Navigating the Co-Teaching Relationship: from Rough Seas to Smooth Sailing, Part 3 of 3

The previous two posts in the co-teaching series focused on principles of navigating and/or facilitating a healthy co-teaching relationship, either from the perspective of administrators or teachers themselves. The following are some practical technological tools that both content-area teachers and “specialists” (teachers of special education or multilingual learners) can provide to support special populations in the mainstream classroom.  

1. Text-to-Speech Tools such as Snap & Read and Microsoft Immersive Reader remove the decoding barrier for those who are dyslexic or pre-literate.  Yes, such students need to work on improving their decoding skills, but they should be able to access content while they are working toward that goal in other settings. 

2. interactive Video Platforms such as Edpuzzle and Screencastify, also remove the print and/or language barrier for special education and multilingual learners.  Flipped lessons– in which content is presented via interactive video for homework the night before the teacher expands upon or reinforces material– allow students to review direct instruction as many times as they need to, simply by pressing the “rewind" button.  In addition, the close-captioning and translation functions available on many videos help make the content of the video even more comprehensible.  One newcomer with little English noted that his favorite class that first semester after he moved to the U.S. was the social studies class that adopted a “flipped” method.  He explained that he often got lost when other teachers delivered direct instruction in the moment, but since the main instruction for the lesson was on a video, he could rewind as many times as he needed to in order to grasp the content. 

3. Text Leveling Tools such as Brisk or Diffit allow specialists to adapt texts and assessments to a reading level that students can actually access.  Think of the endless possibilities for assignments such as research projects, current events, jig-saw reading activities, and even sub plans.  

4. AI Image Generation tools such as ChatGPT and Canva can help teachers produce images for end-of-lesson writing or conversation prompts, turn-and-talks, assessments and examples. Rather than depending on Google to produce an image that may not be quite what they want, an AI image generation tool helps teachers tailor an image to their specific needs.  One social studies teacher working with special education students and multilingual learners wanted a cartoon image that would show every part of the factors of economic production through a context appropriate for middle school students.  After a few minutes of waiting, ChatGPT generated a detailed cartoon image of a potato chip factory, complete with the teacher’s name on the branding.  

Co-teachers seeking to make content comprehensible to multilingual and struggling learners have more tools at their disposal than ever before.  What tech tools have you used for such students in your co-taught classrooms that are not on this list?