CO-TEACHING REPORT

The implementation of the co-teaching activity has been put into practice in two different schools; in 6th grade. The main idea of the lesson was to carry out an interactive and entertaining workshop composed of three different stages: a taboo, a dynamic written creation and the correspondent performance. Nevertheless, a challenge was initially displayed when every school needed to cover separate content topics throughout the same class intervention.

On the one hand, as the last term project of School nº1 is the Grease Musical Play, and as it contains a considerable amount of sexist jokes and comments, the session had to primarily cover gender issues, if possible focused on publicitary advertisements from the age when the movie was set. So, after arranging the groups, the initial skeleton of the sessions was adapted in many ways to embrace this theme, starting by showing, debating and commenting different discriminatory existing adverts and recognizing its evidence on some particular scenes of Grease. The taboo was adjusted to work supermarket vocabulary content, as the main ultimate purpose would be to create a slogan trying to sell these products. The second activity was based on the recognition and error correction of slogans of modern adverts, which allowed them to appreciate the typical formation of slogans while they focused on its correction. After that, they were given a sample paper where the tips of “How to create a memorable slogan” were deglossed. The next step was the final creation of a new slogan also in groups, which would not only include the features and rules of its production, but also avoid any kind of discernment towards any social group.

On the other hand, in School nº2, the aim was to carry out a workshop where students could revise previous knowledge about food vocabulary and shopping expressions. Moreover, some grammar aspects such as countable and uncountable nouns were supposed to be included. In this case, the taboo activity was created by using words related to different kind of food, including many uncountable words for the following activities. Since the workshop was called ‘Let’s go shopping’, different payment methods were also introduced such as the concepts ‘cash’ or ‘credit card’. Afterwards, students would be given eight sentences related to common expressions used in a supermarket that they would have to correct. Finally, the play creation was an activity focused on the creation of a dialogue for a concrete situation. This activity was based on a guidelines’ worksheet, where students would have to write their dialogues following the instructions given.

The implementation was first carried out in School nº1, but only in one class of the two that configure 6th grade due to logistical aspects. It was a really enjoyable session, but as we had never worked together in a co-teaching disposal, we needed to learn how to cooperate and equally intervene in the class, which presented few difficulties once we had been through the first half hour. We were initially a bit doubtful regarding the students’ understanding and participation within the gender issues topic, yet they actively took part in the class dynamics with great motivation and initiative.

In both schools, we only shared the essential explanations for them to work autonomously in groups, usually related with principal grammatical content or the needed steps to carry on with the activities and the required individual support. We realized that each class where the tasks were developed required a different adaptation, as the students were different as well and required a distinct kind of attention. While some groups were constantly posing questions, others worked successfully on their own; and while some classes instantly got quiet when we needed to intervene, some others demanded more management strategies. So, if we had to highlight a particular common drawback, it would indubitably be not knowing the students’ names from the school of our partner. It is clearly easy to interact with students when you get to know them: their needs, character and ways to approach them.

Regarding the evaluation of the workshops, it was tried to create simple assessment tools considering that it was a short lesson. In both schools, we used similar instruments adapted to each workshop. What is more, in one session there were put into practice and assessed different language skills. Below, it can be found a chart with the assessment criteria used in each school and the tools for it.

All the materials and assessment instruments used in the co-teaching activities can be found by accessing the links below.

- School nº1 materials and assessment tools:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dg8q1SIGwMUa2zeaMWOrkwFuIG2HQDbRHT2fQWyezAI/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pmbic4c4SFJla-Nsb6cYDZv2w1XZBoA6VP55Eoerfcc/edit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10OhqMt2-7bXplh2RvhP-z7qaSOjPru-V2_kg5elLF1k/edit

- School nº2 materials and assessment tools:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wwI5302TSseBihUh7EEzWU42-ipTyw3T?usp =sharing

TIPS FOR FURTHER IMPROVEMENT

• Time management. Although there was time to develop all the activities, much more could have been done to take profit of the sessions, since they were interesting and had many things to go through.
• Accurate group distribution. We did not think about distributing the groups in a particular manner so that all of them were equilibrated.
• Different approach towards grammar activities. Even though grammar needs to be somehow worked, it could have been done through a different methodology, maybe more dynamic or less repetitive. Nevertheless, it was not a big impediment.

PERSONAL REFLECTION OF THE EXPERIENCE

Marta’s reflection

I must recognise that at the beginning it was quite a challenging activity because both of as had different topics we needed to go through and preparing something useful for both seemed impossible. However, this challenge made me realize that even the most different things can be connected somehow and, for us, the connection was by developing the same kind of activities adjusting them to the topic.

We knew we wanted to create a fun workshop where students developed their speaking skills, since it is not usually easy to include speaking in class. For this reason, we prepared three main activities where communication among students was essential. In my opinion, I believe it really worked because students had a lot of fun playing taboo and they were really using English. The tutor of the class told us that she was impressed of their engagement. In the scene creation, they made wonderful creations and it was nice to see how they used all the things previously revised. Nevertheless, this does not mean that there was not any weak aspect. Personally, I believe that the grammar mistakes activity was a bit tough and it could have been approached differently. I even think that it could be a more profitable session if we had had more time to invest on it with children.

Regarding our teaching, I suppose that the fact of being a student teacher helps when sharing the class with another teacher because that is what we do in the internship. However, I must admit that having two active teachers in class was wonderful. Although we had prepared our interventions, spontaneous explanations took place in the class. It was nice to see how we two complemented each other, adding useful information for students. Moreover, when students were developing their tasks, we realized it was much easier to focus our attention on those pupils that had more difficulties or to spend more time answering some question they did because the other one was also helping and moving around. Finally, I would like to highlight that it was much easier to develop such a dynamic workshop being to teachers, since we could have better control of the class.

Considering the experience and the previous aspects commented I would highlight some similarities differences among individual teaching and co-teaching styles.

• Focus the attention on needed students and classroom management. Having two teachers in the class allows to pay closer attention to those students who need help, since there is another teacher that can attend other students. This also helps developing more dynamic activities because there are two people responsible of controlling the class.
• Complementary information. I realized that during the co-teaching activity Andrea and I were doing some explanations and many times the other added some extra information that help children understand better what was being explained. For this reason, I believe co-teaching permits students to get more information or at least in different ways so that everybody understands.
• Group work and cooperation. This experience has made me see that it is needed a lot of group work and agreement between the two teacher, something that is hard to achieve sometimes. Being a teacher requires this skills, but even more when the classroom is being shared.

Andrea’s reflection

As far as I am concerned, the co-teaching experience has made me realize that cooperative work is beneficial even when teaching, but only if you properly get along with your partner and learn to produce and perform together, which is definitely the case. If you have the luck to work with a quality teacher, you get to learn many new strategies and approaches from them and their way of working.

However, it would have been much easier if we could have implemented exactly the same lesson in both schools, as the collaboration would have been even wider; and also if this was a long-term or whole-year project, as we would be able to improve this new skill and create unusual dynamics and activities.

Then, as it is commonly said, experience is what makes great teachers, so I was able to view how after each session some things could have been done differently or though a different approach, just as the planning of the timing and the final outcome. However, taking into account the little time frame we had, I am content with the final result and the feeling of how this could be implemented in further lessons.

To sum up, I would like to close my personal reflection with a quotes from Gail Lynne that states:

“Collaboration and cooperation will beat competition every time. Let’s take great profit of it.”