Role of Teaching Assistant

Teaching assistants make a valuable contribution to pupil achievement within a learning environment.   Outline your views on the skills you fill the teaching assistant should have that are useful in this role.   Explain how your skills and experience would enable you to fulfil the role of the teaching assistant and another similar role.

In modern classrooms not only teachers are playing a vital role in increasing pupils’ achievements, knowledge and skills within the school environment.   In many classrooms today there is an individual or group of people delivering the curriculum, assessing children’s progress and working hand to hand with teachers to support them by direct involvement in teaching and learning.   The range of roles for teaching assistants depends on the school, but the main role is working across a range of classes with groups or individual children according to particular needs of children in the school.   Teaching Assistant’s roles have changed over time; apart from traditional childcare roles such as preparation of a classroom and teaching materials, the teaching assistant also has to meet the needs of the more complex curriculum.  
One of the main roles of teaching assistants is supporting children with special educational needs; this role may vary between supporting a small group of children with the lower level of literacy through literacy hour to supporting individual children with learning communication and physical disabilities across the curriculum.   This support may concentrate on literacy development or use of specialist materials to help children with particular learning difficulties e.g. dyslexia.  
Another role of the teaching assistant is working with parents and teachers on developing children’s knowledge; here the teaching assistant can establish a good working relationship with the teacher and

use their communication skills to reflect on how the lesson went and discuss afterwards with the teacher, and as a result make...