Reply To: Quality First Teaching ideas

[Dawn]

I agree with Elysa on the point about directing TAs. We no longer use a lot of classroom support as, in our environment, 1:1 specialist interventions on specific skills make the most impact (we’re a PRU and only have some of our children for a few months before their GCSEs).
I have worked at schools where classroom support was the main option and some went as far as to have a section on formal lesson plans about how the TA is being directed, etc, but very few schools actually train staff on this or show them best practice examples. It’s a shame as the TAs often know a lot about the children and their needs. In my NQT year, I learned more about supporting SEN and planning effective lessons for their needs from my Y10 class’s TA than from anyone else.
In some schools, the SEN team/TAs are like bees, they are super-useful, you see them around and about and you know where their hive (the SEN room) is, but you’ve no idea what they actually do, how it all works or how to become involved in it.
The CPD powerpoint is good but it needs to lead to staff feeling comfortable and confident with their use of TAs and some of the best ways to do this are with specific training tasks which require a mix of staff to work together adding their different perspectives on SEND needs and with an informal drop-in sharing best practice obs rota to see how staff who work really well with TAs organise this.