The pages in this site aim to provide teachers with an occasion to expand their thinking about instruction for students that are learning English, both at the secondary and the elementary level. These pages can be explored in any order. They provide opportunities to examine each topic through a variety of media and offer discussion and reflection questions based on the materials provided.
Collaboration between ELL and mainstream teachers in a K-12 setting can be very beneficial to students who are still learning English. It can also promote professional development for teachers. Explore the topic of collaboration through these teachers' perceptions of the benefits and challenges of collaborating. Then look for links to your own experiences and professional goals.
Heidi Adam
secondary
science
Terry Fritz
secondary
ELL
Natalie Tourtelotte
secondary
social studies
Sharon Cormany
secondary
ELL
Shoua Moua (left)
mainstream kindergarten
Carolyn Cone (right)
ELL. specialist
What are the benefits of co-teaching?
What are some of the challenging or most difficult aspects of co-teaching?
Describe what you consider to be important personality traits of a successful co-teaching teacher.
To be answered after reviewing video clips.
To be answered after reviewing video clips.
Your couch. It is mine.
I'm a cool paragraph that lives inside of an even cooler modal. Wins!
Ms. Terry Fritz (ELL Teacher) and Ms. Heidi Adam (Science Teacher) Ms. Fritz and Ms. Adam co-teach a Science class for lower level ELL students. This is the second year Ms. Fritz has co-taught with Science teachers but the first time teaching with Ms. Adam. They volunteered to co-teach with each other. Ms. Fritz is a very experienced teacher and has been teaching English as a second language for ___ years. Ms. Adam has been teaching for 3 years, and this is her first time co-teaching. Prior to having a Science class made up of ESL students, she had experience working with ESL students in her regular mainstream classes.
The students in the Science and the Social Studies classes are primarily Liberian. All have had limited formal education and many have experienced or witnessed atrocities in Liberia before coming to the US. Liberians typically speak a variety of English that can be difficult for speakers of American English to understand. The teachers feel that class as a whole would have difficulty succeeding in a mainstream classes due to their limited reading level and their lack of background knowledge in the subjects they are studying. The classes consist of a mix of students from all high school grades and ages.
Ms. Sharon Cormany (ELL Teacher) and Ms. Natalie Tourtelotte (Social Studies Teacher) Ms. Cormany and Ms. Tourtelotte co-teach a Social Studies class for lower level ELLs. This is their first time they have co-taught together, and they volunteered to collaborate with each other. Both have taught at the same school for three years and they knew each other before agreeing to co-teach. They decided to create this class to support the development of their ELLs' social studies specific skills, general literacy skills and English language skills.
The students in the Science and the Social Studies classes are primarily Liberian. All have had limited formal education and many have experienced or witnessed atrocities in Liberia before coming to the US. Liberians typically speak a variety of English that can be difficult for speakers of American English to understand. The teachers feel that class as a whole would have difficulty succeeding in a mainstream classes due to their limited reading level and their lack of background knowledge in the subjects they are studying. The classes consist of a mix of students from all high school grades and ages.
Ms. Cone and Ms. Moua co-teach a full-day kindergarten class to lower level ELLs for half of the school day. The children spend the other half of the day only with Ms. Moua. Ms. Cone is an elementary ELL specialist and has been teaching ELLs for 15 years. Ms. Cone saw the predominant Hmong student population at her school and felt a strong need to learn their language to better understand and communicate with them. Now she speaks basic Hmong and utilizes it in her instruction successfully. She has had many experiences collaborating with mainstream teachers. Ms. Moua is a mainstream kindergarten teacher. She has been teaching kindergarten for three years. She has not co-taught previously. Due to the Vietnam War, Ms. Moua's family was forced to leave Laos and became refugees in Thailand. Ms. Moua was about 4 years old when her family immigrated to the U.S. in October 1979 and settled in California. Ms. Moua lived in California for about 18 years and then relocated to Minnesota. Ms. Moua's first language is Hmong.
All of the kindergarten students in this class had Hmong as their home language. While Hmong is typically the majority first language spoken, there are usually speakers of other languages in the class as well. This year was an exception.