Co-Teaching
Co-teaching often occurs in inclusive classrooms. In co-taught classrooms, general education and special education teachers work together to plan lessons, teach, monitor student progress, and manage the class. Co-taught classrooms allow students to spend more time with teachers and get more individual attention. Having more than one teacher in the classroom makes it easier for teachers to facilitate small-group lessons. Another benefit to co-teaching is that it provides opportunities for teachers to learn from one another and it allows students have the opportunity to learn from teachers who may have different teaching styles, ideas, perspectives, and experiences.
Co-Teaching Models
One Teach, One Observe
One of the advantages in co-teaching is that more detailed observation of students can occur. With this approach, co-teachers can plan ahead to decide what types of specific observational information to gather during instruction. Information from the observation should be analyzed together afterwards to help prepare for future lessons.
One Teach, One Assist
This model allows one teacher to actively teach, while the other teacher assists students by giving individual help as needed.
Parallel Teaching
On occasion, students' learning would be greatly facilitated if they had more supervision by the teacher and more opportunity to respond to instruction. In parallel teaching, the teachers are both teaching the same content, but they divide the class and do so simultaneously to improve instructional effectiveness.
Station Teaching
In this model, teachers divide content and students. Each teacher then teaches the content to one group and subsequently repeats the instruction for the other group. Independent stations can also be incorporated allowing for smaller groups of students.
Alternative Teaching
In most classrooms there are groups of students who require specialized attention. In alternative teaching, one teacher takes responsibility for the large group, while the other works with a smaller group targeted instruction to their unique needs.
Team Teaching
This model allows both teachers to plan lessons and work together to teach students. Team teaching allows teachers to deliver the same instruction at the same time.