Although the class teacher is primarily responsible to plan, deliver and review all learning activities for the class, a teaching assistant can work alongside the teacher and make contributions that can improve the teachers plan, alter the delivery to make it more effective for pupil attainment and extend the teachers initial review. “Planning, teaching and evaluation follow a cycle which gives structure to the learning process” (Baker, B., Burnham, L., 2010) and is vital in my role as a teaching assistant. I aim to describe how I aide the teacher to plan and deliver lessons and how I give feedback to the teacher about individual pupils, in order for the teacher make improvements in her planning and to be able to target individual
When asking questions I keep them open-ended (e.g. who, what, when, where, why) instead of using questions which encourages them to answer simply yes and no (Baker, B., Burnham, L., 2010).

When I see a child is struggling, my role is to firstly re-explain what they are meant to do then to ask them what exactly they are struggling with. Although many times the children will try to convince me to do their work and try to make me give them word for word answers, I stay strong in my resolve and explain that if I give them all the answers they’ll never learn. Once they understand my reasoning, the children get on with their work and ask me to aide them in spelling. To do this I sound out the works and then sound out the letters by using the schools phonics technique.

Review: At the end of each activity, the teacher calls the attention of the class and goes around to each table to ask one child what they were doing and how they found it. When the children have gone out for break, lunch or a lesson that is based in another room (e.g. music, ICT or French), the teacher will sit with myself and the LSA and ask us for our feedback. At this point the LSA and I will give the teacher a breakdown on each child’s participation and their ability to complete the activity. I