Hi Gemma,
I am really interested in this too – so mostly commenting to follow and pick up advice but have put a few thoughts below if they are helpful at all.
Currently we have 2 LSAs in with our Y10s. Our students that usually have support in lessons were shared across two ‘bubbles’. We got an LSA in for each bubble and set up another classroom next door to their bubble classroom so that we could withdraw them safely if we needed to. Our thoughts were that we were going to be doing a mix of all class and small group work (a little like an old school primary model). In reality the bubble groups are so small (10-15 students) that the students are able to stay in the same classroom and the LSA/Teacher are able to differentiate and question even from a distance! However the main thoughts/concerns are;
– Students that in the past have had scribes or partial scribes (writing sentence starters etc) – is this going to need to be more technology based due to social distancing?
– We won’t have enough break out areas for every bubble/staff member (I have 25 LSAs)
– LSA subject knoweldge – if they are supporting one group of pupils with all subjects, they are going to be supporting outside of their specialisms.
– Working with teachers – there is so much for teachers to think of now that sharing between LSA and teacher will be even more time pressured.
– LSA experience. How are we going to ensure that all of the team are upskilled on thier questionning and differentiation strategies. We have some staff that are brilliant and really experienced, others that are very new to the school environment. We cannot shadow staff in the same way that we would have done in the past. We also have some new staff that will be supporting students that don’t know them, and they do not know well yet. We have made a booklet introducing the LSAs to students but wondered if there was anything else that we could do to aid this relationship at the beginning of the year?
We have an INSET day at the end of July and again in September where I have some time to talk to staff and LSAs about the best support for our SEN students in September – I just need to work out what this will look like! Any ideas would be welome!
Thanks
Grace