Team Teaching and the Water Cycle

This week, the ASPIRE 5 scholars explored how the Sun and the ocean interact in the water cycle.  The lesson was a good example of how Mrs. Fullhart and I plan to team teach this year.  With the help of our student teacher, we designed three stations.  In the first station, scholars created a Doceri video on their iPad that explained the key concepts of the water cycle.  For the second station, students created a "Graffiti Wall" to represent each part of the water cycle.  Scholars drew the first thing that came to their mind for each card, which included condensation, precipitation, accumulation, evaporation, and energy source.  In the third station, scholars completed a lab, which allowed them to view parts of the water cycle in a water bottle.  Scholars had two days to complete all three stations, and they were free to complete them in any order.

So what are the advantages of the team teaching model, and how does it help highly gifted students?  First, having the ability to stage multiple events in the classroom at the same time gives the scholars flexibility and choice.  Student autonomy is very powerful, and the freedom to move between the stations at their own pace gave them control of their own learning.  Next, having a teacher at each station allows us to identify individual and whole group strengths and weaknesses.  Each day we were able to communicate what we thought the students grasped, and what we needed to improve.  In the future, we are committed to using team teaching to make our lessons differentiated, and to give the students more choices.  With three teachers in the classroom, we will be able to design tiered lessons, and still provide the necessary facilitation while the scholars work.  We also will be offering scholars choices of activities that match their interests and special talents.  While choice has always been a staple of ASPIRE, being able to get directly involved in student groups will allow us to better serve them with more direction, analysis, and feedback.

We are very excited about the potential of our open classroom design.  The possibilities seem endless, as we keep thinking of new ways to take advantage of our physical space every day.  In the end, it is the scholars who are benefiting the most, as they receive more individual attention and support.  How successful will it be?  Stay tuned all year long to find out.