This article looks at how GoLearn’s solution can help Teaching Assistants make the most of the time with the students they support; to ensure that they are confident in the classroom and gain the relevant experience, help, and tools they need to achieve their potential.
In light of National Teaching Assistants Day last month, we thought we’d take the opportunity to outline the fantastic work and intrinsic role TA’s play in day-to-day schooling and how they support learners to engage with the curriculum and progress in their learning.
We believe Teaching Assistants are the unsung heroes of the classroom. And it’s not just us; check out the facts!
- 244,000 Teaching assistants are working in schools across the UK
- 96% of headteachers believe TA’s add value to their school
- 44% of parents of autistic children want more teaching assistants in UK schools
To celebrate the fantastic work Teaching Assistants do each day, we’ve highlighted five key ways GoLearn can help support these integral members of our schools!
1. Reduce Workload
A considerable part of our goal at Golearn is to save the amount of hours teachers and teaching assistants spend on planning and preparation time to focus on finessing what they do best — supporting and accelerating students’ learning.
We achieve this through automatic marking, feedback features, and full courses of study mapped to the curriculum — significantly reducing the hours spent planning, writing, and marking.
This frees up time for TA’s to work with students face-to-face and focus on the specific targets needed to help their pupils progress each day. The extra time can also be used to allow teachers and TA’s to connect regularly to review progress.
3. Teacher Taught Lessons
Our platform is built specifically to be a teaching companion that guides and informs your teaching day-to-day, month-to-month and year-to-year.
Our ‘teacher taught lessons’ feature provides a ready-made framework that teaching assistants can pick up and teach from in the absence of the class teacher complete with teaching instructions.
Our platform supplies you with the lesson resources, detailed lesson plans and guidance, all mapped to clear learning objectives and success criteria so that you can clearly see what each student should be learning and how you’ll know when they’ve been successful — no matter who you are supporting.
2. High-Quality Resources
A huge part of a teaching assistant’s role is prepping resources each day. GoLearn provides complete courses of study that are fully mapped to the curriculum, underpinned by evidenced pedagogy and packed full of engaging lessons and personalised tasks — all to ensure the highest quality of teaching and learning.
These resources not only save you from endless photocopying and printing but can be used in conjunction with any curriculum worksheets and give you some great ideas for engaging displays or posters for your classroom.
Our lesson resources take away the added pressure of creating bespoke lessons for struggling students and give you more time to focus on student interventions.
4. Analyse Student Skills Gaps
GoLearn collects granular data each time a student interacts with the platform — tracking Reading, Writing, Listening and Grammar skills.
This data clearly highlights skills gaps, so teachers and teaching assistants can take the necessary steps to ensure all their students get back on track.
It’s an excellent way for TA’s to review learning data — understanding exactly where and how their students are progressing — so they can identify the areas where their pupils need more support to further build up their confidence and competence.
5. Support Beyond the Classroom
Not only does GoLearn encompass all of the above features, but we also offer a comprehensive support plan to every school that uses our solution. This includes;
- Detailed teacher, student and school admin guides
- Comprehensive platform training sessions
- Opportunities for ongoing professional development and training
- Opportunities for further engagement, collaboration, and research
These meetings will help TA’s gain more experience in analysing learning data, including measuring the depth of learning through SOLO Taxonomy data and using data to help address specific class/student learning gaps uncovered through GoLearn’s Continuous Assessments.
We champion the idea that any classroom solution for improved teaching and learning needs to consider the vital role of Teaching Assistants and incorporate features and support to help them master their craft and demonstrate their potential.
If you’d like to learn more about how GoLearn can help you improve your teaching, reach out to our team by requesting a demonstration of our platform.
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