Even with the short amount of time left in the school year, the benefits of parallel teaching can be achieved. We are always looking to support co-teachers in utilizing the small group co-teaching models to provide more intensive instruction to their students.
2nd Grade Pandemic Parallel Teaching
Our work did not stop or even slow down under the various pandemic conditions, and we’ve learned a lot about how to implement small group co-teaching models. Before we get into those details, let’s first review parallel teaching.
In its purest form, when parallel teaching, you divide your class in half heterogeneously in flexible ways. Each of you teaches the same material to one half of the class. It is crucial that both of you reach the same objective with your group and cover the same content. The fun part, in addition to teaching a smaller group of students, is that you can each teach the material however you see best. The only co-planning necessary is to agree on the timing, standard, objective and start and end point of the material.
You can choose to divide your class in a variety of ways, including by interest, preference, learning style or readiness based on the skill and objective. Please remember that parallel teaching is not intended to be dividing the “low kids” and the “high kids” as a default strategy.
How does parallel teaching work in a pandemic? Here are some ideas that have worked for some teams.
Remote Learning
If your entire class is remote, parallel teaching can be done in two different ways.
1. Everyone signs on to the same meeting (regardless of your platform) and you break the class into two break out rooms (or keep one group in the main room and the other group goes to a break out room). Each of you is with one of the groups. If your platform only allows one person to set up the break out rooms, the other teacher leads a brief “do now or review” while their partner sets up the rooms. There is no need for teachers to move between rooms in this model. You can choose to come back to the main room to wrap up, or complete the entire “I do, we do, you do” and closure in your groups.
2. If break out rooms don’t exist or are a challenge on your platform, each of you invites half the class to a separate meeting. You do the whole class period or block in separate meetings.
HYBRID
There are two hybrid options teams have found successful.
1. This first way to parallel teach in a hybrid model has been simpler to figure out for some of the teams we support. One teacher teaches the lesson to the students at home while the other teacher teaches the students in class. You will each need a computer, unless the partner teaching the in-class students is teaching without technology. (Yes, that is still possible! 😊)
2. If your technology supports it and your students have headsets, there is another option. All students sign on to a meeting. Each of you works with a mix of in class and at home students. Just as in remote parallel teaching, you can do this either in break out rooms or separate meetings.
SOCIALLY DISTANT
7th Grade Social Studies Pandemic Parallel Teaching
For co-teachers whose students are all in person, we know that movement and spacing is a tremendous issue and concern.
1. In this situation, parallel teaching involves students turning their bodies in their chairs or turning their chair if permitted. You divide the class front to back, side to side, or whatever variation works in your space.
2. Some co-teaching teams have found it helpful to build in a non-sequential quiet portion of the lesson. One teacher starts with the quiet part while the other starts with the noisier part of the lesson. In this way, the distraction of hearing each other talk is lessened.
3. Another work-around is that one teacher and their group is on a meet and uses headsets while the other is not. The group on a meet can be using a NearPod for example.
Check out these two co-teaching teams using socially distant parallel teaching:
Here you see a 7th grade Social Studies class using the front of the room and the back of the room to the side. They were working on annotating and finding textual evidence in an article about the causes of the French and Indian War.
Here you see a 2nd grade class. This team divided their class into three groups. The students in the middle of the room worked independently. One teacher was in the back of the room and the other in the front. They both taught a lesson on idioms to their group. The next day, one teacher would teach the lesson to the independent group, the other two groups would work independently while the other teacher provided some needed 1:1 instruction.
As move toward next school year, we don’t yet know exactly what school will look like. We have learned that we can continue to use small group models regardless of the configuration.
Here’s to the constant creativity of teachers!
If you want to learn more, please email us at info@lakretz.com. If you have other ideas, please visit our Facebook page and share your ideas!