New Adventures with Co-Teaching. Taking it to Teaching Literacy

If you've read some of my other blog posts before, you probably know by now I have a co-teacher. He and I have worked together for the past three years, and we hope to continue to work together in the future. 

We've done presentations on co-teaching during virtual learning, co-teaching in both in-person and virtual environments, and shared our experiences how we work together to establish a relationship as well as plan for instruction. Our mythical twist, Ferny the Dragon has inspired us to continue to be creative, and I must say I am excited for some things we are going to try and work on in the summer. 
As both teachers and reading specialists/ literacy coaches, teaching reading to our students is high up on the priority list. 

One thing that we often talk about is our literacy blocks during the school day. We work together to organize small groups for phonics, vocabulary, fluency, guided reading, strategy groups and independent conferring. It's a lot to manage but I'd like to take some time to share a few tips to get started that (hopefully) you and your co-teacher will find useful to get started with organization. 

1. Set time aside to work together on groups. - This may seem like an automatic mode action, but you'd be surprised how quickly time goes by. Setting time aside ahead of time helps alleviate this problem. 
2. Use binders to organize your groups. - Using a binder helps you to break down each group further and set up individual students. When a binder is used, both teachers can easily track and compare groups of students. 
3. Define who is teaching what. - Again this might seem automatic and you might be saying "I know this, what else," but taking the time to review the curriculum, student data, and also considering what areas of interest/talent you have creates the best groups. For example in our class, I work with students in the highest and lowest phonics group, and my co-teacher works with the middle level group. Knowing this saves time in planning throughout the year, and also forces us to be flexible when students are ready for a new group. 
4. Share, Share Share. - As co- teachers it's important to share... everything! Utilizing prep periods or time before and after school is important so both of you can see the progress and new information about the groups daily. Since you won't be seeing every group everyday, debriefing allows you to further plan ahead and see who will need additional time, and what groups still need instructing. 

Working together and sharing tips aren't new ideas for us, and it's been the way we've operated in general so far. The beauty lies in looking at our literacy instruction through a closer lens and see what has worked and what areas we can improve on. 
Here are some final thoughts to get you going. Keep communication at the forefront of your instruction, no matter what the subject! Keep thinking about areas of literacy you are passionate about and how you can incorporate that into your daily instruction. Keep utilizing time and space to help you plan for instruction together. After all, two teachers in the same room is already a bonus... own it and use it to. your advantage for your students! 

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