Co-Teaching in the ELA Classroom: Content Teacher and ELL Specialist

As EL learners enter middle school, often language and literacy scores tend to stagnate. This research will delve into the opportunity to have two highly trained teachers within the classroom co-teaching English language arts with a focus on language development and compare that to the experience of students leaving the classroom each day for their pull- out EL instruction. Oftentimes teachers are placed into or have the best of intentions to start co-teaching, but one professional often ends up appearing to be the aide, or assistant. True co-teaching requires a relationship in which both members feel comfortable and confident in sharing their ideas and concerns. Cook and Friend go so far as to call a co-teaching situation a “professional marriage” (Cook 1995). English Language Learners are often removed from the content class to attend small group classes with the specialist. Ideally, remaining in the classroom during the school day would cut down on lost instructional time, reduce the stigma of needing to leave for additional services, build rapport with more adults as well as classmates and, of course, improve English language proficiency. This study is driven by the researchers desire to pave the way for students to connect their heritage language to their target language as efficiently and as accurately as possible. After two decades of teaching using the pull-out and transition check-in models, the opportunity to conscientiously and deliberately develop a co-teaching model that works for ELL students led to asking this question. How do ELLs’ reading skills and language acquisition in a co-taught setting compare to that of ELLs in a pull-out setting