Teacher/Classroom Assistants
Teaching assistants can play a very significant role design and technology.
Benefits for children
Teaching assistants in design and technology can:
- Encourage individual children and share in their difficulties and triumphs
- Help if they are stuck or are unsure of the teacher's instructions
- Prompt them to think before rushing into doing something
- Ask questions that help children move forward in their thinking
- Speed up the pace of an activity and reduce frustration by being an extra pair of hands in adult-intensive activities, e.g. threading needles, using a glue gun
- Work with groups allowing more practical activities to take place or making possible practical activities better suited to the needs of particular children, e.g. more challenging activities for gifted and talented children
- Help children with particular special needs to take part as much as possible in activities with the rest of their classmates
- Be a model to children by the way they demonstrate good practice (e.g. using technical vocabulary, using a tool correctly), demonstrate a new skill or learn something new alongside them
Benefits for teachers
Teaching assistants in design and technology can:
- Bring skills, knowledge and expertise in design and technology which may be different from the teacher's
- Be a source of ideas and information
- Be someone else in the classroom checking that children are working safely and accurately
- Increase the amount of practical activities taking place and thus help to relieve some of the time pressure
- Help to increase the pace of lessons and help children to complete tasks within time constraints
- Provide valuable feedback on the progress or needs of particular children as well as feedback on activities
- Help with some of the practical demands of the subject, e.g. organising resources, setting up a safe working environment
- Supervise children working, leaving the teacher free to focus on a particular group of children
- Be someone to share the more challenging, amusing or rewarding moments with (and there are usually plenty!)
Useful publication for teaching assistant
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