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.