In the Parallel Teaching strategy, the co-teachers divide the class in half and instruct them on the same material. Parallel Teaching is teaching the same lesson with half as many students. We divide that up so that children have more air time and more teacher attention. It really draws them closer to the subject area that they need to be engaged in. So, we go from 22 students down to 11 students in each group. The primary benefit of this approach is that the student to teacher ratio is reduced, thereby allowing the co-teachers to maximize participation and minimize behavior problems during teaching. It allows for better thought out answers, the children have more time to think about it. One of the things I like about it too is some kids, they kind of want to hide. When we have them in a smaller group like this there’s less chance for them to hide. It’s just nicer always having a smaller group to be able to have more rich discussion and vocabulary from the students. In this class, Co-teachers John and Michael are using table groupings to divide up their classroom. This will reduce the student-teacher ratio and it will also increase instructional intensity. The table groupings aren’t random. They are grouped according to a heterogeneous grouping so we have a good mix of EL students and higher and lower performing students. With this approach teachers will have to maintain control over the noise level so that the groups do not get distracted. In addition, timing is a critical part of this strategy because both teachers need to take roughly the same amount of time to complete the instructional segment. Teachers should try to use this strategy more frequently to allow for maximum student participation in the learning. Usually when we are doing Parallel Teaching that time can vary. But the attention span of a kindergartner is relatively short and so from start to finish, you are looking at about 15 minutes. Parallel Teaching is a great methodology when you want to focus on the deeper instruction or deeper learning just because of the small groups. We’re able to pay closer attention to the details and catch kids before they fall out the bottom. For today’s purposes, we’ve found it most convenient to divide up in those familiar groups that they normally work in and it works very quickly, and they’re right at home.