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Problem
Navigating through a year of remote learning during the pandemic, and a year of readjusting to the classroom has surfaced and perpetuated challenges in student engagement across Maker. Since returning to in-person learning, teacher-driven instruction has been prevalent and both students and staff have voiced a need for regrounding core Maker practices of CBE, PBL, and design learning. Student behaviors such as lateness and daily / period attendance are additional areas of growth that have been identified based on student engagement and rigorous expectations. We don’t want students who are merely compliant; we want them to be learning, we want them to be challenged, and we want them to feel that their presence matters. We want the learning that happens in our classrooms to support them in their experiences outside of our classroom as well.
Hypothesis
If students are grouped based on their learning needs with a specific teacher assigned to their group, then they will be more engaged in learning, as measured by January Regents scores, assignment turn in rates & core value grades
Target group
All three ICT sections.
Planning & resources
Planning
Met with Pri and Amy to talk coteaching models. This inspired me include alternative teaching as well as parallel teaching
Data collection
Data collection
Baseline data
We had already started implementing our strategy in MP1. My baseline data was from previous years- specifically the following:
Challenging co-teaching relationships in the past, lack of clarity around roles
Our Algebra 2 students come to us with widely different skill levels. A few years ago, I started doing small group skill remediation, but it was challenging to keep the other students (who were not in my small group) motivated & learning. I hoped that one benefit of having a co-teacher would be we could teach two different lessons (one skill remediation and one skill extension) helping keep everyone engaged
On day 2 of a lesson, students who missed Day 1 struggle to engage. Having two teachers in the room has allowed us to do a re-teach with the students who missed day 1 so everyone can stay more engaged.
Measuring success
Our current pass rate is 92% which is slightly higher than for my class in past years. This is extra impressive given that our class sizes are huge (34) and have a higher proportion of high-needs students since they are all ICT (I’ve only taught gen ed Algebra 2 in the past). This shows that our students are engaged in the work. Anecdotally, when I taught classes over 30 in the past I felt that I wasn’t able to give every student in the room the instruction they needed to be successful. I don’t feel that way this year. We don’t have students falling through the cracks because there isn’t enough time to get to them. This is because we have two teachers in the room and are intentionally using our time to get to everyone.
We used parallel teaching for two units- Unit 1: Solving Equations & Unit 3: Regents prep. For Unit 3: Regents Prep I taught the students who need to re-take the Algebra 1 Regents while Amber did a PBL project with the students who have already scored college readiness. In past years, the college-ready group did independent busy work. But having a coteacher enabled them to engage in a meaningful project- see examples of their great work here! Additionally, my Regents prep students are now almost all able to independently solve Regents problems, which they were not able to do at the start of the unit. In Unit 1: Solving Equations all students were able to increase their level of mastery of solving equations through targeted instruction.
Overall findings & impact
I want to try more alternative teaching, and maybe even stations in our PBL units in the spring.
Actionable steps
If you want to use this strategy in your classroom, I recommend …
Thinking through the why of parallel teaching. It’s not a strategy to use every day- use it when there is a clear rationale for having two different groups
Use student data to intentionally decide who is in which group
Plan both lessons together so both teachers know what the other is working on
Cayden Betzig | cayden.betzig@uamaker.nyc
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