, showing the students that each teacher has authority in the classroom.
Each teacher also monitored two tables, so to ensure that all students were able to receive
teacher support and so that all students could receive informal and formal assessment by
the teacher making it easier to monitor all students progress and identify all students
who need reteaching. This was especially helpful on the last day of instruction when
formal assessment occurred. On this day, we did parallel teaching, giving directions at the
same time, so to assist in remembering all parts of the task and passing out packets to our
assigned tables.
After implementing the lesson, there were several strengths in how the lesson was
divided up among the teachers. Both K and C kept up with the other students in the class,
feeling confident in their abilities to find words with the digraphs, although they may not
have been able to read all the words. This was due in part because each teacher had a time
to scaffold the activity for these two students on an individual basis while the other teacher
was giving whole group instruction. Also, students were engaged the whole time because
the teachers were able to move into each new activity very quickly, keeping the pace of the
instruction at a motivating rate. Students also felt comfortable within these activities
because they knew that there was a teacher available to seek for assistance, whether it was
during the word card sorting or during the reading of the stories independently. An area
that I would change for the next time is that I would assess for each digraph after
completing instruction on that particular digraph. Putting the assessment all on one day
was very tedious for the students and they were not as motivated to complete the packet as
they were throughout the rest of the week. Also, the changing digraphs in the packets
easily confused students who struggled in reading more than their peers because they did
not have experience writing the words in such an isolated manner.
Through the assessment process, we found that the top three reading groups of
students performed the formal assessment packet quickly and proficiently. Students who
struggle in reading missed about 1-2 pictures per page, which could be attributed to
picture confusion or slight confusion in switching pages to new digraphs. When meeting
Monday and evaluating these results, we found the cotaught lessons to be very effective in
teaching material that is often not addressed until first grade. We also discussed how we
moved through the activities using coteaching. We each felt very comfortable with our
roles because we took on similar roles each day i.e. I did the opening and oral reading to
the students each day. We felt that each of us monitored when we stepped in so to not cut
off the other teacher or show a lack of authority to the students. The students responded to
each of our behavior management, asking for eyes and ears and waiting for each students
attention. We also both insisted that students raised their hands in order to ask or answer
questions. Due to our discussion the week before coteaching, we had a clear idea of when
we should give directions, how we would gain the students attention, and how our parallel
teaching would go on Friday. Although we mixed up instruction on Friday, the students
responded well to both of us explaining the directions at the same time because they were
accustomed to each of our authority in transitioning to new activities. Next time, we
thought that having center coteaching for the word sort would be more effective, so to have
students assist each other in figuring out the words instead of relying on the teacher for
support.