Abstract:

This presentation focuses on the use of a co-teaching model with English language learners (ELLs) in an elementary school in the Southeastern United States. Co-teaching is an instructional model originally developed for students in Special Education. In this model, both mainstream and English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers collaborate on instruction and teach in cooperation with each other. Ideally, in a co-teaching model both teachers carry similar weight in the classroom; they are truly equals in instruction. As originally envisioned co-teaching is “two or more professionals delivering substantive instruction to a diverse or blended group of students in a single physical space.” (Cook & Friend, 1995, p. 2)
There are four basic tenets of co-teaching. The first requires that co-teaching include two professionals in the field of education. While paraprofessionals and other aides certainly add to the instruction going on in any classroom, co-teaching is characterized by the fact that there are two fully certified teachers in the classroom. Second, teachers involved in co-teaching deliver substantive instruction. In other words, teachers are not teaching to the lowest achieving students in the classroom. Third, co-teaching involves a diverse group of students. Co-teaching was designed, at its core, to more fully integrate students with special needs into the mainstream classroom. Finally, co-teaching is delivered in a single space.
Co-teaching generally follows several classroom iterations. These include a variety of ways of implementing co-teaching (Cook & Friend, 1995) including teacher/floater, parallel teaching, alternative teaching, station teaching, and team teaching. This presentation focuses on the use of several different models to include ELLs in the mainstream classroom. Two visits were made over a 3 year period of time. The researcher observed in classrooms implementing co-teaching and interviewed both ESL and mainstream teachers and school administrators involved in the model.
During the data collection portion of the study, the researcher found that the co-teaching model became more popular in subsequent years after its initial implementation. The school in question has a generally high-need population in addition to a high ELL population. Hence, co-teaching was seen as a way of adding an additional teacher to the classroom in an effective instructional model. However, it was also noted that the linguistic needs of ESL students were, at times, pushed aside in favor of providing services to all the students in the classroom.
Conclusions drawn from the research indicate that co-teaching is extremely popular among teachers who feel that ELLs and native English speakers benefit from the model. However, there is no data to support this conclusion. Additionally, at this site, individual ESL services had been suspended in favor of a complete co-teaching model. Researcher recommendations included the continued use of co-teaching with more intentional use of English language proficiency information in grade-level discussions and more classroom accommodations specifically targeting the linguistic needs of the ELLs in the mainstream classes.

Keywords:

English as a second language, co-teaching.