Gabrielle Schwarz

EEX 4070 Article Review #2

10 October 2016
Vaughn, S., Schumm, J., Arguelles, M. (1997). The ABCDEs of Co-Teaching. Teaching
Exceptional Children: Education Periodicals, 30(2), p. 4-10.
The article The ABCDEs of Co-Teaching by Sharon Vaughn, Jeanne Schumm,
and Maria Arguelles clearly focuses on co-teaching in the classroom. They discuss
various models of co-teaching, including information such as effectiveness and examples
of how that form of co-teaching would take place (Vaughn, S., Schumm, J., Arguelles,
M., 1997). The authors come up with plans A through E, in terms of different ways to coteach (Vaughn, S., Schumm, J., Arguelles, M., 1997). They use an example case study of
sorts of two teachers who co-teach fifth grade in order to apply their models to a specific
example (Vaughn, S., Schumm, J., Arguelles, M., 1997).
I actually currently intern in a fourth grade classroom where a lot of co-teaching
occurs. My collaborating teacher is the math/science teacher. That being said we have
two blocks of students, those who come in the morning, and those who come in the
afternoon. Our first block has a large quantity of gifted students, while our second block
includes some students with learning disabilities. The gifted teacher comes in to co-teach
science in the first block, and the special education teacher comes in to co-teach math in
the second block.
During the first block, when the gifted teacher comes in; I feel as though my CT
and the gifted teacher model Plan E. Plan E is One Group: Two Teachers Teach
Same Content (Vaughn, S., Schumm, J., Arguelles, M., 1997). I personally really like

this approach. The students are always extremely engaged, and the teachers always seem
to build and add on to teach other. When the special education teacher comes in it is more
like Plan A which is One Group-One Lead Teacher, One Teacher Teaching on
Purpose (Vaughn, S., Schumm, J., Arguelles, M., 1997). I feel as though I definitely
prefer Plan E. I like how all the students get involved and how the teachers really get to
build off of each other (Vaughn, S., Schumm, J., Arguelles, M., 1997). It seems as though
Plan A can be a bit exclusive at times.
This article is highly useful for my future endeavors in teaching. More and more
schools are utilizing a co-teach model. I will try to incorporate a variety of the plans from
the article. Many students may react differently to different co-teach models. While some
students may benefit from two teachers in the front teaching the same, others may benefit
from one teacher doing more small group instruction and the other doing whole group
instruction which they discuss the different approaches in the articles (Vaughn, S.,
Schumm, J., Arguelles, M., 1997). While its also helpful to have different approaches for
the teacher to take, as some teachers may model one plan well, but not be too good at
making the other plans effective. Its nice for me to be able to go back to an article and
have a list of co-teach models to reference. Overall, I hope I get the opportunity to coteach and if so I will try a variety of co-teach methods in order for my students to have
the best possible learning experience.

References
Vaughn, S., Schumm, J., Arguelles, M. (1997). The ABCDEs of Co-Teaching. Teaching
Exceptional Children: Education Periodicals, 30(2), p. 4-10.