Have you ever wanted to partner with another teacher and conduct a “stations” activity for your students? What if you could address a half or even a third of your class on occasion and give very specific feedback or instructions? If you do not have a colleague or an aide with whom to share your instruction, remember with recorded technology, you do. You can partner with yourself.
One concept of the “flipped” classroom model is to give students instruction at home and more hands-on practice and guidance in the classroom. Practice and application get spread out to the most opportune parts of the day: independence outside of the classroom when students can demonstrate level of mastery with moderate challenge and inside class when support with the instructor is necessary. The preparation time you invest to create an extension of your classroom “for home” can also have beneficial uses for splitting your class while you are all assembled.
A split class or stations model allows a portion of the class to receive direct instruction from materials you have recorded or prepared freeing you up to interact with the other portion of the class in person. Don’t want to consume class time with a lecture? Pre-record it and set aside a section of the room for addressing this task while you engage learners in another task. Then rotate, reflect, respond. Studies show that not only is movement helpful for student retention of information, but so also is a diversified task list and more personal interaction from the instructor. Let the video, podcast, or back-channeled feedback do some of the teaching and data gathering while you address the smaller group of learners who need more individualized attention and suddenly you are co-teaching with yourself.
Even better is the classroom model where after a few sessions of you dividing the instruction your students take ownership of the teaching partner and mentor themselves. What if your co-teacher was a student who led a small group or a panel who instructed a prepared body of material?
The classroom is still yours to plan and assess, but the co-teaching elements of sharing the instructional load may be already at hand. Let the trust build through experimentation and someday your students will be self-directed learners and evaluators too.
Co-Teaching pairing ideas:
- with co-curricular colleague
- with Special Education
- with cross-curricular colleague
- with guest
- with web tools (pre-recorded)
- with students themselves