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At SAIS we are constantly looking at ways to improve the skills of our staff. One key area for our school are our Teaching Assistants. Many of our TA’s are qualified teachers and all are college graduates with a wonderful command of the English language. They spend many hours helping the teacher in class as well as in specials classes. Helping the teacher prepare materials for the students to use, helping the students develop their fine motor skills in the Early Years classes and of course translating instructions when needed. In all Grades they support the teacher through taking part in reading and maths groups They also have to be skilled in understanding when it is necessary to translate and when it is time to encourage the student to listen and use their English. They help students read, do their mathematics and of course write.
In order to improve a TA’s teaching skills Ms Janet, our Head of Early Years produced and led an 8 week teaching skills course for all TA’s. Some of the areas they covered were How to use a Lesson Plan, using questions effectively in teaching, how to transition smoothly from one activity to another and Classroom Management. This included how to maintain discipline in the classroom though evaluating situations and employing different methods of bringing either a student or a whole class back to order. Another important skill was how to gain and retain the attention of the students during class time.
During the 8-week period there were opportunities to observe different classroom teachers in action and write reflections on how they could incorporate their different strategies into their own work. There were different scenarios presented to TA’s through case studies based on real life situations where they had to offer solutions to the problems presented. Each week they had homework to complete, just like any student. Finally, the TA’s had the opportunity to put what they had learned into practise by taking a live class which was observed and assessed by Ms Janet. They had to give Ms Janet their own assessment of how well they performed by outlining to her what went well and what did not. Ms Janet went through the result of her assessment and suggestions made to improve the weaker areas and how to build on their strengths.
At the end of the course each TA was presented with a certificate of completion and a congratulatory rose for all their hard work.
Ms Janet commented ‘We are so proud of our TA’s. They are such an important part of the SAIS Team. This course was rigorous, and they needed to put a lot of hard work into completing it. We are even more proud of them for having done this on top of all of the other duties they have in school.’