What does our team-teaching look like?
Oct 19 & 20/20
At our practicum, my partner and I teach 2 days in a row each week. Our team-teaching approach is to take the topic given to us by our sponsor teacher, split it over the two days and we each teach a specific piece on our day. We use the same examples, same pdf’s, build off of each other’s work and both of us attend both days, prepared to help out.
This week we taught about IELTS writing task #1. For my part of the lesson, I introduced the topic, talked about the overall requirements, the grading structure, the types of charts, and had the students take the full 20 min and write a complete answer. The second day, my partner broke it down and taught the elements and timing of each part of the answer. Next week is more refinement and practice in writing task 1.
There was a lot of information to give the students on how this task is laid out and the requirements. I’m not sure it was a good idea to put so much info in one lesson. It was a bit dry. Lots of listening and work, without much fun. Part of the difficulty is that I’m not sure how to make the Teams environment interesting. I don’t have access to the full functionality of the program because I’m not in the system as a teacher. I can only share my screen, look at the chat and use google forms to get responses.
Next week will be better, because I can build on specific pieces and have more interaction with the students.