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Originally Posted by emmahodgson
help with 303 6.2 please
develop a plan for improving own knowledge and understanding with skills in literacy and numeracy and ict
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Hi. I incorporated the answer for 6.1 + 6.2 with the answer for 1.2 as its all about acknowledging and developing your strengths and weaknesses. Ive had this unit signed off by my assessor. Its relevant to me and my school setting but I think there might be some points you could consider.
Thankfully, I have a very good working relationship with my teacher and the rest of the Speech and language team. We have a very good working relationship built on mutual trust and a good team work ethic. This has enabled me to become much more confident in my new role. Through performance management and self appraisal sessions I have been able to identify areas that I feel are a strength. This process has also allowed me to identify areas of weakness I feel may have and has given me the opportunity to address them if needed.
I am positive and enthusiastic about my role in the speech and language unit. I feel this comes across in my work with colleagues and children and helps to encourage others to approach their work in the same way. I’m friendly and approachable and work well as part of a team. This can benefit the children as they know they can always come to me for help or support. We always highlight to the younger children if we are assisting others so that they can see adults working and helping each other. Good modelling is important to help them develop better social skills. Due to working in a support role for over 7 years in the same school, I am able to locate and gather resources quickly, enabling the teacher to think about other aspects of the lesson. This means that lessons can be planned quickly and hopefully leads to a more enjoyable lesson for the children. I am confident enough to voice my opinion and ideas to others and also to know when to ask for help. If you don’t ask for support when you need it, you won’t be able to do your job as effectively and this could lead to misunderstandings and mistakes taking place. My growing confidence has also enabled me to recognise the skills I have and to use them effectively within the classroom i.e. I am good at art so will happily plan and lead an art lesson. I am also responsible for making displays of children’s work and love to get the childrens input so that they feel involved in showing off their good work.
I have covered class teaching for my teacher during absence and had good feedback from lesson observations, again boosting my confidence. This confidence boost makes me believe in myself and I think this comes across in my teaching. The children respond well to lessons I teach so I feel that I am supporting them to the best of my ability.
With regards to weaknesses, I did address the fact that I felt my maths skills were not up to date and so subsequently didn’t feel confident offering assistance to children in this area. It wasn’t that I couldn’t reach an answer to a problem; it was more the case that the methods I knew were outdated. I often felt that the children knew more than me! I couldn’t offer the best level of support needed because I lacked confidence in this area. I was able to talk through certain mathematical topics with the teacher or our school numeracy coordinator prior to the lesson/activity to gain a better understanding. Due to the ability levels of the children I work with most of the lessons came with a step by step teaching process so this helped me a little. I could learn as the children did. I decided to retake my maths GCSE 2 years ago and learned better ways to approach mathematical problems. I also gained a new confidence in my own abilities in this area. I still don’t consider it a particular strength of mine but feel that the knowledge I have gained has been invaluable in supporting the children.
I like to think that my standard of English is quite high and feel that I am stronger in this area than in numeracy. However, I have recently addressed my lack of understanding in some areas of literacy teaching. I found I didn’t understand what certain terms meant, such as what is a conjunction or what does up-levelling mean? Having worked in the foundations stage for 5 years I was unfamiliar with a lot of the terms used in teaching literacy in KS1/KS2. I now work with children from early years – year 6 so had to approach the literacy coordinator for some advice in this area. I realised I needed to boost my skills because I didn’t want my lack of knowledge to impact negatively on the children’s learning. Thankfully, we have very pro-active senior management team and because of our discussion, all TA’s in the school were offered workshops on phonics teaching and strategies to support literacy. As a result, my skills have improved in this area and feel happier supporting children during their literacy sessions. Also, working in the SLRB means that children are constantly working on basic literacy problems, such as how and when to use a pronoun. This reinforcement also allows me to gain new insight, learn new terms and address my own use of language.
ICT is one area that I know needs bringing up to date. I am able to use computers, smart boards and other electronic devices competently and other teachers often come to me for help and advice. However, I don’t think that I use the devices to their full potential because I lack the knowledge to do so. If I am stuck on some things in class, I sometimes ask the children to assist and they can usually help me solve the problem quite quickly. They find this very amusing but they also like to help!
Again, senior management have been very good and sent out a questionnaire asking all staff about their ICT skills. We were subsequently offered workshops on how to use a digital camera, making PowerPoint presentations etc. These were very helpful and I now feel that I can incorporate some of these programmes into my planning for other subjects.
I support most of the children in SLRB for their ICT lessons and have managed to learn how to operate many programs just by being in on the lesson. It has helped bring my ICT skills a bit more up to date and given me a bit more confidence in this area.
I do still feel that there is a lot more I could learn and once the new term has started, hope to ask our ICT coordinator for more support in this area.
Overall, I think the most important factor in offering the best support for learning activities is confidence; Confidence in your own abilities and confidence being placed upon you by others. As long as you address any concerns or problems straight away, you should be able to offer the best level of support at all times.
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