 So here are our learning intentions as we start. We're hoping that today, at the end of our time together, that we have as a collective a better understanding of collaboration and co-teaching. We're really really focusing on the co-teaching. It's one of the pieces that Sharon was coding for in the research. It's one of the pillars of the project of how do we actually capitalize on that shared expertise in working together in the classroom with all kids. We want to leave, of course, with a plan to increase the effectiveness of our collaboration. I think we think there's lots of examples of collaboration. Some have more impact on learning than others and there's lots of... It's a bumpy road sometimes when we first start and people don't want to waste their time. And so we really want to look at how we can best use our time together and to leave with an idea in our head for each of us, I guess, to think about what am I going to do a little bit differently to be more effective with a partner when I get there. And around that we've stolen tons of examples from this project and across the province that you'll get on a handout and if we get a chance we'll talk to some of them. And finally, last year we did a model of a class review. As a way of starting, we talk about no plan, no point, and so you have to find out who your kids are, what they know, their strengths, their areas of need, set some goals. So we're going to come back and make a little reference to that as a reminder of what that can look like because we think that that's one of the ways that we can use as a planning tool when we get through to the end. And in the last ten minutes we're going to have a guest and Lisa is going to share with us an example of what she did from a co-planning model with one of the classes and teachers that she was working with who was in the project last year. So as Faye's already mentioned one of the parameters of this project was around collaboration and that doesn't matter with whom, right? It could be the Aboriginal support worker, the Aboriginal teacher, the teacher librarian as Faye referred to yesterday, the resource teacher working in the classroom with the teacher. So the whole premise of this morning is wrapped around that. So why do we collaborate in co-teaching? And this came from feedback last year from the point of view of people saying, OK, what's the benefit of doing this? So what Faye and I did was dig, looking for people's statements, but I'll be really honest with you. What we did was tie them to our beliefs. So this is very much based on the belief, our belief, because we happen to be the ones with the mic. Based on the belief, the collaborative planning, teaching and assessing, better addresses the diverse needs of students by creating ongoing effective programming in the classroom. We've talked, and we talked a little bit about that last year. There's lots of effective different ways to address the needs of kids, but one of the pieces that we looked at in this project when it first began was how can we better meet the needs through collaborative work in the classroom. So not looking at how can we get better at a piece where somebody might be out of the classroom getting intensive work, because we're pretty good at a lot of that. But how can we get better at that ongoing work so that when those kids, if they are out, return to the classroom, return to a place where their needs are being better met all day long. And so that wraps into, and this comes from personal experience, learning that by doing this, I felt better because it allowed more students to be, needs to be reached. The classroom teacher felt better because together we knew that. We could see it in the work that we were doing, because instead of four kids being referred down the hall, we were working around all the kids in the classroom. And maybe kid five and six who you would like to have had in that group, but there wasn't quite enough room. So it's just looking at that. It's taking away the piece that says only these kids are getting a service to saying all of the kids are, and we intensify and diversify the service based on the needs of the kids. So obviously it focuses on the ongoing context for learning because that context is in the classroom. So we're not just focusing on the specific remediation of skills removed from the learning context of that classroom. And I don't imagine there isn't a person in the room who can't think of an example, particularly if you've been one of those people where you work with kids on something down the hall and they don't transition that or generalize that back to the classroom situation. And we know that from research. People all over the place have done research around that we can teach it in an isolated context and particularly kids with learning difficulties do not generalize that information to another context. So if we do it in the context, we give them a better chance. And our belief is that even if we did work with a group of kids outside the classroom on a particular group of skills, if that happens, then we also need to take ourselves with the kids into the classroom so that we can do that bridging, help them with the bridging as it comes on. So I think about the, we talked last year about, of all the programs that there's a research based on about what makes a difference to the programming, the only one that came out that had solid research behind it was reading recovery. And the work that has gone on in reading recovery is exemplary. But when I go back to, in my thinking about the original, when Marie Clay originally started, she had her reading recovery teachers often moved through. So they worked with reading recovery and kids one-on-one. And then they worked in the classroom so that the kids in the classroom, they returned after several years to the classroom so the kids in the, all the kids in the classroom benefited from that range of skills. And so that's a piece, you know, we've got, we unfortunately don't have very many reading recovery teachers anymore because they've been cut in so many districts, but they're hugely skilled. And so it's that piece of how do we take those skills and the knowledge that they have about supporting learners and how do we help more of us in the classroom know that piece as well. And I just made a decision that I think the example with Marsha fits better with the next point. So this point around, it builds a repertoire of strategies for teachers to support the range of students in their classes. This was going to be an example I use later, but it just twigged in my head that I'm stealing this example from Arrow Lakes, I'm stealing this example from Marsha, because I had the opportunity to facilitate last year in Arrow Lakes. And one of the neatest things that happened was that the support teacher asked Marsha if she could go into her classroom and teach in that classroom so that Marsha could have the opportunity to observe the students in her classroom. Because as a classroom teacher, I'm busy teaching. Just having the opportunity to watch my kids, to see how they interact differently with a different teacher. And in particular in Marsha's case, it gave her the opportunity to see a teacher who used different strategies, who used different techniques to see how those could also mesh with the way that she could work with those kids. And what Marsha spoke absolutely passionately about in the meeting in the CUSP was, and I got to really watch my focus student as part of changing results for young readers. And I saw that focus student respond differently to Karen than to me. And so after the opportunity for Karen to teach in the classroom, where Marsha was the classroom teacher, then they sat down and talked about ways that they could support together. So a completely different model than I'm typically familiar with. They didn't plan first, they planned after. The best part about it was the repertoire of strategies for both that changed. Did she get to speak? No, I didn't think so. I checked that part earlier. Oh, I thought she was... I thought she might after I... Did I extrapolate too much, Marsha? Thank you. I was waiting for her voice. I told her I might lie a little bit when I told that, but I didn't know whether I had or not. Okay. So let me just see if there's anything else in here that we need to read. It's the consistency. We've talked about that, Randy, because we don't want to run out of time. Okay. So the belief is if we share our collective knowledge about all of the students and learning, we'll end up with a plan of action, and based on this, we can better address the learning needs. And so it's the rationale all the time. Two of us working together with the experiences and the expertise that we bring are better than any one of us working alone. Okay. And so it's that piece, and it doesn't matter who the two are. And it's way more fun. Absolutely. Well, especially if you like the person. But... Well, just keep checking. And even if you don't, you can grow to like them. Okay. I'll be working on that. But it's that piece that says, you know, when I come into a classroom, I come in with a certain set of expertise, you know, a certain set of skills. When I come into the classroom, I have a fair amount of skills because I've been doing this for such a long time. And you learn as you're going, right? But I also know that when I come into a classroom and work with a teacher, it doesn't matter if the teacher is even in their first or second year of experience, and all the classes I've been in co-teaching, I have never been in a classroom where I haven't learned something. And I come in like Methuselah. I mean, really. So, you know, some of them are like 23, 24, and I can tell when I arrive that, you know, they're sometimes feeling a bit intimidated. I'm saying like, so don't worry about this because we're just going to have a good time. It'll be good for the kids and we'll be able to, you know, we've got a plan. We'll see what happens at the end. Never, and it's not a word of a lie, never have I been in a classroom where something didn't happen that that other teacher did where I've thought, you've got to be kidding. I've been teaching this long and I've never thought of that. Now that was brilliant. Okay. But you know what happens is as the person who's there all the time, you don't know necessarily always the little sparks of brilliance because you're so busy doing the work that you don't have that outside set of eyes to say, do you know when you did that, here's what happened to John. Oh. And when you did that, here's what happened with this little group. So it's that piece of being able to go back and forth and remembering that it is better together if you both have a voice in what's going on. And Faye, think about what happens to the culture of a school when that happens because now two people have worked together and I might be the resource teacher in that situation and I might steal that brilliant thing you did as a classroom teacher and share it with someone over here. And so the professional development that happens in a building as a result of just one situation like that is huge. And the feeling of community. Yes. So we own all of the kids instead of thinking, oh, I'm so glad I didn't have that class this year. Oh. I've missed them. Or they're coming through, this is a good year to be pregnant. Well, not this. Yes. Because it happens, right? Instead of all being together. Or a good year to transfer. Or to transfer, yes, okay. So obviously last year this whole project was framed around collaboration, right? One of the best things about this project was teachers having the opportunity to share ideas and practices with each other. So we have a task for you to start off with. I think it's coming up shortly, is it? Yes. Two minutes. So share with one person at your table the best collaborative experience you had in changing results for Young Readers Project last year. And if you weren't part of the project, listen for the themes you hear people talk about. So resurface that best thing from last year. Now we recall last year when we began that this was one of the pieces that was really challenging. It was to figure out we had teachers and we had schools who said, you know, we're not really necessarily going to, we don't want to play by those rules. And so we'll come but we're not actually interested in that collaborative piece. Or we'll only come if we can have extra time for the collaboration because we're still going to do the stuff that we did before. Because for many of us this is new and it's sometimes is bumpy when we get started. And so we're always looking for that piece because we so firmly believe in strength-based to think about so what did you find that worked well? And what would happen if you did more of that more often? And how can you build that repertoire? How can you continue to grow if you really do believe that collectively we know more? And Randy and I do. And if collectively you believe that we actually know enough to teach each and every child in this province how to read and we do, then we need to keep working to go and say so what else do we need to do to make that difference? The most interesting thing that stood out to me in listening in the groups that I listened to was the adults talking about how they felt included. That by working together, I felt included. I was so impressed with the way the person felt included in the staff because she. So the conversation that I heard wasn't about kids, it was about us and how lonely this profession can be and when we work with others we feel part of it. So the shift is we have worked long and hard and well at a model that was about fixing kids. Could you please, and I heard this not just in groups that I was working with, but I heard this in many places around the province last year where people would say, I don't know why when they come back from wherever they've been, you know, and you can fill it in, they're not better. She only has a small group to work with or she only has two or three kids. Why aren't they better when they come back? Because it's a fixing model that we're thinking about. And you and I were originally trained in a deficit model thing. We never got good at it, that's why we had to change. That was the mentality we're given, right? And so the shift that happened years ago was to and more of an inclusive model, right? That inclusive model became more of a strength-based model. We looked instead at fixing what we were doing instead of fixing the kid within the classroom or within the curriculum. But there were still some aspects with that. We still went within that inclusive model. So what we see is that transformations have happened even within the inclusive model that we've been involved in. We've gone from very much of a pull-out or you're physically included in the class but you might as well be sitting in a cardboard box at the back. It was still very much a remedial model. We still worked on making kids fit within that. But they were often on a very different plan and there's nothing wrong with having a different plan. We have kids that we work with that need different plans but sometimes we slip into that different plan mode before we look at how they can be part of. And so where I see things are moving and I think that's one of the tenets of what we're working on here is an inclusive model where we see classroom teachers as the central support focus, the key in what we're doing. So all of us who are non-enrolling, our job is to line up beside the classroom teacher and figure out how best to support that student. But the voice of the classroom teacher is very, very critical. So at the beginning of the year, and I'm sure I'll see this in some of the places that I am in September, what does not happen is the resource teacher or the learning assistance teacher or I'd also include the English language learner teacher does not say to the classroom teacher, here's the list of kids I'm going to see this year. That that comes if what you're looking at in terms of who the targeted kids are arises from a conversation, a planned conversation around some kind of structure where the classroom teacher and the support person sit down and say let's talk about this class and the needs and the strengths in this class. And let's make a plan. So no one person as a classroom teacher, I'm not saying here's the group, take them. One group last year said to me, I was sent 11 kids to do spelling. Boy, that's not a very busy resource room. First of all, 11 kids sounds to me like a classroom program, but spelling like that's the biggest issue is spelling. It's good staffing in the building, good staffing because a lot of us don't get to that part for a long, long time because there's other needs that pop up. But it's that piece of saying you have to work together around what's the part in here that's important. We're on a project about reading. We believe that reading is about making sense, learning to read and reading to learn together and enjoying reading and wanting to read. And we want that for all our kids, so that ought to be coming up in a collaboration somehow. How are we working together to get better at this piece? So some of the things that we think of that make a difference when we're together in this classroom fall into this list. Now what I want you to do after you've heard them is take another one of those two minutes and say, so what are two in there that jump out to you? What are two that jump out you think, you know that's something that I think might make a difference in my class. Okay, here's the list. Work from a plan based on student strengths and needs. Differentiate instruction. Use AFL strategies to assess understanding. Increase participation of all students. Decrease behavioral challenges. Focus attention. Increase student independence. Teach self-regulation. Model positive, strength-based language. Talk to each other about what they're learning about their students. Okay, in your role, what jumps out at you from there that would be beneficial when you're working with somebody else in the classroom. Two minutes. When I'm thinking about those focus areas, here's one of the things that I think about and I'm sure this has happened, and this may be part of the conversation that you had at your table. There are times when the most important need in the classroom is management. That learning can't happen for anybody, whether it's somebody who's vulnerable or somebody who's not vulnerable until some patterns and routines get established and it's taking more than one person to do that. You better believe it. That's the starting point. It's not just, yes, our focus, our end goal is reading, but that may not be our first step because if we can't get the kids to the carpet to listen to a story or when they get to the carpet, it's not a safe place to be, then that's where we need to start. We need to be thinking about that. How do we make this environment work? Because until we get the environment and the culture going, and sometimes it's simultaneously with the reading activities that we're doing, but we have to get that all together in order to get started. And so sometimes that's the place where we're first beginning. Rather than starting with, I've already identified the skills in my groups and so here's where we're going to start. We get into some of those structures that come in there. So when we start to work and we're working together, we have to keep a framework of questions in our head to make sure that what we're doing is really getting us what it is that we're aiming for, what that whole impact is. And so we consider these kinds of questions. Are all students actively engaged in meaningful work? If there are two of us there, there's a greater chance of us being able to say yes or to tweak it whatever we're doing to make the engagement. Remember Sharon kept saying that yesterday? It's the most important thing. If you're not engaged, you can't be learning. And let's be engaged with something that counts. Because sometimes they're actually, yes, really engaged, but they're engaged with activities that don't particularly count. You know the sheets? Sometimes sheets are handed out because they're really good for management, but they're not all that good for meaning-making. And so you want to have both those pieces. That's the goal. Are they engaged? Everybody in meaningful work. Are all students participating by answering and asking questions? So here's my example around that. A long time ago in a building that Sue used to work in way over here on the far side of the room, the role I took on as resource teacher in a grade six, seven classroom was moving around the room, queuing kids about the questions that Ellen, the classroom teacher, was going to ask and queuing them around, what do you think you could say when she asks this question? Because one of the goals we had for five of the kids in that classroom participation, engagement, offering their knowledge, because they never shared. And it took six weeks of me doing that before these kids started spontaneously do that. And then our plan changed and that wasn't the role I had anymore. Are all students receiving individual feedback during the learning sequence? Again, what came back yesterday, that one-on-one support. So when something's happening in the classroom, if there's two of us there, then we've actually cut our class size down to 11 or 12 kids, and now we ought to be able to even more easily get around to make sure that we're coming in with those feedback questions to each and every one of the kids. What's working so far in what you're doing? Is there something in here that's challenging? What can I do to help? So we're looking at shifting that ownership, but there's that piece to get the feedback. So again, if we think about it in the context of changing results, it's not just the one focus student that we're thinking about, but we're thinking about that whole range, the student who's exceeding expectations. You know, some of those kids that were on Maureen's data slide when they first came in also need some feedback in that learning sequence to propel the learning forward. And so we can individualize as we're going around much better because it's a goal. You need the individual piece rather than just the group piece if the group's going to work well for you. And Fay, I think one of the benefits that happens from that co-teaching example here is that from Fay and I working together, obviously at the end of the session, at the end of today, we'll talk about so what did we learn from today that would make tomorrow better? That can be a three-minute conversation at the end of that time that we work together that sets us up for tomorrow because what did we learn from the kids? What did we learn from working together that worked or didn't work that we're going to shift? We put this one separately because it's another one of those over-arching questions is that we want to keep coming back. We want to make sure that we don't think about any one focus is always the best all the time. And so you want to keep coming back to think is what we're doing right now, this form of co-teaching that we're doing, is it the best for this time, for this task, for this student or for this group of students because there's different ways to co-teach. So it's not one size fits all, all the time but looking about at what else could we do and saying together, so you know, Randy said like we use this information to start to see what we're going to do tomorrow when we're together or in a few days when we're together. But the other piece we want to keep thinking about is that could we have been working together in a different way that would have been better? And one of the things that we're going to do in the next chunk is talk about what some of those ways of working together can look like. But it's another piece that we think about is that is this best for now for these kids because it's the flexibility that makes a difference. There it's even more, it's even easier to be flexible. If we're in different places it's much more difficult to be flexible because you can't tell what the other guy's doing. And it's more time to talk to keep ourselves working in a consistent direction for those kids. So is it okay to walk around the class and support as needed? Is it okay to have those one-on-one conferences with kids? Is it okay to take small groups out for phonemic awareness? Again it goes back to is this the most effective use of teacher time to support the mutually agreed upon goals of student learning? So look at those questions. Is it okay for one of the teachers to walk around the class and support kids as needed? Because this child needs help in focusing attention. Because this child needs help in answering a question. Because this child needs help in following and tracking and self-regulating. Is it the opportunity to cue kids around some of the things that Deb has shared with us? Is that an okay role? Is that an okay role all year? Is that an okay role for a short time? Those are the questions we need to be asking ourselves around what we do and how we do it. And those three particular questions I put down because they were all questions that people asked me last year when we were talking about co-teaching. But could I still do this? Could I still do this? And Sunday night we had the benefit of working with Bev Krieger around ways to deepen conversations in our collaborative groups when we were working together in the project. And one of the things that I was thinking about is that sometimes we get questions and you think, well I don't know what to do with that question. See and I think it's a shift. Can I do this or can I do that? Take it back to a question that gives more power to the people who are asking the question and shift it to the piece that says, you know, that's a piece of the question but the real question here is, if we do this, is that getting us to the goals that we have that are going to focus on student learning? So it doesn't mean that you can't take a group out and work on phonemic awareness with them. If that is part of supporting getting toward the goals. And it is okay, could it be okay to have one-on-one conferences while this is going on? Absolutely. If it's coming through the goals. So it's helping take those questions that we sometimes get and elevate them to the piece about why are we doing this? Let's put it into a different context. It's not okay if it's not focusing on improving student learning, if we're not seeing results from it. Or if one of the adults is feeling undervalued. So if you're the resource person and you're in the place where you're walking around and your supporting is needed and you come in with all your expertise and you hum around the room saying, can I help? Can I help? Can I help? You're there about three and a half nanoseconds before you're thinking, why am I here? I could do anything and have a greater impact on student learning. What a waste of my time. And so for me, that takes it back to the bigger question. If that's what I'm feeling, then I need to be asking the question not of myself only, of myself and whomever I'm working with, is this the most effective use of our time to support the mutually agreed upon goals that we have? And it might be for right now. I might have to feel that way for a while. If it's targeted, Randy, the way it was when you talked about the five kids that you knew needed to learn how to participate in the classroom and so your goal wasn't just to hover around and see if Barb would like a little help just now and Debbie would like a little help and who's looking desperate, but you had definite kids that you were aiming toward to bridge them into the class and you might also have noticed somebody else at the same time and you could have nudged them in but you had a job to do. Okay, so we have two questions for you and you don't get that full luxurious two minutes you had last time you only get 90 seconds this time. Here's your first question. When you think about the possibilities of co-teaching, what's your dream? What would be, yeah maybe one minute, what's your dream? What would be the most marvelous way for this to play itself out for you? Think big. It's a dream. No yes buts. Okay, only possibilities. One minute. What's your co-teaching dream? Randy and I both think that those questions are important questions to have with the people on our staff. Okay, so and notice where we introduced the questions. We didn't start with them. We started by talking a little bit about what do we think co-teaching is? What do we think collaboration is? What do we think focusing on class support looks like? So we started with building a little bit of background knowledge and sharing some of our beliefs and some of the purposes behind it and then we asked the questions. So I would be asking those questions if this is something that you're working with on your staff, those are the kinds of questions that I'd ask with my staff but I wouldn't ask them first because if you asked them before you started to have any conversation about that shared understanding of what collaboration in class is over the map. But you need them out because you want to be able to deal with them. So what do you think that what would be really good in here? And what is it that you're really afraid of? So one of the things I heard was what's my worst nightmare? Working with somebody who's not talking in language that's strength based about kids. Like no kidding, right? It's the shaming and blaming and you're thinking how am I ever like to be a student in that classroom? And you know sometimes I think we don't even hear that language coming out. Oh, really? You know it sounded like that. Think about the model I can provide by sharing different language. So we look at this, you know when we look at that whole support on co-teaching and collaboration it's got lots of ties into RTI and where that piece comes through and we're going to talk a little bit more about that in October but that's just sort of a little flash up there because we want to get to the stuff. Okay. So here's the stuff. Possibilities of what it can look like. So I used this framework of different models because it was simple and clear. I said it to Randy and he said, oh that makes perfect sense. It's way better than the way we've been talking about it. It comes from a book called teaching in tandem. So I'm crediting the book but I'm also telling you not to bother buying the book unless you really like to read stuff that you're going to be able to say no it would never do that way to American. No it would never do that. It doesn't sound like my context. She didn't tell me that before she sent me the slide. No I sent him the slide. He said it's brilliant. I said it is. He said I'll get the book. I said I don't know that you really need the book. Because the context is very different. We live in a very different educational context. This is written with a very political context in mind. It's not like ours. The and very numbers driven context but the models themselves we've got quite lovely. So we would like to wander you through the models. We're going to talk about each one a little bit and we're going to talk about them in terms of what does this look like and then what are the strengths and some of the possible pitfalls of each one. Again with that piece it's a repertoire to choose from. When you think about how can I work with somebody else together. And just to cure remember all of these power points go up on the website. So I don't feel like you need to capture all these slides because there is some great stuff here but you may want to process it in your brain and think about it. So if you've already skimmed this one you've probably already attached it to some of the conversations that have happened around being the extra pair of hands. Because this is the one that certainly that I see is the most frequently done. It takes the least amount of planning but therefore it has the greatest pitfall. But the advantages are there's two of us in the room. So there's more one-to-one feedback. You know if we alternate roles no one has the advantage or looks like the real teacher. This is the one where you get kids saying well she's my teacher and she's my teacher and he's my teacher. Which is wonderful because the kids see us all then as being their teachers. You can capitalize on each of our strengths and it builds professional capacity. So all those things happen out of this. The biggest pitfall is is it's the easiest one to go off the rails because either one of us can feel like we're the extra pair of hands in the classroom that we're just standing there twiddling our thumbs. So link that back to phase comment of but if I know I have a direct responsibility when I'm in there of five students, six students that I'm helping to it negates some of that. The other piece that makes a difference in this is that remember the part where Randy said at the end of the class just one minute, two minutes, three minutes as you're walking out. How did it go today? What worked well? What could we change? Is a way of making sure that this stays more goal directed and nobody feels useless. And I think it's more common for the non-enrolling teacher to feel like the buzzing radiator of the classroom teacher. Really all this expertise and I'm wandering around saying how can I help? So two examples. First one, obviously two teachers demonstrating a strategy that we could use the next day. There are some examples of some strategies that we could be doing together. It may blend into some of the other models that we'll share from the point of view of what explicit roles are we taking while we're doing that. To do something. It could be kids are working independently on a task. One teacher is working in a small group on that task and the other teacher is supporting kids who are working independently. Again one teacher might be moving around the room helping kids who are working independently knowing there's some specific students I need to particularly focus on while another teacher and notice our language we're not saying the classroom teacher is doing one thing and the resource teacher or teacher librarian is doing something else that's a decision we make from the point of view of what works best for the kids. Now this can happen when one teacher is explaining something, giving instructions. The other teacher might be making a web of what those instructions looked like. Okay. Might be saying after so Randy's explained something and then I can say so I understand I'm first going to do and then going to do and then going to do. Okay. Check with your partner to see if that's what you understand too. So they're getting that piece that I might not know all the content that Randy's doing as the classroom teacher that comes in I may not know exactly where they are as the progressing through if they are actually doing some research around different kinds of whales or whatever the piece is but I can take his talk from the front and rather than listening to him explain I need to be showing kids how I'm making sense of his explanation because there's always kids who haven't figured out that they should be listening when the instructions are going on. That doesn't go away in grade one and grade two. That lasts for a long time. They haven't figured out how to tie in so then they have less learning time when everybody else gets to work. So even if it seems like a small role I'm thinking about who are the kids that I know are going to need some support and I could be going and saying did you get it or I could be saying here's what I'm understanding and just doing a quick capsule of what he's done in a different kind of demonstration to show everybody because I think that gets a much wider group as we go through. The other thing it says to the teacher I could try that next time. It's like going to Pro-D without having to leave your classroom. There's something that I hadn't thought of doing as you're going through each time. But it's making sure that that's happening all the time. I need a job when I'm in there. The second model that they talk about they call parallel groups. Now when you're doing this you divide the class in half or sort of half. Sometimes it's a little bit different but you're not looking at a small group and a large group. You divide into two groups. The teacher takes one group the non-enrolling teacher takes the other group. This takes more planning. It also takes here's a big word more trust because you have to assume that the other person is doing stuff the way you'd like it to be done. So you have to assume they know their content they know their strategies they know their process. A little bit. Now what it gives you is way more personal contact. Way more personal contact. I've now got ten kids. And don't I get to know them better than I do when I've got twenty kids as I'm going. But it means that in order to do this we need to have spent more time in planning. Because when you're finished working with your parallel groups you don't want to come back and find out that Randy actually had a little extra time so he did three more pages. Right? And then you're thinking oh good now tomorrow I'm by myself I've got half my kids who've done this much of the story and half my kids who've done this much and I've got to think of a way to catch them up. So it takes much more pre-planning and thought to go through in that piece. But it has the advantage of being able to reach more kids as you're going through in the piece. So here's an example of what the parallel groups can look like. One of the schools in my Richmond group last year was Woodward Elementary and when they were in one of our initial meetings, it's a nice little tiny school, in one of our initial meetings they said you know what we really need is to focus more on word work with our kids. It seems to just be a gap in what we've been doing as a whole staff. There's other things we're really proud with but we think this is a real need. So they got together with the whole team and they involved everybody in primary in it. So this was way bigger than the people who were in the changing results group and the principal and the resource teacher and they divided the kids up in groups and they did word work three times a week in the gym with everybody there together. And everybody had a group. That's a form of parallel group and it was bigger than just two. And the principal she could hardly stand it, she was so excited. This is the best part of my week and one of the teachers said one day she's having way more fun than all the rest of us in her group and the kids are wanting to all be in her group because there's a lot of giggling and laughing going on but you see what it did was it not only gave the kids more intensive instruction on something that was an identified need in the school it involved more people and they talked to each other about what they were doing so they'd be saying now why were they laughing the other day what did you do that they were all laughing and they're all so busy in your group all the time and so she'd be saying well I tried this and I tried that everybody's making little notes I'm going to try that too and what did you do because I noticed that stuff was going on over there so that collaboration was just going round and round like that and it was only three short periods of time three times a week that they were doing it as a group in the primary department those were parallel groups so another adaptation on parallel groups and this one comes from Westwood Elementary in Coquitlam where I had the opportunity to work with them for five years on an action research project so primary team of teachers highly concerned about what can we do to better meet the needs of all the kids in our classroom so as a group they came up with the action research question around how do we better meet the needs of our students out of that group conversation came this type of parallel idea so they used the standard reading assessment which I always describe as a precursor to the dart would that be an accurate way to do that okay they used that listen to the kids read highlighted on the performance standards then they met as a group they used the language from the performance standards to form their groups you can see some of their groups getting critical thinking with words getting the big picture they cross graded the kids one two two three four into groups they're everybody in the school the ESL teacher, the resource teacher, the principal all the classroom teachers so we had four classrooms we ended up with eight teachers obviously smaller number of kids they started two times a week doing this for six week blocks then they would reassess the kids would be shifted again they did it again for six weeks we surveyed the kids we surveyed the teachers overwhelmingly people talked about feeling better, working together it was the conversation around the table they brainstormed strategies they could use for those areas so they shared that knowledge they had very deep conversations that this was not paper and pencil time this was teaching oral language in time just to have a smaller group and give paper and pencil for the kids to do it was a time to teach because you had fewer kids the change in the culture of this school in my opinion was absolutely phenomenal because they collaborated together around a common need that they had at primary and one of the best things that happened was the intermediate people said we want to have an action research project too at the end of four years the whole school was involved station teaching so in station teaching it's looking at small groups within the classroom it can be sort of a learning center piece it can be learning station setters set up it can also be small group guided reading that set up so the difference in the station teaching compared to the parallel groups is smaller groups of kids who are working together some of whom can be working independently so often this is a homogenous group where the kids are grouped together for a like skill and there's three or four or five kids that are together typically a teacher would have two groups so you have two teachers in there each teacher would have two groups one that they are responsible for the independent work that they're working on and the other group that they are directly instructing and then they'd flip back and forth so again advantage more individual attention again because not only are the kids having a chance to do some independent work and practice the skills that you've been teaching them but you've got your group size down smaller and you can monitor what's going on back and forth so there's a greater focus on self-regulation there's a greater focus on do you know your job do you know what it is you're going to do how's it working for you how can you be independent from me there's a little bit of letting you out now here's a pitfall the possible pitfall here's a piece the way when you start you can't start until you've taught the kids the self-regulation skills so you can't set up all your stations you can't set up your learning centers you can't set up all your different groups and then assign the kids to go to them if you haven't taught them the prerequisite social skills to work without you sitting beside them for a certain amount of time so when you're starting with your stations you might be introducing one station to the whole class and everybody's learning how to do this and what their job is and how to work there and then another station comes along so you don't start this approach on the second week of September because you're teaching the kids the prerequisite skills so that this can work when it gets going and with two people so it requires lots of self-regulation from those kids but it gives them more teaching time which is the piece that makes the difference so I talked about that first one already and you guys know how to do that part but that's an example of what the co-teaching can look like the resource teacher, the non-enrolling teacher has two groups in guided reading the classroom teacher has two groups and you're going back and forth it was when I was at Tate and Michelle's room working with Michelle she's working on math groups she's working on math with her kids and she's got groups in her classroom that she's working with and in this particular case she had her kids in four groups and here's how her piece, I came in as a resource teacher so I'm very much coming in in the support role because she's got this unit that she's working on and she has a particular job for me when I come in she has one group that she's directly teaching she has two groups working on guided practice they're all working around patterning she has two groups working on guided practice her third group, she's working on guided practice but she would like some feedback on how this group is working and so my job is to be with this group observe them some questions about how things are going but not to interfere with the actual teaching and then to report back so she can see if she needs to do some adjustment so I'm there for a short period of time I have a very specific task I can observe easily and do a little bit of monitoring with the other two who are working on their guided practice piece but they're very engaged, they really don't need me I have so much information about the four kids that are working in this one group by being there for half an hour with them that I've talked about them for days oh and they did this and they did this and here was the evidence of the thinking and here's the evidence of the language and here's what they could do with the actual symbolic representation which she couldn't possibly have done by herself no matter how independent all three groups were because I had nothing to do but to pay attention to those four kids so she had a whole whack of information when that was over for visits to the class we had detailed, super detailed information to use in the teaching and furthering learning with all those kids in the math group now I didn't know that this example fit within the station model when I did it because this example came out of a class review and the reason I've chosen it is because it's science so the classroom teacher and I had done a class review his key areas that he wanted to focus on were organizational skills independence, self monitoring greater independence of his students and those sorts of things and here was my bind I couldn't work with him during the English language arts and math time because it didn't fit with all the other things that we were doing so jointly we decided to work on this in science now this stretched me phenomenally this goes to what I was talking about with the North An people he had the science curricular knowledge I knew nothing about that area nothing but I had the instructional knowledge I had the strategic knowledge I had the knowledge of helping kids to focus and do those sorts of things so somehow he talked me into creating two science stations and he created two still to this day don't know how he did that because I should have adamantly refused he should have created all four of them what we did in our co-planning was I know that's not equitable but given my knowledge of science it would have been a lot easier what we did in our co-planning was talk about how we could ensure that the stations met the needs of all the kids how they were differentiated how we would train the kids how we'd work with them those sorts of things so that was the whole setup in advance when we got to the point of actually opening all four science stations was an absolute joy to watch it's one of the best times I remember as a resource teacher working in this classroom while the kids were actively engaged in these science stations and I learned tons about science from having to explore those stations with the kids and the kid I remember in particular was the kid who refused to do anything because it was a station approach in science which was one of his passions and love you wouldn't have noticed him from anybody else in the classroom one large group one small group I don't think there's anything here that you know either teacher can work with either group we've referenced these all morning from the point of view of again it doesn't matter whom whom anyway it doesn't matter which person is doing which because it's that opportunity to provide tutorial intensive individual small group support obviously the big put fall here is the blackbird group right the group the same kids being in the group that works with a and so this goes back to my example from westwood that if we're continually looking at the kids then the kids who might be in the small group will change based on the focus of the small group so here's some way of changing that back table group one teachers working with the whole class in writing they're introducing their drafting the kids are working and one teacher meets with a group of three or four kids to do some conferencing and some editing together not just one on one but as a little group so that they're learning how to also do the peer editing and peer conferencing with one another and the group changes so here comes a group here comes another group and they're moving through same thing in reading everybody's reading large group the teacher is moving from student to student listening to short oral reads okay because after you know they've all got their books they're reading they can be reading their just right books it can be choice time and they're reading their choice books but you're going around and you're just listening to a sentence or two from each child because that's a chance to get that individual feedback and two or three students are sitting with a particular teacher around a particular focus okay so one's moving around and the others got a very small group with something that they're working on so it could be because this is the time where they need it could be the kids who are the least developed readers and that could be the group that you're working with one of the days but if that's the group you work with every single day you're in the class you're going to be targeted as in comes Faye and she takes the kids who have trouble okay rather than being a co-teacher so some kids will say to the resource person how come you're talking to me right because they have you so it really is still segregation you've just moved your body inside the classroom so it has to be that piece about working with all of us together the small group is working on reading the readers theater is an example I just wanted to reference because again I stole it from arrow lakes and shared it with another group as part of changing results for young readers from the point of view of a way to work together from the point of view that engages kids actively in what they're doing and the conversation that happened subsequent to that was a rich from the point of view of how are we helping kids to have the opportunity to practice reading the math example is because it pushes again right it takes us outside the classroom into the environment and it's a really neat way so here's a large group of kids who are using manipulatives to represent shapes small groups are rotating with another teacher using iPads to take pictures of shapes in the environment kids love being outside and then the one that I think we're sort of working toward is the teaming one it's the one where it's seamless okay the it's absolutely co-planned it's easiest it's often easiest when you've worked with somebody for a while the teachers take alternate roles it's kind of like Randy and I are are trying to do today we've planned this together it doesn't matter really in most cases who takes what slide and who starts although there's particular pieces in there that we each know about and that's what it looks like again in the classroom it's most often I think in this kind of seamless piece happening when you've got everybody together when you've got that whole class and one's taking the lead and you're alternating that back and forth as you're going on it's often starts that seamless piece in whole class and it's followed up in smaller group work with one of the other models it requires lots of trust and it requires lots of planning and when it works it's absolutely seamless and you can't imagine what you ever did when you didn't have that person around to work with some of the time but it's constantly building each other's skills as teachers it's the piece where I think of at one point when I was working we had a particularly challenging class and I just and I worked in the class with the teacher every Thursday when I was there until recess and I just at recess would come the first couple of months and I think I just I don't know how she survives and I said to Ruth like I just you know like I don't know how you're doing this and she says well I only hang on until Thursday and on Thursday you come and you're here till recess and I think I haven't lost my mind yet I can make it through till Friday okay that's all she's that's all because we're supposed to be experienced we're supposed to know what we were doing that we were in the stage where we couldn't even it was Thanksgiving we were still hanging on to the are they all on the carpet could we do something you know is it safe in here for everybody the learning needs were way down on all the other stuff and we were supposed to know what we were doing and and I'd say to her like really and you come back again every day and she said I just hang on for Thursday hang on for Thursday but it's that piece of how do you actually work in that place where it changes the learning for everybody it starting with whatever it is it needs to happen so that learning is better for those kids from 9 till 3 we can all be super effective for 20 minutes or 30 minutes with a small group but those kids who are most at risk need ongoing fabulous learning opportunities that they can be engaged in all day if they're going to keep pace with their companions okay so here's what I'd like you to do one minute say something to the person beside you what's ringing in your head from those examples as you've gone what's ringing in your head so the class review process okay you've seen this before we're just going to very quickly refer to what you start the conversation with what are the strengths of this class and you follow up that what are the needs of this class and then what are your goals for this year and then who are the individuals and we meet as often as we can to do this process at the beginning of the year with the school based team including the administrator and classroom teachers come in it takes 45 minutes to have the conversation come up with the plan as we're starting at the beginning the hardest question in that group of four for many people when they come in you know third week or fourth week of September what are the strengths of your class and you've got to stick with it you can't say oh well they're not a bad group but here are the needs because if it's going to be strength spaced you have to keep talking about what makes this class work so that you're changing the vision that says there are strengths not they're driving me crazy there are strengths they're all talking all the time but that's the piece that's the place we're going to talk we typically record on this form just because we find that the graphic helps with the organizing as we go through and here's an example which is not easy to see but will be on the website but the most important piece about that is we just wanted you to have a look to see how that can look as you go through and notice that we don't have decisions yet because we're going to make decisions if we're doing this as a school after all the classroom teachers have come together and we've assigned support as a team so that support isn't the same for every classroom support is based on the needs of the class in comparison to the other needs of the classes in the school because we're a community and we're all in this together and then the support person and the classroom teacher have some time probably another 45 minute period to sit together to start to make some co-planning about the decisions that are going to be made. Now if you've never seen class reviews before there is an absolutely unbelievable chapter in learning in safe schools that walks through how to take part in class reviews it's the basis upon which the science example came from because the goals of the teacher were