Andrea Maier Dr.

Muir Reflection December 5,2013 Reflection What I learned from this observation process was that in a co-taught classroom you can work great with your teaching partner, or you can look like a highly paid teachers aid. I have been working at Prairie for 8 years now and I know great teachers that treat you likes a great person and look past the T.A. label and know you have a great wealth of knowledge to offer in working with special education students. Then on the other hand you have teachers that know you may or may not have a degree and look down upon you. I saw four very different teaching styles when I went out and observed. I took notes of every class that I went to and told each teacher thank you for having me in your classroom. I will go over the four classrooms and how the co-taught classrooms looked. I will say two were ran like a co-taught classroom should look like or at least what I have learned they should look like. Then I will go on to talk about to two classrooms were not. The first classroom that I observed was Ms. Smith's room, and this started out with both teacher talking about that days lesson and how they were going to get the students engaged. The classrooms always start off with ten minutes of reading time. The lesson went smoothly with Ms. Smith starting off with what was going to be learned for the day. They had been working on writing a paragraph, but before they started the lesson Mrs. Ellingson started the students with a game. This got the students up and thinking about verbs, noun, past, and

present tense words. The co-taught model was going great until it came to the writing part of the class. Mrs. Smith had Mrs. Ellingson work with three students and only one student was an ELA student the other two had missed school. Mrs. Ellingson was more along the lines of being a T.A. in that classroom with catching up to students plus working with on ELA student. This was a great class do not get me wrong Ms. Smith is a great teacher, but she could of let Mrs. Ellingson teacher a little more. The second class of the day was Mr. Eggert and he is another great teacher, but the coteaching is not shown in his classroom. He does have a small meeting while the students are reading with Mrs. Ellingson. This is just to show her what he is doing for the day. Mrs. Ellingson is just a T.A. pretty much in this classroom, but the classroom was run great the students were on track the whole time. The one thing that I would change is using Mrs. Ellingson and her knowledge of ELA students. She has a ton of fun activities and the students pay very good attention to her when she is in the classroom. The co-taught model was put in place so that you could get more interaction out of your ELA students. I wish I could of seen more of this model used. This is something that can happen though with teachers, it is my classroom these are my students. This will never be me, I would rather share the knowledge and learn something new each and every day. The next week I went a observed in Ms. Rice's class and as you guessed it the two teachers planned the lesson during students reading time. The teacher was very well organized at the start, but you could see that she would change her mind in what they would be learning for the day. The teacher had the objective on the board for the students, but would change her

mind about how she was going to teach it. The fly by the seat of your pants method was in use. She never once asked Mrs. Ellingson to take over and teach what they were learning for the day. Which would of been great because she just came from a classroom that just went over basically the same thing. Share the wealth did not apply with this teacher and Mrs. Ellingson waited for the teacher to begin the lesson. I believe the five general education students should of went to the co-teach training, so they could see how useful planning time is with Ellingson could be and that she is there to help with students. The last class of my goodness was the best class of my four observations. The teacher Mrs. Yost and Mrs. Ellingson ran the class very smoothly. Ellingson brought in work that all the students could use, but it had cliff notes on it to help ELA students use. This was awesome because all students could use this in the classroom. The thing that I liked the most was Mrs. Yost would teach for awhile and then Mrs. Ellingson would jump in and teach the students and the students were engaged the whole time. The wait time for students was great never too long or short. This class was what I heard co-teaching could look like and it was true, so I was excited because Ellingson said I was in for a treat. This is something that I will take with me in my teaching tool bag. That working with others on a co-taught setting can be awesome and very rewarding for teachers and students. I hope I can get some time, so that I can go back into this classroom and observe some more. The whole experience was great because I can sit back and look at what good teaching can look like and how you can change it for the better. Do not get me wrong the teachers I observed were great teachers I would just change how they co-teach. Co-teaching has its ups

and downs, but given the right people you can see how it works and how it does not work. I will take what I learned and pull from my notes what I liked and learn how I can incorporate it into my teachings. Then I will see how you can take what I did not like and learn from it on how I could or could not use inside the classroom. The observations were great and thank you for having this as an assignment.