At FISW, we believe in the values of collaboration and teamwork, and not only for our students. Co-teaching started as an experiment in an elementary classroom and became a school wide program very quickly when we realized the benefits of it. As usual for us, we didn't take the easy road and decided to dig deep into the meaning of co-teaching and how it would show in our classrooms and the school in general. We started by thinking about what it looks like (and you can have a pretty good idea of our thinking at the time looking at the pictures included in this post).
We came up with a definition that matches our needs and the needs of the community at FISW: Intentional coordination by two teachers, with separate curricula, to share responsibility for planning, organization, delivery and assessment of instruction, as well as the physical space.
What does it mean on a daily basis? That the teachers use strengths and align objectives from both curricula. Co-teaching is a time each week that the French and English teachers spend together in the classroom, modeling teamwork and cross-cultural cooperation. Co-teaching makes the learning process more meaningful and impactful for our students, in part, because it allows them to make more relevant connections between what they have learned in both languages. It has become the basis for projects in which the students use resources in both languages and create products that alternate languages intentionally and coherently.
This is what we are going to explain in depth in our following posts: the mindset of co-teaching, the coordination, the sharing, the project-based learning and the efficiency and relevancy of it for our students.
- Yvan Tabellion, Fifth Grade French Teacher
