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Reflection: Co-Teaching

Carmen L. Boyer

Department of Special Education, University of Kansas

SPED 898a: Masters Project

Dr. Irma Brasseur-Hock

July 20, 2022

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Reflection: Co-Teaching

Link to Teaching Video: https://youtu.be/XUKdSli5SBc

One of the major projects in SPED 875: Advanced Practicum with Exceptional Children

& Youth was a co-teaching lesson. It consisted of completing two planning documents and

delivering the lesson with my team teacher. The assignment emphasized the importance of

planning and collaborating with each other before, during and after the lesson.

Revisions

I received full credit for the assignment. I made minimal revisions to this project. I edited

the lesson plan and journal for grammatical and punctuation errors.

Reflection

After completing the first year of this master’s program I moved to a different state. Job

searching is always a daunting task, especially when the entire process is virtual. But this time

would be different. Instead of feeling pressure to take the first job offer, I was able to select from

several offers. Learning about co-teaching in SPED 775 made me want to seek a school that not

only allowed co-teaching but would prioritize it. I wanted to put into practice what I had been

learning about. I am extremely glad I did because this has been my most successful year as a

teacher yet, despite the late evenings with graduate course work. In reality, it was because of the

knowledge I gained through the extra course work.

In SPED 875 we explored collaboration and co-teaching further. This project gave me the

opportunity to improve on what was already a good working relationship. My co-teacher and I

shared a classroom, so we rarely scheduled time to meet with each other. We would mention

ideas and discuss a plan when it was convenient or through shared documents. Implementing the

planning templates and meeting agendas was powerful. It made us realize all the little details that
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we often left out of our cursory plans. Most importantly, it allowed us to differentiate the lesson

in a way we had never thought of before. We prepared writing templates that at first glance

looked similar, but they were strategically assembled and distributed to students based on their

literacy abilities and motivation.

Watching the recorded lesson also provided considerable insight. I had never seen such

an effective hook in a lesson. I have watched that part of the video multiple times because I love

to see their excitement about the “mission” given to them from their third-grade teacher. The

success of the introduction was due to the creative collaboration my team-teacher and I were able

to accomplish using our meeting times effectively.

The video also illuminated some areas that I need to improve. First, I need to address the

topic of time. Time is very delicate during a writing lesson, especially with a large class of mixed

working speeds. Sometimes it takes a while for a student to get in the groove. When it finally

happens, it is often just before a transition to a different activity. During this lesson, my co-

teacher and I forgot to set the timer for the allotted writing time, but we also decided not to

interrupt the roll some students were on. Consequently, I could not fit the closure activity in a

thirty-minute video, and several students had checked out by the end of the lesson.

More importantly, the video helped me see who did not receive enough attention and

support during the lesson. We identified and made detailed plans for students who needed a lot

of support or very little support. Our plan was not strong for those whose needs fell in between

the two extremes. We relied on the writing partners students had assigned to them in the past.

When we created the small groups to work with the teachers, we had also taken away some of

the partners. The more gregarious students sought out help from other students, but the shy ones

who always follow the classroom expectations were left alone for too long without getting their
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questions answered. I think checking off student names on a class list when we were assigning

groups and partners could have been a simple way to prevent that situation. Additionally, we

should have taken turns leaving our groups momentarily to check in on the other students.

Unfortunately, my team-teacher and I will probably not get to co-teach together next

year. Although I am slightly disappointed, I also feel very prepared to work with someone new

because of the collaboration tools and strategies I have learned in SPED 875.