Making a Meaningful Difference: The Effective Teaching Assistant Making a Meaningful Difference: The Effective Teaching Assistant.

Making a MeaningfulDifference: The

Effective TeachingAssistant

Objectives:• Our perceptions of childhood• The role of the Teaching Assistant• The qualities of the Effective

Teaching Assistant• Classroom interventions of the

Effective Teaching Assistant• What next?

What are our

perceptions about

childhood? What

should childhood be

like?

What should childhood be like?

1. As a child, how far from your front door were

you allowed to play?

2. As a child, at what age were you allowed to

go to school on your own?

3. As a child, at what age were you allowed to

visit the shops or a friend unaccompanied?

4. In your opinion, at what age does childhood

end?

“A child’s emotional health

is far more important to

their satisfaction levels as

an adult than any other

factors.”

What Predicts a Successful Life, Economic Journal,

November 2014

The behaviours of effective learners:• 1. Good working memory• 2. Inhibitory control• 3. Cognitive flexibility

“The ability to delay immediate

gratification for the sake of future

consequences is an acquirable cognitive

skill… This skill set is visible and

measurable early in life and has profound

long‐term consequences for people’s

welfare and mental and physical health

over the life span”

Mischel, The Marshmallow Test, 2014

Marshmallow Test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7LN96jEXHc

“Children in the past have been

assumed to have capabilities that

we now rarely think they have… So

fixated are we on a long and

happy childhood that we

downplay their abilities and

resilience ”

Cunningham, The Invention of Childhood, 2006

The worth of parental talk

Analysis reveals that parents education, social status, race, or wealth are not as important to IQ levels as how much they talked to their children and interacted with them in other ways.

Parents who talk to their children the most tend to praise the children's accomplishments, respond to their questions, provide guidance rather than commands, and use many different words in a variety of combinations. This type of interaction can… “accurately predict the vocabulary growth, vocabulary use, and IQ scores of children.“

Hart and Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American

Children, 1995, Paul H Brookes, Baltimore

What is the role of the Effective

Teaching Assistant?

Effective Teaching Assistants

statements activity• 1. All children can learn, they just learn in different ways

and at different speeds• 2. The majority of Teaching Assistants in our schools are

glorified babyminders• 3. The least helpful thing a Teaching Assistant can do is

to do the work for the pupil• 4. The true skill of the Teaching Assistant is to ask really

great questions• 5. The job of the Teaching Assistant is to help the child

keep up ‐ not help the child catch up• 6. The child a Teaching Assistant supports should make

as much progress as any other child in the same school

Own your own story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n4DyFh9iWA

Killer phrases to avoid

• He/She can’t do it …’• ‘Don’t push him/her too hard …’• ‘It won’t work …’• ‘It won’t work with these children…’• ‘We tried that…’• ‘We already do that…’• ‘I’d love to do that but…’• ‘What can you expect?’• ‘I agree but…’

What does your image say about how your children

learn?

What does your image say about

how you help your children learn?

Which students do you think you have

had the most impact upon in the last year?

Which activity or resource has had the most impact

upon on your pupils’ learning in the last year?

What are the personal qualities of the

Effective Teaching Assistant?

What would be on your classroom learning

checklist of the Effective Teaching Assistant?

Learning checklist for Teaching Assistants – you:• Help your pupils understand the purpose of the lesson• Encourage your pupils to stay positive throughout• You work with the pupils to help them stay focused on task• Know where your pupils are at and where they need to be• Link previous learning and check what the learners already know• Review learning as you go• Ask really good extending questions• Give lots of timely useful feedback to help improve their learning• Know, or find out about, the topic being taught• Ask your pupils about their progress and what may help or hinder

their learning• Share responsibility for their success• Role‐model good learning habits

Five Practical Interventions for

Effective Teaching Assistants

Five Practical Interventions for Effective

Teaching Assistants

1. BASICS First:• Belonging• Aspiration• Safety• Identity• Challenge• Success

Five Practical Interventions for Effective

Teaching Assistants

2. Oracy Precedes Literacy:• Talk it through before beginning• Insist on the proper words being used in

context• Use mini‐whiteboards or other visual tools

which encourage drafting• Rehearse using laminated Key Vocabulary

cards and Learning Mats• Test for Reading Age

Five Practical Interventions for Effective

Teaching Assistants

3. Make Connections Explicit:• Review and Preview• Summarise and Speculate• Insist on quality, keep all work and

regularly review it to show progress• Take photographs of successes• Use hexagons, exit cards, memory maps,

jenga or similar props to make connections

Five Practical Interventions for Effective

Teaching Assistants

4. Ask Great Questions:• Scaffold your questions• At the beginning discuss what would be the best

questions to ask, then collect them• Become the pupil: ask the child to teach or

explain to you• Add numbers to define the challenge: what are

the three most important things?• Rehearse possible future difficulties and plan in

solutions: what will we do if…

Five Practical Interventions for Effective

Teaching Assistants

5. Feedback which Works:• Praise for things which are in their control• Model school practice on written marking• Practice Self and Peer evaluation against

Success• Criteria: encourage Peer evaluation which is

positive, specific and helpful• Avoid, or limit, the use of raw scores, levels or

grades• Provide Response Time for any written feedback

Making a Meaningful Difference: The

Effective Teaching Assistant