Leadership Experience

 Co-teaching Observation

I observed a science lesson by Ms. Kay and Ms. Minty for this leadership assignment. The lesson began with Ms. Kay (the special education teacher) typing up the focus of the science lesson: to put an egg into a bottle and take it out intact using the properties of air pressure.  Students had to hypothesize whether or not this was possible when the top of the soda bottle was narrower than the girth of the egg. She typed up some key words on the board: air pressure, hypothesis, observations, materials, steps, and results. Students were instructed to take out their notebooks and copy down the notes. There was some minor chatting taking place among a few students as they finished copying down the notes. Ms. Minty (the general education teacher) was circulating the groups among the students to see who was on task and who needed additional assistance. She also seemed to be managing the behavior issues in the class by keeping students focused on the task. Ms. Kay seemed to be leading the lesson and was standing in front of the room making reference to the notes on the smartboard and eliciting from students what their understanding of a hypothesis was. There wasn’t much interaction between the two teachers. Ms. Minty would comment if a student gave an appropriate response, and offered some praise.

Ms. Kay set up a table in the middle of the room to conduct the experiment. This is where the students would have to focus their attention shortly. She did say a few times that if the noise level got too high, she would stop the lesson and students would then have to read their science textbook independently. Ms. Minty went over to her desk to grab her clipboard. Ms. Kay asked for the classes’ attention and went to the experiment table. She explained that she was going to try to see if she could prove his hypothesis to be true and fit a boiled egg into a soda bottle by using the properties of air pressure. Ms. Minty  asked the class to tell her what Ms. Kay was doing. A student raised her hand and said “he is going to put the egg into the bottle.” She then was prompted by Ms. Minty to share her hypothesis. The student said, “I hypothesize that the egg will not be able to fit into the bottle because it is too big.” Ms. Kayinterjected that we were all about to find out what was to be.

This observation gave me a window into teaching and learning as it happens. After being in the classroom, I found that most of the instruction was teacher led.  During the observation, the teachers were doing all the talking and it made me wonder if all the students were all learning in this way. Students played a more passive role in their learning, and spent most of their time sitting quietly in their seats.  When students spoke, it was because the teacher elicited structured responses from the students. The students didn’t have any direct ownership over their work. I also noticed that a large portion of the time was spent on talking or teaching rather than on doing and learning.  The presentation of the material was standard; the teachers had their aim written and visible for students to see.  Any additional notes were written there for students to copy. The communication between the teachers was minimal and seemed unplanned.  Teachers spot checked for student understanding mostly by circulating and randomly questioning students.  The type of questioning used was mainly to get students to retell the process, as oppose to critical thinking and digging deeper for meaning. Overall, the lesson was between basic and proficient (Danielson Rubric) because the focus was carried through, but teacher led.

 It seems as though the co-teaching model frequently has one teacher who assumes the dominant role, while the other’s role is to assist and reinforce the lesson. It wasn’t clear if there was co-planning involved because Ms. Kay seemed to be facilitating all components of the lesson. Perhaps they could have broken the class up into three groups and modified the lesson to meet the different needs of their students. One group could have had cooperative group roles assigned to it, and a student leader would facilitate the experiment instead of the teacher (this group would have been the higher level group). Then the second group could have been working with Ms. Minty to discuss their rational for the hypothesis before the experiment, and then check if the results matched their initial thoughts (this would have been the medium level group). The third group could have worked with Ms. Kay, and been given a specific template with the procedure for the experiment written concisely in steps for students to follow, as well as sentence starters for the hypothesis and results statement (this would have been the lower level group of students). These different groups would ensure that students’ learning needs would be addressed, and that both teachers played an active role in facilitating the lesson. The lesson would also be more student-centered if the smaller groups were provided with the materials necessary to do the experiment either independently or with some teacher assistance. To bring the class together again, each group could select a speaker to share out their findings, and the teachers could have recapped the learning objectives. In my opinion, for the Team Teaching model to be most effective, teachers need to co-plan and discuss different ways to implement the same lesson and share ideas. Most seem to divide up the subjects they wish to teach and assist during the other lessons.