December Log

The final month of 2015 has been an extremely exciting one. The Children who were a part of my production 'Windrush' finally performed, managing to pull off three amazing performances in one day! The first one in the morning was to Foundation Stage and Key stage 1, the afternoon one to Key stage 2 with the final performance for parents after school in the slot they would usually rehearse in. It was lovely to hear back reports that students, parents, and staff all enjoyed the play and appreciated the initiative and and hard work I had put in with the kids. After watching the performance a lot of children and adults have been requesting another play that they can be involved in. We will just have to wait and see if I can pull anything out the bag in the new year! There's been a few things I've learnt from this time that I would do differently and a lot that I would keep and just have more experience on how to do better! Some of the key things I've learnt for if we do another production would be...

1. Communication: Letting the right people know what's going on and when with more notice and even others in case they can help and  give suggestions.
2. Realistic estimates and organisation: Whereas the play was originally meant to be for Black History Month it panned out across three month! In order for under 11's to pull of a play to a good standard with only about 45 minutes of rehearsal a week, they would need much more time! Pat and myself often found ourselves begging Bronwen, the LSA in charge of Lunchtimes and Linda, Headteacher for extra time during the school day! 
3. More organisation and knowing your resources!: Although the play was a success, I believe next time it will be better simply due to experience. The children in 'Windrush' have set a standard and expectation for the others that will follow, and now, knowing what resources are available to us in the school and where before-hand will make things a lot easier.

I'm hoping to upload the video of the play soon! I often get so carried away with the being an LSA(/  director in this case) that I forget to take pictures and videos for my blog!

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November Log

It’s now November, and although we’re in the third month of the year I appreciate the fact that Learning Support Assistants/ Teaching Assistants and Teachers are still being trained on different areas which are involved in your role. In our weekly LSA meetings this month we’ve had a lot of training and talks which reassures me that their not expecting us to come to the job ‘knowing it all’. The school knows that each school is different, even from year to year! Harlesden Primary this year, have expanded and have a good number of children starting school for the first time in year 2! Some children have special learning needs such as ADHD and Autism, and a lot of the new children have English as an additional language and require extra help also. Two of our weekly meetings this month was a talk and training session led by Clare Henshaw from BOAT (Brent Outreach Autism Team). She was able to give us a better understanding of the autism and situations we might face with children on the autism spectrum. We were able to discuss and benefit from hearing about her experiences working with children across many schools and in a special needs school. In weeks to follow LSA’s and teachers will have training or meetings on Interventions, Guided and home reading, Phonics and many others. As a LSA some of my main responsibilities include: supporting children with special needs where necessary, changing the classes home reading books, and working with groups everyday in guided reading, doing interventions with specific children; where I take a group of between 2 and 6 students for a mini lesson as it were in order to focus on a particular area that they all need support or boosting on. So the training that we are undergoing in our weekly LSA meetings are specific to the needs of particularly the new LSA’s. We also had peer reviews where two of the new LSA’s watch an experienced LSA with a Guided reading group and an intervention group. Myself as the LSA in year 5 and Sonia, the LSA in year 3 had the privilege of observing Bronwen, the LSA in year 6, her intervention was in maths on the chunking method in division. As LSA’s in key stage 2 it was a great model of what would be expected of us, and I was able to take away a lot from it and make notes. We met up with all the LSA’s and Hannah Woolf the Assistant head and discussed what we had learnt from our peer observations and what we had learnt from it. This month myself and 3 other teachers have launched Harlesden Primary’s netball club which we run on Monday after school, this was another extra-curricular activity that I wanted to do! As it was when I was in year 6 that I was first introduced to netball and have loved ever since! With the support of Bhavin Dhokia, P.E coordinator and the Headteacher, Linda Perrier, we are now up and running with suitable equipment. The children are picking up very quickly, as they do, and we hope to start playing other schools in the new year! In this month I was also given a new responsibility. I am now responsible for preparing the Star Learner of the week certificates for celebration assembly on a Friday afternoon. It requires good communication often reminding teachers to submit their chosen pupils names and reasons and liaising with my class teacher and support teacher when they see best fit for me to do them on a Friday, prioritising where my support is most needed in class. I have to print, write and laminate the schools certificates and leave them with either the deputy or assistant head in order faced down year 1 to year 6. Fridays I find the most hectic the days, because it involves me trying to be flexible and finish those as well as support my class, sorting and laying out the children’s homework while they are at assembly and finding time to change the reading books of those who have bought them back in. One Friday afternoon I had been granted a rehearsal slot with the children in the ‘Windrush’ production from lunchtime till 2.15pm. That day requires serious juggling around as when I came back I was in charge of my class till almost the end of the day as the class teacher had a meeting. I left school with a headache that day as all the usual up and down hustle and bustle of a Friday afternoon on top of that was quite a lot to deal with. I made a note to myself that I would never have a play rehearsal on a Friday again! I had hoped that the Children in my ‘Black History Month Play’ would be ready to perform this month but rehearsals are still underway. We will now be performing twice in the play in December, and I know we will be ready. 

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October Log - Getting into things

The second month of my placement has been rather engaging. Having finished my contract at my summer job in the evenings I was able to channel more of my time and energy into my primary job at the school. I often stay later than the time I’m paid for marking homework books and preparing the classroom for lessons the next day. Although I’m allocated some time to do these jobs within my hours in the classroom, there simply isn’t enough time, where there is often a student or the teacher in the class who would appreciate and benefit from your support engaging with the students in the actual lesson. So what do I do? One option could be to speed up my marking giving less individual feedback, noting any major common misconceptions to be tackled in an intervention, seen as with homework marking is just to acknowledge that they have attempted to do at home by themselves what they have done in class that week. Yet out of my desire to see these children be the best they can be, I opt to mark in my own time, like a teacher to give each child the personal feedback and follow up I think they deserve. Just comparing my role in the school to my summer part-time job, you can really gage the difference between a job and a career. Someone who works in Careers advice once asked me ‘what would you be willing to do for free? That’s what your career should be.’ and I think I finally understand what she meant. In my summer part time job, once your time was done, you were out of there! I worked with people who would do as little work as possible and still try to get off early, however in a career you are committed to your growth and progress in your area of work even if it means working past the hours your paid for, or that not even being defined. In this case as working in the Education sector, you are committed to your growth and that of your students even if it takes hours of marking, research or preparation after your working day.

Extra-curricular activities after school is another part of the teaching career which teachers or TA’s often so without extra pay, which I am currently experiencing first-hand as a TA at Harlesden Primary. After asking about whether the school participate or put on anything for Black history month it was suggested that I start something. So I’ve written a short play for the children, entitled ‘WINDRUSH’, which follows the story of some Caribbean’s and their story just before and after their migration to the UK in the 1950’s. After selecting pupils who shone at the auditions we now have rehearsals every Thursday after school for an hour. The process has been hard work and is still underway. A production in itself is hard enough, let alone with under 11s who forget what they rehearsed during our lunchbreak the same week! Myself and Pat Evans, the school’s Parent Support who is working with me, hope for our budding actors to be ready to perform the play in two to three weeks’ time.

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Off to a good start...

So on starting my placement at Harlesden Primary school we began with inset days which allowed us to have what I would call general training. We had a long session on Schools Fire Warden training with Ian Roberts who is a Health and Safety Advisior in Brent on Fire safety including things we can do to prevent fires and procedures in the case of one. He emphasised how in a school, especially one like Harlesden which has recently expanded to have two buildings instead of one how it would be important to sync the systems and for here to be a good level of communication. Also with a situation which can make adults react out of the ordinary, children just as much or possibly more so due to immaturity so it would be crucial in making sure they understand that in the case of a fire there is a system in place. Within this first month we have had a chance to have a fire drill in the school which the staff were aware would happen sometime in the day, but the children were not. The class teacher in the class I am working in spoke about fire's generally in relation to'why it was important for the class to know how to line up quickly, quietly and sensibly' and it just so happened that after we moved on from that to our Grammar lesson that the alarm went off. You can imagine the shock that ran across their faces in the first few seconds of that alarm sound at the event which seemed like a mysterious coincidence. However having just had a talk about fire's they were spot on for their routine of lining up, and evacuating the building to the assembly point in the playground.

Unfortunately their behaviour isn't always as perfect. Working as a TA in a year 5 class for the past month has been quite a humbling experience as to how far you have come. Up until now on your educational journey, you have always been the main student, you have been focussing on your grades, and your own personal development. However it is interesting that although you are focussing on the educating the children, you develop yourself so much more. Within this month I already feel confidence in leading the children, I remember in earlier days when I would shake within myself just to raise my voice enough for them to hear me telling them to quiet down, but now I have the confidence to do that and so much more. One of the biggest challenges I've faced so far was working with a particular group in English who were rather difficult.Some were off task, some disruptive and some didn't even understand the task! Trying to apply what we were doing to a group of students at different places  was a struggle, however that first time with them was the worst, and since then I have worked with them twice and it has gone in my eyes exceptionally well! I cannot take all the credit. One thing that helped me was observing  a 'Guided Write' session lead by the Assistant headteacher, Hannah Woolf, with a group of year 6's. I was able to see how much better their work could be working together in a structured way. I was able to ask her questions about how much time she would spend on constructing one paragraph, and how quality of writing was more important than quantity. Yet in any session where you didn't get as much done with them as you would have liked, it is important to evaluate and see what you can change for the better next time. So over the coming months I will have plenty of opportunities and hopefully improve.

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