10.3 Co-Teaching Models & Scaffolding
Key Takeaways
- Co-teaching delivers specially designed instruction inside the general education classroom, supporting Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) by keeping a student with disabilities alongside nondisabled peers and grade-level content rather than routing support through a separate pull-out setting
- The five recognized co-teaching models — one teach/one support, station teaching, parallel teaching, alternative teaching, and team teaching — each fit a different instructional purpose, and the model should be chosen based on the lesson's goal, not habit or convenience
- Overusing one teach/one support risks reducing a certified ESE co-teacher to an aide-like role and can inadvertently single out the same students for extra help every day, which is a well-documented misuse the exam tests for
- Scaffolding follows a gradual release of responsibility ("I do, we do, you do") and uses temporary supports — sentence starters, graphic organizers, worked examples, checklists — that are deliberately faded as a student's independence increases
- Prompt fading within scaffolding directly parallels the prompting-hierarchy fading covered earlier in this chapter: any support introduced to help a student succeed must have a planned, data-driven exit strategy so the student does not become dependent on it
Co-Teaching Models and Scaffolding
Quick Answer: Co-teaching pairs a general education teacher and an ESE teacher (or another specialist) sharing responsibility for the same group of students in one classroom, using one of five recognized models — one teach/one support, station teaching, parallel teaching, alternative teaching, and team teaching — chosen to fit the lesson's specific purpose, not out of habit. Co-teaching is one structural way schools deliver specially designed instruction while honoring Least Restrictive Environment (LRE), keeping students with disabilities alongside nondisabled peers and grade-level content. Scaffolding — a gradual release of responsibility from teacher-led to independent, with temporary supports systematically faded over time — is the instructional technique that makes any of these co-teaching structures actually build student independence rather than permanent dependence.
Co-teaching and scaffolding are two different kinds of decisions that show up together constantly in FTCE scenario items: co-teaching is a structural decision about how two educators organize a classroom, while scaffolding is a technique decision about how support is provided and withdrawn within any classroom structure, co-taught or not.
Co-Teaching and the LRE Connection
IDEA's Least Restrictive Environment requirement calls for educating students with disabilities alongside nondisabled peers to the maximum extent appropriate, with removal to a separate setting only when the nature or severity of the disability makes that necessary even with supplementary aids and services. Co-teaching is a direct response to that requirement: rather than pulling a student out to a separate special education classroom to access specially designed instruction, the ESE teacher (or related-service provider) brings that specially designed instruction into the general education classroom, so the student remains with peers and grade-level content throughout the school day.
The Five Co-Teaching Models
| Model | How It Works | Best Fit | Watch For |
|---|---|---|---|
| One Teach/One Support | The general education teacher leads instruction for the whole class while the ESE teacher circulates, monitors, and provides support as needed | Introducing new content where one clear instructional voice reduces confusion | Overuse turns the ESE teacher into an aide rather than a co-equal instructor, and can visibly single out the same students every day |
| Station Teaching | Content is divided into distinct stations; each teacher leads one station while students rotate through in small groups | Content that naturally breaks into separate components or skills | Requires careful planning so stations are balanced in difficulty and pacing |
| Parallel Teaching | The class is split into two heterogeneous groups; both teachers teach the same content simultaneously to their group | Lowering the student-to-teacher ratio for discussion, practice, or hands-on work | Both teachers must be equally prepared on the same content to keep instruction consistent across groups |
| Alternative Teaching | One teacher works with a small group (pre-teaching, re-teaching, or enrichment) while the other teaches the larger group | Short, targeted support for a specific skill gap or extension need | Should rotate which students receive the small-group role; consistently pulling the same students resembles segregated instruction happening inside the same room |
| Team Teaching | Both teachers deliver instruction to the whole class together, sharing the lead role fluidly throughout the lesson | Modeling debate, think-alouds, or complex problem-solving from two perspectives at once | Requires the highest level of co-planning and comfort between the two teachers |
Choosing the Right Model for the Purpose
The exam consistently rewards matching the model to what the lesson actually needs. A first exposure to a new, complex concept usually calls for one teach/one support or team teaching, where a single coherent explanation (or two coordinated voices) reduces the risk of confusing students with competing instruction. A skills-practice day with a specific gap to address for a subset of students fits alternative teaching. A lesson that splits cleanly into independent components fits stations. A discussion-heavy lesson benefiting from smaller groups fits parallel teaching. Relying on the same model every day regardless of the lesson's purpose — most often, defaulting to one teach/one support because it requires the least co-planning — is a common real-world misuse that reduces the ESE teacher's instructional role and the LRE benefit co-teaching is meant to provide.
Scaffolding: Gradual Release of Responsibility
Scaffolding provides temporary instructional support that is deliberately, systematically withdrawn as a student's independent competence grows, following the same gradual release of responsibility structure introduced in Section 10.2's explicit-instruction sequence: the teacher first does the heavy lifting ("I do"), then shares it with the student ("we do"), then hands full responsibility to the student ("you do"). Common scaffolds include sentence starters and paragraph frames for writing, graphic organizers for structuring ideas before drafting, worked examples that show a completed model before independent problems, and checklists that break a multi-step task into a visible sequence a student can self-monitor against.
The defining feature of a true scaffold — as opposed to a permanent accommodation — is that it is temporary by design: as a student demonstrates growing independence, the teacher deliberately removes or reduces the support (fewer sentence starters provided, a checklist replaced by a shorter reminder, a worked example given every other problem instead of every problem) rather than leaving it in place indefinitely. This mirrors, at the level of everyday classroom instruction, the same principle behind fading a prompting hierarchy for a student with a significant disability, covered earlier in this chapter: any support introduced to produce success must have a planned exit, driven by data showing the student is ready for less help, not left in place by default.
Bringing Co-Teaching and Scaffolding Together
Scaffolding can happen inside any of the five co-teaching models. In station teaching, one station might offer a heavily scaffolded version of a task (sentence starters, a worked example) while another station offers the same task with scaffolds already faded for students who are ready for full independence — both stations working toward the identical standard, at different points along the gradual-release continuum. In alternative teaching, the small group is often exactly where the most intensive scaffolding is introduced, with the explicit goal of fading it quickly enough that the student rejoins the larger group's independent work rather than remaining in the small group indefinitely.
A Worked Scenario
A co-taught sixth-grade ELA class is writing a persuasive paragraph. The two teachers use alternative teaching: the general education teacher leads the full class through drafting using a graphic organizer and a paragraph frame with sentence starters, while the ESE teacher pulls a small group of students who need more intensive scaffolding, providing a worked example paragraph and guiding them through the frame step by step. As students in the small group show they can generate topic sentences independently, the ESE teacher removes that starter first, then the transition-word prompts, then the frame itself over successive sessions — rotating different students into and out of the small group based on current data rather than keeping the same roster fixed for the semester, so no student is permanently tracked into the pulled-aside group.
A co-teaching team uses one teach/one support for every single lesson all year, regardless of the content or lesson goal. What concern does this pattern raise?
A co-teaching team splits their class into two heterogeneous groups and both teachers deliver the identical lesson content simultaneously to their own group to lower the student-to-teacher ratio for a discussion-heavy activity. Which co-teaching model is this?
A teacher provides a graphic organizer and sentence starters for a writing task, then removes the sentence starters once a student consistently generates topic sentences independently, followed later by removing the organizer itself. What instructional principle does this illustrate?