Support Staff and Teachers

Teaching Assistants support classroom management and assist with general administration. They help manage pupil behaviour and support pupils’ health, safety and emotional/social development. Teaching assistants establish relationships with learners and help pupils to access the curriculum. They support the development and effectiveness of work teams, work with other professionals and liaise effectively with parents.

Pupils may also have difficulties with the work in general or they may have listening troubles. Asking pupils to evaluate their own work may enable them to identify their own problems and the teaching assistant can address these where appropriate.

The boundaries between the teaching role and other professional roles, including points of referral to meet the needs of learners.

Schools employ and have teaching assistants, to again, create the best possible learning environment for the pupils. As a teaching assistant I will work as part of a team working to make the pupils learning journey, a successful one. I will attend staff meetings and continue to develop my skills through in-house training and other relevant courses. I will maintain and contribute to school policies and procedures, and work in partnership with parents and carers on behalf of the school.

During the lesson the teaching assistant should assist and be a role model for the children and throughout the lesson the teaching assistant should do what the teacher asks and requires.

I also must check the pupils work, if necessary help them to catch up, encourage them to correct their own mistakes and provide them with support to learn independently. In order to do that I must develop a positive working relationship with the pupils. That can be achieved by listening to them, gaining their trust and confidence, always respecting and valuing them, knowing that children must be safe at all times.

Although the class teacher is primarily responsible to plan, deliver and review all learning activities for the class, a teaching assistant can work alongside the teacher and make contributions that can improve the teachers plan, alter the delivery to make it more effective for pupil attainment and extend the teachers initial review. “Planning, teaching and evaluation follow a cycle which gives structure to the learning process” (Baker, B., Burnham, L., 2010) and is vital in my role as a teaching assistant. I aim to describe how I aide the teacher to plan and deliver lessons and how I give feedback to the teacher about individual pupils, in order for the teacher make improvements in her planning and to be able to target individual

My role as a teaching assistant is to take on tasks such as preparing the classroom for lessons and clearing up afterwards, which allow the teacher to concentrate on teaching. To support pupils with particular individual needs, sometimes my role is to work one to one, while others work in small groups or work with one of these groups. The teacher is not able to give every pupil individual attention, assistants provide essential support to the pupils and the lead teacher. My responsibilities also include:

To conclude, once the lesson has finished, the TA will provide feedback to the Teacher as to how and what the children learnt, if there were any areas of difficultly or if extension or different strategies were used to help the child learn, if the work was supported by the TA or if their work was independent. Having assessed the children’s work and passed on the relevant information, (this can be passed on verbally or by annotating the planning and by marking the children’s work) the teacher can then reflect effectively, update children’s progress on school monitoring systems and can now plan next steps for each individual child’s learning. Children all learn in different ways therefore the adult teaching needs to be versatile and have a variety of teaching strategies to enable them to assist in any given situation.

Teaching demands a lot of creativity and being able to adapt to different situations and environments. However, in order to experience lasting success, more than pot luck, charisma and spontaneity are required. Planning is essential. Planning and preparation gives a certain level of confidence. Whether it is a single lesson or a whole course, planning allows you to design the learning journey you wish to take your students on. In designing, you can make sure that you are catering for all your learners’ needs. This includes sufficient differentiation; for SEN needs as well as your gifted and talented students. In planning you can ensure that your lessons have a definite beginning, middle and end and have clear aims and targets. At this stage you will also prepare and plan resources. Also, you must plan your assessments. How will you know when the students have learned what you set out to teach? How will they know? How are you going to prove that learning has taken place at the end of the course? All these points will be addressed in the planning stage of the teacher training cycle.

Rewarding children for his or her accomplishment will give the class an incentive to do the best work in the studies. Lesson planning plays a major role in a classroom setting the steps I would follow for an effective plan is to have suitable objectives a list of materials and resources with direct instruction also practice exercises and study guide. A good teacher should be detailed to ensure the student’s the ability and skills also student’s come first in the class.

A teaching assistant will be able to deal with many situations where a pupil requires a reprimand or sanction of some description for their actions and behaviour. For example, minor conflicts between pupils, not listening to instructions, talking in class or poor manners.

As a teaching assistant/learning mentor, you are able to take more time with students to enable effective communication, whether this is one on one support or a small group. The students will benefit from this as they have been able to understand more comprehensively the task at hand, however if they do struggle with anything we can take the extra time with them to give them guidance which will help the student fulfil their learning potential.

It is important to observe the child carefully, closely and to listen to them in different situations to ensure that the teacher is clear about what their needs are, their strengths and difficulties. It is important to observe the

* Recommend appropriate options to suit learning needs, taking into account learning styles and methods of delivery available.