Pursuing Collaboration With Content-Area Teachers

By: Kathryn Kulie

For English language development (ELD) specialists, integrating their work into the classroom alongside content-area teachers can be a challenge. This work is essential to support multilingual learners’ academic growth. As one educator said, the goal is “that language support feels seamless rather than added on.”

To learn more about developing a collaborative process with content-area teachers, we spoke with WIDA Fellows Lanísia Scarbrough, a current multilingual learner teacher, and Tee Swan, a current principal and former ELL Coordinator.

Structure Regular Co-Planning Time

Lanísia and Tee’s schools allocate scheduled time for ELD specialists and content-area teachers to engage in co-planning.

For Lanísia, this planning time incorporates a backward design approach. “We first look at state priority standards and then incorporate the WIDA [English Language Development] Standards to develop aligned learning targets and success criteria,” she said. “While we stay aligned with those expectations, we build-in small adjustments to better meet our students’ needs.”

Tee’s school follows a similar approach. ELD specialists and content-area teachers in each grade meet to analyze formative data and discuss tailored strategies and interventions to meet the needs of multilingual learners and special education students. Tee believes this regular, face-to-face interaction is essential.

“We find that more personalization in conversations helps with meaningful interactions that are then applied, used and experimented with in the classroom,” he said.

Develop a Co-Teaching Relationship

ELD specialists and content-area teachers also need to determine how they’ll co-teach in the classroom. Consider questions like: How long is each lesson, and how will we divide the content? Will one teacher consistently lead certain types of activities, or will we rotate responsibilities? Will we implement small group or individual support options for multilingual learners?

This partnership may not always look the same, and that’s okay. For instance, when Lanísia began co-teaching, they followed the One Lead Teacher / One Support Teacher model.

“It allowed us to build trust, establish routines and better understand student needs without overwhelming instruction,” she explained.

For Lanísia, this process is especially useful for the hands-on aspects of instruction, like modeling and guided practice.

“I typically prepare or adapt visuals and language supports, while the content teacher plans how they will be embedded naturally into the lesson flow,” she said. “We also decide in advance who will lead different parts of instruction.”

Because they assigned these responsibilities beforehand, it was easier for them to focus on what is paramount — students’ learning.

Eventually, they became more comfortable working together and felt ready to intentionally explore new approaches, like team teaching and parallel teaching. Whatever your teaching relationship looks like, the most important takeaway is to continually reflect on what’s working well and what new approaches might better suit your pedagogy.

Create Consistent, Accessible Materials

Store instructional materials in easily accessible systems and be consistent with resource use.

Lanísia’s team uses shared document formats. For example, for vocabulary instruction, everyone can access slides with visuals, definitions and example sentences.

Another strategy is to include everyone in the brainstorming process. In Tee’s school, teachers across the grade have used their co-planning time to collaboratively develop new pedagogical tools.

“Part of this time has been [spent] introducing concepts of creating stations for learning in the classroom that allow students to select methods that work more effectively for them individually, such as using manipulatives for visual learning, word walls, word practice [and] using a variety of vocabulary to enhance the depth of learning,” Tee explained.

Whether it’s for a new tool, strategy or model lesson, the school then sends instructional coaches into the classroom for additional support with implementation as well as lesson observation.

Content-Specific Advice: Co-Teaching for Math

Tee and Lanísia found that multiple instructional modalities were essential for teaching math to multilingual learners.

Supplement auditory instructions with manipulatives, written instructions and explicit math language instruction. For her first-grade students, Lanísia first identifies key vocabulary terms like “subtract” or “equal.”

“These words are introduced using pictures, gestures, and examples, and we revisit them repeatedly during instruction and practice,” she said. “We also support students with sentence frames that match first-grade language expectations, such as: ‘I added ___ and ___.’”

She also models “math thinking” aloud for students.

“While the content teacher models how to solve a problem, I reinforce and restate the language, pointing to visuals and using gestures to support understanding,” Lanísia shared.

Tee also used this approach to assess student performance.

“I would keep in mind ... how to use a variety of performance criteria to support expectations,” he said. He created rubrics with students, using student-friendly language, so they could easily apply their learning to demonstrate their proficiency.

Final Thoughts

ELD specialists need to be intentional in their preparation and collaboration with content-area teachers. These teaching relationships aren’t built overnight, but with these strategies for structured, comprehensive planning and a willingness to stay flexible, they will grow naturally over time. For more information and guidance on this topic, consider the following resources:

• Lanísia consulted and recommends co-teaching models from the book “Co-Teaching for English Learners: A Guide to Collaborative Planning, Instruction, Assessment, and Reflection,” by Maria Dove and Andrea Honigsfeld.
• Read another Featured Educator’s perspective on collaborating with content-area teachers.
• Read the WIDA Focus Bulletin “Collaboration: Working Together to Serve Multilingual Learners”