LDOE/Blue Engine: The Power of Two: Leveraging Co-Teaching to Address Unfinished Learning
Quality of Professional Development: Excellent
Implementation of Technology: Excellent
Zoom breakout rooms-student choice and differentiation
Aha slides: word clouds, polls, and reflections
Similar apps: Nearpod, Pear Deck, Slido, Mentimeter, Poll Everywhere
I had to pleasure of attending another awesome professional development by LDOE: The Power of Two. As many of you know this is my 3rd career. I have been employed as a receiver/cashier (10 years), Environmental/Quality Lab Technician (6 years), and my current profession teaching (going into my 4th year). We all know that teamwork is essential in all careers. This professional development was a great example of teamwork and effective co-teaching. During this professional development, the facilitators themselves were the exemplar. They modeled what effective coteaching should look like in the classroom. They also discussed the challenges, the vision, effectiveness, and co-planning of co-teaching. The facilitators emphasized the importance of establishing norms at the beginning of the school year and acknowledged there will be conflicts. Teams need to take conflicts and used them as an opportunity to grow. During this professional development, I learned about the LDOE guidance document and coteaching planning tool (I didn't know these existed). I love how they implemented differentiation and student choice. Instead of assigning breakouts rooms, we pick our own based on if we wanted to work alone, with our co-teacher, or have a discussion. I have never seen educators use zoom breakout rooms use this way 😀. After breakout room sessions we returned, and they asked volunteers to share their experience. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling well and couldn't complete sessions III and IV. At the end of session II, we were informed they have modules we can complete for free covering the same information discussed today (links provided below). This is awesome. This professional development had four sessions: Introduction/exploration, Team Effectiveness, Co-Planning, Ongoing co-planning/ Conclusion. Each session was an hour and 20 minutes with a 20-minute break between sessions 1 and 2. After the second session, there was an hour lunch break. There wasn't a break between sessions 3 and 4.
Here are my key takeaways from this professional development (the sessions I attended).
Session I: Exploration of the Guidance Document
What are the challenges of coteaching?
Challenges
No common vision
No learning this in school
No time for coteaching
No contributing 100%
What does effective co-teaching look like? What does effective coteaching sound like?
Leverages all adults to meet the diverse learning needs of all students
Co-teacher optimization and individualization
Vision for Co-Teaching
Purposeful teacher roles
Meaningful use of class time
Intentional student groupings
Strategic use of data
Deep student engagement-seen for who they are and what they need
Student ownership of learning
We discussed the coteaching guidance document (please see link below)
Team effectiveness
How to use the guidance document?
Has co-planning tasks
Included team effectiveness tool
Team formation tools
Has suggestions for administration support
Has content specific resources
Anchored in 6 critical traits
Link to general guidance document
Link to math guidance document
What initial wonders do you have?
Love how they implemented differentiation-we had the opportunity to choose which breakout room we wanted to go to. I didn’t know this was an option in zoom.
They provided us with sentence starters/stems for the end of session one reflection.
Session 2 Deep Dive: Team Effectiveness
Listening and perspective taking
Utilizing organizational systems-who does what
Providing feedback and following through
Consistently communicating
Executing a joint vision
Sharing expertise
Ask to identify one of the 6 traits we could work on the next school year.
Team Formation
Completing Individual assessments: Leadership, behavior styles, social styles
Individual reflection: complete with team (one example of an activities for team PD)
Managing Conflict-establish norms at the beginning of the year, realize conflict will happen
LDOE Team Styles: Leadership, Social, Behavioral (Individual Assessment Tool)
How can I turnkey this information?
Coteaching Guidance: Asynchronous Module- 1 hour to complete, match the guidance documents
- Type of questions in modules/check for understanding: reflection
- Private and discussion option
- To enroll in theses courses
- These courses are free
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