The co-teaching activity was first implemented in the school where I am doing the internship and one week later, in my colleague’s school. Both activities were carried out in the fourth grade classroom. While I knew the pupils of my school very well, my co-teacher had not shared many hours with hers, so she did not know them.

 

We started preparing the co-teaching activity on the moment we found out we would do it together. We both agreed that we did not want to do a teacher-led session in which students had to memorise information, so once I put forward the topic that my mentor asked me to work on, we started thinking how we could transform it into a hands-on engaging task for the pupils to complete.

 

During the preparation of the activity, my colleague always displayed initiative to suggest possible approaches to the topic and ideas and much creativity. She never said no to any of my suggestions and looked at them openly. She showed a very positive and open attitude, even when she did not trust that a specific suggestion would be feasible.

 

In her school, they function somehow differently from mine. Some of these differences include the materials they use, the way the use of English is encouraged or the use of a reward system, just to name a few. In my school, on the other hand, children are very used to group work, and hands-on tasks. Having critically observed how these different input and ways to work enhanced the performance of the pupils of her school, she was now able to put forward the ones that she considered most useful - the use of scaffolding, the reward system as a means to encourage children and some ideas specific to the activity. In retrospective, although the scaffolding did not go very well, the rewards and some of her other suggestions were a resounding success. She was very eager to embrace the suggestions I put forward as well. This way, when we implemented the activity in my school, the children did not have the difficulties that usually stem from working following a different methodology.

 

She was very flexible when choosing the topic. It was my mentor’s suggestion to work on the numbers, and she welcomed this proposal with open arms. In addition, she always made sure that what we prepared was compatible with her own school, and seeked advice from her mentor.

 

She had very realistic views of the timing and the children’s abilities with regards to the content, most of the activities and the English level.

 

During the implementation, she was at all times attentive so that both of us had a chance to speak and to provide one-to-one attention to the children. When introducing activity and the different tasks, she was quick at noticing any concepts that were left unclear, and took immediate action to explain or paraphrase them. She knew where she could be of help, so she acted promptly to write key information on the blackboard, to go tive one-to-one instructions or to use the reward system.

 

When implementing at the school where I did the teaching sequence, she quickly established a positive connection with the specialist and the pupils. In her school, she made sure that I felt welcome.

 

As the pupils were working in groups, she visited the different groups to make sure they knew what they had to do. To guide them towards the resolution, to encourage them to speak in English and to solve any conflicts.

 

She showed a confident and determined attitude. She was very quick at responding to the students positive and negative behaviour in order to reinforce the former and to discourage the latter.

 

She used English at all times during the lesson. This allowed her to “provide significant levels of meaningful communication and interactive feedback in the target language in order for students to develop language and cultural proficiency.” (Crouse, 2012). However, she accompanied her words with gestures and visual support. She spoke at a good pace - neither too fast nor too slow - using simple vocabulary and often checking for understanding, especially after reading the information that introduced the students to the task. However, I noticed how she was a bit doubtful especially about the numbers, but in general about the English contents. I would encourage her to thoroughly review them before the lesson.

 

She strongly encouraged pupils to speak in English by providing positive feedback when they did, regardless of the correctness of their productions.

 

As for the evaluation of the activity, she showed a critical attitude with regards to waht did work well, and what could be improved, should there be an opportunity to do it again.

 

She showed a very similar attitude in both her own and my school. It is true that she showed some more leadership when we implemented the activity in her school, mainly to give me a hand to move around and find out how things worked there. She initiated the lesson in her school, but we took turns so that we both could implement all the different parts of the lesson.