Task 7 and 8: Co-teaching report
and co-teacher evaluation
Collaborative report:
Our co-teaching activity consisted in a writing contest. Divided into groups, our students had to create an invented story including certain characters, objects and a setting provided. We also gave them some connectors to structure their story. During the writing process, the students had one technological device per group in order to check words or structures that they didn’t know. After writing their texts, they had to read them aloud to their classmates so that they could decide which story they liked the most. At the end of the session, we used Mentimeter to vote their favourite stories and some group became the winner.
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. On the one hand, school 1 is a state and high-complexity school, with a high percentage of immigration and a low English level. The grade where we were teaching was 6th. On the other hand, School 2 is a semi-private school, with a low percentage of immigration, middle-upper class families and a quite high English level. The grade where we were teaching was 4th.
In School 1, then, we had to ask students to write shorter stories (or even just sentences), including only one of the characters and objects provided and using the connectors only if they needed them. We also had to translate them some things to that they could understand what they had to do. However, in School 2 we didn’t translate anything and we asked students to write a story. As they were two grades younger, we maintained the rule of using at least one of the characters and objects provided, but not all of them if they didn’t want to.
School 1: Mataró
The first time we implemented our activity was at the school in Mataró, during the English
lesson with 6th graders. The lesson started right away, after presenting the guest teacher, of
course. We explained to the students how the activity worked and the parts that it would have.
After that, all groups were given a computer, a piece of paper and some cards to help them
write. The computer served as a tool for them to look for translations and words online.
The session went quite well, it was easy to see that the students’ level of English was not very high but they worked together as a team and created great short stories, they were very cooperative and worked with all the ideas they had in the group making sure their story was funny for the others to listen because they knew the overall activity was a contest. We are happy with this aspect as they are not used to work in groups or with these types of activities and they are quite used to work with books and individually.
They needed a lot of help from us and the English teacher but only when having to write their texts as the majority of the groups had a good and clear idea of what they wanted to write, the problem was that they did not know how to do it in a proper English. They used the automatic translator quite a lot, for that reason, the stories had not the best grammar and the sentences’ structures were a bit difficult to understand at some point in their stories, but they were practising their writing skills in a cooperative way which was the aim of the activity.
After the writing process, they had to read their stories out loud, we did not have much time so, in the end, one of the teachers had to read the stories for everybody and, after that, explain the plot of it in Catalan for them to understand as their level of understanding the language was a bit low and for the next part of the activity was key for them to understand each story being told.
They worked very good as a team when having to vote for their favourite story, they talked and respected their individual opinions and comments and at the end, they decided as a team which was the story they wanted to vote for.
School 2: Sant Boi
The following week, we implemented the session in School 2. In that class, students were already arranged into groups because they always sit like this, so we didn’t have to create the groups. At the beginning of the session, they have a routine consisting in playing a song in order to relax themselves after the break, so we started with a song. After that, we presented our guest teacher and the activity we were going to do. Each group took an iPad so that they could check words and vote at the end.
During the session, while they were writing, we two were walking around the classroom and helping them whenever they needed it. Some groups were working really well but there were others that had some problems or didn’t work at all, so it took them very long to write the story. In general, although they should be used to working in groups, they argued a lot and it was not very easy to make them finish the activity. That’s why we had to devote more time than in the School 1 to this part of the session.
After that, they had to read their stories aloud. In this case, we didn’t read any story and we let them do it, but it took us a long time again. The English teacher and the group’s tutor offered us to take some time from the following class to finish the activity, so we accepted and finished 10 minutes later. The positive thing is that they all could read their stories on their own. The fact of doing the routine at the beginning, devoting more time to the writing process and finally making them read their stories is what made us take a longer time to finish the session in this case.
Finally, when voting, it was difficult for them to decide which story to vote but they liked a lot the way of voting through Mentimeter.
In general, the session was good and students liked the activity a lot. They are not used to working in groups in the English class, so that’s why they probably had some troubles while writing their stories. Apart from that, the groups are arranged by the tutor in a way that they are compensated but not regarding their English level, so we found that some groups had a higher level in general, while some others had a lower one and it was more difficult for them to write the story.
Final reflection
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 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.
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.
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 consecrated 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 adopted the way of making explanations. In fact, it was effective as students understood us pretty easily.
We also think that in order to improve a co-teaching session, it’s better than 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 for this by explaining to each other the reality of each group, but of course, it’snot 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.
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 is 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 serve as an example to collaborate among themselves as well. Ofplancourseasit can be easier to on your own as a teacher and not with having everything to agree or decide anything 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.
Co-teacher evaluation
At the beginning, the co-teaching activity scared me a lot because I knew that my partner’s school was very different from my school and we were supposed to create an activity that could be implemented both in her school and my school. I really liked working with her because she has great ideas, she is very creative when having to plan an activity from scratch. Also, she is really active and works very hard on everything she does, that is why I was really happy to do it with her even though I was a bit afraid.
The planning process of the task was great. There was a lot of communication between us and together we created an activity that could be implemented in two very different schools and in two different grades.
The day we had to implement our activity in my school, I had to tell her to be prepared to work with a difficult group but she showed a really confident attitude before and during the session. After I introduced her to my students we explained together all the activity, I did the first part and she did the second part of the session so we divided the explanation in half for both of us to say something.
When the session had started she was very active all the time, going from one group to another to help them, just as if she knew them already. We were a great team during that session and thanks to that it worked quite well. I liked that when we implemented the activity we controlled time very well, we were right on time for everything even though the writing process took us more time than expected, that is something we should have prevented as we knew my kids had difficulties writing in a foreign language. I think we planned in a too general way and that made us have some problems. But we worked them out quite good.
For the second session, the one we did in her school I feel I did not do much, at least regarding the explanation of the, in this case she did all the explanation, not because I wanted but because she carried on explaining, that could be something to improve, we should have talked about the division of the explanation to make sure both of us spoke in that part of the activity, but it is not something she needs to work on, both of us do as we were a team and maybe we forgot this in some moments, for example, in both sessions, the teacher reading or helping the students read the stories was the regular practicum teacher in the school and I think that we could have shared this task and become a better team.
In this second session timing was not that accurate, actually, we spend more than one hour, we did not plan the fact that students would have so many difficulties when writing the story, moreover, in the previous session the other students did not have so many problems to come out with an idea, they had problems when writing in English. We should have plan this and, maybe, provide them with some ideas on how to start, something to make the writing process smoother.
I think that our activity was good for the grades we chose but we planned in the same way for both of our grades and that was a mistake as we planned the difficulties with English from my students but we did not plan that her students could have problems when having the idea for their stories.
Something that we also should have planned more is the reading of the stories. In my school I had to read the stories out loud because the students did not want to do it, moreover, I had to explain the plot of each one of them in Catalan for them to understand. In the other school the reading process was different, but similar, we had to do it very quickly but each group read their story and then they tried to explain the plot in English, if the could not do it, my co-teacher helped them.
Even though we had some problems in situ, we managed to make the sessions work and work quite well in my opinion. We made a solid team even when having difficulties and as it was our first time working together I am very pleased about the outcome.
I think that my co-teacher was very active and creative, she worked hard to make the activity work in both schools. I was a great activity to be done by two people and I am really happy with the way we made it work and how we work as a team.
