Two > One: Co-Teaching in Mathematics

    Mathematical reasoning and problem-solving is the heart of mathematics (Hasanah et. al, 2019). The great part about co-teaching is that it allows more opportunities for differentiation, discovery and problem-solving due to having two teachers that can offer students' opportunities.  Challenges Combining Co-Teaching and Research-based Methods      Unfortunately, according to Indriati (2018), there exists three challenges for blending co-teaching with research-based methods for teaching mathematics. The first challenge exists in "identifying research-based practices for specific mathematics content areas, particularly for algebra, geometry and data and probability". The second challenge is that "some instructional practices may not be appropriate for all individuals and their level of content knowledge". The third challenge is that "some research-based practices will not work well in a co-taught general education setting" (p. 4). Therefore,...

      Co-teaching comes in sorts of varieties, and each model serves a specific purpose. During my first two-years of co-teaching, I had not received any professional development. Therefore, my co-teacher and I had to do our own research, create co-teaching models that worked for our high school math classroom, reflect on the models and then determine any adjustments that needed to be made before trying this model again. But, I do want to assure you, all of these models that I will be sharing in this blog were not used all in one week or in one unit. Instead, we found what worked best in the high school setting, since students are so used to structure, we would continue to use direct, teacher-led instruction for about 50% of our lessons, and then utilize another model for discovery, practice, support, etc. I have chose to the four most common co-teaching models that we use in our high school math co-taught classroom. Co-Teaching Models Flip-Flop The first model that my co...

          " Regular and special education teachers are largely unprepared for the co-teaching role, despite the great extent to which co-teaching has been adopted in public schools" (Faraclas, 2018, p. 538). Unfortunately.... and I hate to admit it, my first year of co-teaching as the content teacher in a co-taught classroom was horrendous (and embarrassing). In my defense, my education preparation program in college did not emphasize co-teaching, so it was a new experience. My first co-taught class was Geometry with a veteran intervention specialist. This intervention specialist had co-taught for two decades at this school, and she was also assigned as my mentor, which was amazing! Over the duration of this year, my role in the co-taught classroom was the primary teacher, teaching ALL content and grading all assignments. My co-teacher served primarily as a second person to keep students on task and pull students out to provide them with extra support ...

Co-Teaching Presentation: What is It?     During the last school year, I was given the privilege to present at two professional development days that we had in our school district. As I was with our district's cotaught teachers, my special education co-teacher was in another room, working with the interventional specialists. We both presented the same presentation, but provided details using our specific backgrounds in the co-taught pairing.       The presentation " What is Co-Teaching ?" is attached. I hope that you are able to get use out of it. It discusses the value of a co-teaching partnership, what it looks like, what it does not look like, a variety of co-teaching strategies (which I will focus on in a later blog), roles and responsibilities of each co-teacher and how planning takes place in the partnership. I hope that you find this useful!     On these slides, you will see examples of how my co-teacher and I plan, resources we have create...

 Hello, my name is Clara Adelsperger, author of this blog,    Two > One: Co-Teaching in Mathematics !      I am currently a high school math teacher in Ohio where I teach Geometry, Algebra, co-taught Geometry and co-taught Algebra. I am also in the process of wrapping up my master's degree in the Advanced Studies of Applied Mathematics through the American College of Education. This program has allowed me to extend my skills as a high school math teacher, but in the process, has led to my interest to be peaked in how my learning can be applied to the high school co-taught mathematics classroom. These areas of interest will be the focus of this blog!      Before my current teaching position, right out of college, I was unsure what co-teaching was supposed to look like. From my observation, it looked like content teacher did all of the teaching while the intervention specialist served as a glorified babysitter and a second body to prevent di...