Alternative Teaching Essay

One other co-teaching structure is alternative teaching. When a classroom has alternative teaching, “one teacher takes a small group of students and provides instruction that is different than what the large group is receiving” (Ferry). Alternative teaching provides intense instruction for selected students in the classroom. When a classroom has alternative teaching “one teacher will work with the majority of the class, while the other teacher works with the students who need to be taught using different instructional materials” (Friend). This helps the students who struggle with learning in big groups because they can get more one-on-one instruction.

The last structure of co-teaching is team teaching. Team teaching is when “both teachers instruct on the same lesson with all the students present” (Ferry).

Time has a huge impact on how effective co-teaching can be. Some issues regarding time include: “the amount of time to plan, the time spent developing a school-wide support structure for co-teaching, the time spent to prepare the students, and the time teachers are given to develop a personal as well as professional relationship can greatly impact the co-teaching process” (Dieker). Even though these structures impact co-teaching in a huge way, does not mean that co-teaching has to take more time. The time must be dedicated to create a school and classroom that supports teaching teams as well as including student to make co-teaching effective.

The second issue of co-teaching is grading. To make the classroom effective “the teachers must determine how they are going to grade prior to the start of the year” (Dieker). This allows the students to be able to come to the class with a stable environment. It allows allows the students with diverse learning needs to be able to get the correct grading they need. The students who have IEPs will need to be graded a little different, and the teachers must decide on how they will do