Team teaching is one of those phrases that gets mentioned in staffrooms more often than it gets tried. If you haven’t done it, it’s hard to see why you’d bother, or how you’d make it work if you did.
The basic idea: instead of three teachers each teaching their own class, the three of you teach all three classes together, in one space, at the same time. It might be two of you or four. The limits are usually how many colleagues you can talk into it and whether there’s a room big enough (the hall, the library, two classrooms with the partition open).
It won’t save you time
Let’s get this out of the way first. It sounds as though three teachers sharing a lesson would each plan a third as much. You can do it that way, but it’s the worst version. Team teaching works when it’s a proper team effort, and handing a chunk of the curriculum to someone else isn’t one. Work out together the best way to teach it.
Learn from each other
Schools are full of good teachers who almost never see each other teach. Team teaching fixes that. Experienced colleagues bring years of know-how (and resources), and newer ones, early career teachers included, bring fresh eyes to topics everyone else stopped questioning years ago. It’s CPD that happens in the lesson, not in the hall after school.
Plan together
Plan together rather than parcelling the work up, at least in the early stages. Each of you knows your own class: who’s flying, who’s struggling, what they’re into. Put that in one room and you’ll plan better lessons than any of you would alone.
Use the extra adults for adaptive teaching
With more teachers in the room, you can plan for the range of pupils in far more depth than one teacher usually can. With three of you, one might lead the lesson while another stretches the pupils who are ready for more and the third makes sure pupils who find it harder can get into the task. Swap the roles round so nobody is always “the support”.
Watch, and give feedback
Stay in the room for every lesson, including the ones you’re not leading. Watching a colleague teach is some of the most useful CPD there is. Afterwards, say what worked and what might be worth trying differently, and ask them to do the same for you. You might know a pupil better than your more experienced colleague does, and that’s worth sharing.
If something didn’t go well, talk it through together. Three heads usually find a better fix than one.
Try something new
With colleagues planning and teaching alongside you, it’s a good time to try the idea you’ve had at the back of your mind for a year and never quite dared. If it goes wrong, you’re not on your own.
Play to your strengths
It works the other way too. You’ll get to do more of what you’re best at while your colleagues do more of what they’re best at, and the pupils get the best of each of you.
Agree the rules first
Put several classes and several teachers together and you’ll find you each expect slightly different things, in behaviour and in how work is assessed. Agree one set of expectations for the team-taught lessons and stick to it. It’s fine for it to differ a little from what you each do on your own, as long as the pupils know what it is and every adult applies it the same way.
Team teaching takes more thought than teaching alone. Most teachers who try it properly think it’s worth it.
If you’d like to take the adaptive teaching further, try Adaptive Teaching and Interventions: Doing More for Those That Start with Less and Teach to the Top. For agreeing behaviour expectations, Implement Positive Behaviour Management in the Classroom is a good start.