Tda_3.3

1.1 How can a learning support assistant practitioner contribute to the planning, delivery and review of learning activities' Image sourced - http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/consistent_teacher/tlcycle.htm As you can see from the image above, teaching is a constant cycle of planning, assessment and actual teaching. It is through this cycle that the teacher can identify any areas that children will need extra help, support or learning. Teachers usually produce a medium term plan of what they would like to cover within a certain period of time, say every half term for example. From this they then produce short term or weekly plans to identify what will be covered in much more detail. It is usually in this plan that the roles and area of learning support is outlined. The class teacher usually speaks with the learning support assistant to establish what their role will be at different point; it is during this time that suggestions and different strategies can be discussed. As the learning support assistant usually works on a more one-to-one basis than the teacher, she will often have a clearer idea of whether something will work better than others with certain children, particularly those that have been identified as having additional needs. Teachers must include within their planning what the learning objective of the lesson is and what they children should have done to have achieved this, sometimes called a success criteria or similar. It is from these objectives and criteria that both the teacher and learning support assistant can establish whether the children have achieved what is needed to progress or whether they need additional learning. Assessment is a key area within learning, it could well be that a child really excels in one particular area but has fallen right behind in another, it is crucial to find this out so that steps can be taken to support the child and offer them the learning that they need. It is extremely important that the teacher and the learning support assistant have a system in place where they can let each other know how children are doing so that changes can be made to future plans if needed, 5 minutes at the end of the day to have a quick conversation or even a quick note in a diary is often all that is needed. It needs to be clear from a plan what the role of the learning support staff is during a lesson. Are they to lead a small group' Work with 1 child' Are they scribing for a child' If this is not outlined in the plan the learning support assistant needs to be given clarification from the class teacher, there is nothing worse than sitting in a class and not knowing what you should be doing. 1.2 What are my own strengths and weaknesses in relation to supporting learning activities and how may these impact on the support that can be provided' Working in a Primary School as a learning support assistant means that I have to cover a wide range of subjects and inevitably there are areas that I feel more comfortable with than others. I feel that although I have a good understanding of the English language there are times when I need a little reminder on how to use a certain grammatical skill or which piece of punctuation would work best in a piece of text. It is therefore very important that I am able to discuss this with the class teacher beforehand so that I am able to offer the best possible support to the children that I am working with. I feel that my strengths lay in Numeracy and Computers; because I am very confident in these areas I am able to be far more enthusiastic and offer maybe more adventurous suggestions to the class teacher when deciding how to cover a particular topic as I know that I will be able to offer support to her if she isn’t quite as confident with something. It is very important that you feel confident about something before trying to teach it to someone else, if your student senses that you aren’t completely sure about something they may feel that it is too hard and therefore develop a negative attitude. There is however nothing at all wrong with explaining to your students that you do not know the answer to something or that you need a little help with something as it shows that it is OK to ask for help. 1.3 How can you use knowledge of the learners and the curriculum to contribute to the Teacher’s planning' When approaching a new subject or area with a child or group of children it is particularly important to make the learning relevant. This will ensure that the children are engaged and motivated. Albert Bandura’s Social learning Theory tells us; “Social Cognitive Theory implies that you must pay attention for you to learn. If you want to learn from the behavior of the model (the person that demonstrates the behavior), then you should eliminate anything that catches your attention other than him. Also, the more interesting the model is, the more likely you are to pay full attention to him and learn.” (Sincero, 2011) It is important that learning can be adapted to suit the needs of all children; it does not matter if something is explained in a different way, so long as all the children understand how to come to the same conclusion. All children learn in a slightly different way, some may be Kinosthetic learners and need to do something “hands on” to fully grasp what is it is that they are required to do, others may need a lot more visual input. An example of this, I worked with a small group of boys in a Numeracy lesson, we were doing work on ratio and one boy, GY, just could not understand the concept of it. I knew that GY was a huge football fan so I go out some unifix cubes and made up a problem for him that involved his favourite football team and used different coloured cubes to differentiate between the two groups in the problem. It took a few minutes for him to fully understand but as soon as he had he was able to go off on his own and complete the work that teacher had set for him. As a result of this, the teacher included similar practices in future lessons and many more children were able to grasp the problems much easier. 1.4 Offer constructive suggestions for own role in supporting planned learning activities. For this unit I knew that we had to plan, teach and evaluate a learning activity so I spent some time discussing this with my class teacher and we decided that as a couple of girls in the lower ability group in Numeracy were really struggling to understand fractions I would do some work on this with them. One of the girls in the group has a slight hearing impairment, one has lots of issues with self-confidence and one has the tendency to lose concentration so I knew that I had to create something that would keep them all focussed, interested and motivated. As a School we have just implemented a new Numeracy strategy called “CLIC” and it has to date been very successful in raising the standards of learning throughout the whole school and it makes assessments much easier as the children have weekly “tests” called Big Maths, Beat That. CLIC works on 4 principles; Counting, Learn its, It’s Nothing new and Calculations. The first section, Counting, we spend 10 minutes going over a skill that we need to learn that week, this week it was mixed number and improper fractions. I sat with the girls in my small group and supported them with this. On the Learn its section, we were working on fact families, counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s and then looking at the relationships between multiplying and dividing numbers in these tables. This was a class lead activity and I was just there for reassurance for the girls really, checking, their answers and so forth. In the third section, It’s nothing new, we went over dividing and multiplying by 10, again this was a very quick recap, just 10 minutes to check that the children had remembered what we had learnt on previous weeks. For the last part of the session, Calculations, the class teacher and I decided that we would try a new tactic with the girls. The teacher would do some work with the rest of the class at the front of the room and I would work at the back with mine. The class teacher and I decided that the work would be about fractions and recognising fractions and that I could pretty much do any activity that I wanted with them that would help them feel more comfortable with this. I decided on a Bingo game or a card matching game. I would then ask the girls to complete some worksheets at the end just to show that they had understood the purpose of the game and that they had met their success criteria. The game was a very straight forward one; I designed a board on the computer at home and found some fractions picture cards on the internet. I would show the girls the card with the shape fraction on and they would have to cover the space on their bingo board that showed that fraction if they had it. The first one to get a line, 2 lines and then a full house would be the winner. At the back of this pack you will find a copy of the teacher’s lesson plan, black worksheets that the children were given, a copy of the bingo board and one each of the worksheets completed by the children. 2.3 Ensure that the learning environment meets the relevant health, safety, security and access requirements. As we were working at the back of the classroom there were no security risks or access requirements, although I made sure that I was sat next to the child who has a hearing impairment to ensure that she was able to hear me. I checked that the area was free of any hazards like trailing wires, items on the floor or broken furniture, I also made sure that if I saw any of the children doing anything dangerous like swinging on their chair I reminded them that they needed to keep all four legs on the floor. The room was warm and comfortable and there was nothing to distract the children from their work, except the other children in the class. 3.6 Explain the sorts of problems that might occur when supporting teaching activities and how to deal with these. There can be a number of problems that you are faced with when supporting teaching activities, many of these are beyond your control and need to be dealt with once they have happened or may be about to happen, others can be prevented by using different strategies and planning. The sorts of problems that could occur are; * The child/children don’t understand what you are asking them to do. If this happens it is important to reassure the children that it is not a problem and then try to explain the task to them in a different way. Sometimes just rewording something in simple terms is all that is needed. If most of the group understand but there are one or two that are still struggling then these can be supported on a 1-2-1 basis until they feel comfortable. * You do not have the resources needed for your planned activity There may be occasions where you have not been able to prepare resources in advance, this could be because; * Someone has used the items you needed * The photocopier is broken * Power failure * Internet failure * Change to planned activity * Something is broken If something like this does happen it is important to do all you can to gather the resources needed, if however this is not possible then postponing the session you had planned and doing something that you do have the resources for is a possibility, you could even read with children, do a class story or something similar as a delay tactic if the problem is only going to be temporary. * There is a problem with the classroom or the area that you would have been using. There will be times when it is not possible to use the classroom, this could be due to an examination, power failure, a broken window or building work. When this happens it may be possible to use another classroom or area of the school. It is important to ensure that any area that you will be using meets all health and safety guidelines and that any security and access risks have been investigated. If you had been due to do a PE lesson or activity outside and poor weather means that this is not possible you may need to postpone this lesson and do something different in a more appropriate area, in the hall for example. It could be that the area that you were going to work in is too noisy or there is too much going on around it and the children are distratcted. If this is the case, see if there is anuthing you can do to alleviate the noise or distractions, if not, you may need to move to a different area. * The pupil’s themselves are causing problems. There will always be some sort of issue when a group of children need to work together, whether this is that they do not like a particular child for whatever reason or that they are in a very mixed ability group. Whatever the issue is it is important to remain calm and explain to the children what is expected of them, what is acceptable and what is not. If an issue does arise that becomes distracting to the others it is important to deal with it straight away. Behaviour Even the most well behaved child can have “off” days and if provoked, upset, worried, tired, bored or generally unfocussed they could display challenging behaviour. It is important to address this immediately and always praise children that are behaving well. If a child continues to behave poorly or distract others it may become necessary to remove them from the activity and work with them at a later time. Self-esteem and confidence Some children need lots of extra encouragement and support to make them feel that they are able to complete the task that they have been given. This can be time consuming and hard work if they are reluctant to co-operate, however a little patience and reassurance is often all that is needed. Concentration There are many different reasons why a child may find it difficult to concentrate, these could include tiredness, illness, boredom, the work is too difficult or they are worried about something. They may also have a learning difficulty that makes is very hard for them to stay focussed. Whatever the reason for their lack of concentration, it is our job to find a way to engage them, whether this be through giving them short rest breaks between longers pieces of work, adapting the work so that it is based around something that interests them or even just a gentle reminder that they have to complete the work they have been given. Ability It is more and more common to work in groups with mixed abilities or age ranges. Whilst this is beneficial for the most part it can make managing a group difficult as children that are more competent could finish long before the lower ability children. It is important to always have an extension activity to keep them on task and avoid any distractions for the other children. 4.3 Record observations and assessments of learner participation and progress in the required format. Name | LO | Notes | Achieved LO' | LS | To be able to recognise fractions and record them | LS was rather fidgety during the written part of the session and needed lots of encouragement to stay focussed and on task. She asked me to verify what she was doing was right initially but once she became more confident she was happy to work independently. | Yes | LB | To be able to recognise fractions and record them | LB was initially very quiet and worked well but when it came to playing the bingo game she became rather loud and bossy, a quick reminder that she should work on her own and concentrate on her board so that she could see if she had the fractions and she was much better | Yes | SR | To be able to recognise fractions and record them | Worked well, was very quiet during the written part of the lesson but was much more interactive when playing the game. | Yes | As previously stated, all of the girls needed additional support in one area or another and this session proved very helpful for them. In previous lessons they had really struggled to identify what fractions meant and how they could record them. Doing a quick game with them really helped them to keep focussed as they had to concentrate on what they were doing, they enjoyed the competitivity as they wanted to be the first to get a line or the full house and by the end of the session they were much more confident. The Bingo game was completed fairly quickly and I could sense that the girls needed something else to do so I asked them on pieces of paper to write down some fractions and place them on their boards to cover the ones that were already there. I then showed them the shape fractions again and we played their boards. This was very successful as they enjoyed the fact that they had been able to record fractions and they were contributing to the game themselves. On reflection, I would definitely do this game again with another group but would ensure that I had blank boards that they could write on as an extension task if they were becoming bored of the game or unfocussed. Bibliography Sincero, S. M., 2011. Social Learning Theory. [Online] Available at: http://explorable.com/social-learning-theory.html [Accessed 15 January 2013]. Training, D. o. E. a., 2008-2009. Consistent Teacher Judgement. [Online] Available at: http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/consistent_teacher/tlcycle.htm [Accessed 15 January 2013].