Supporting Literacy and Numeracy

A Guide for Learning Support Assistants

Glenys Fox, Marian Halliwell

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781853466793
• eBook ISBN: 9781136756849
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

A practical guide to the ways in which the Learning Support Assistant can effectively support the class teacher with regard to literacy and numeracy frameworks.

Chapter 1
Roles and responsibilities

Who will explain my responsibilities?

In your work as an assistant you will be working as part of the learning support team in the school. The head teacher is responsible for all the teaching and learning which takes place in the school but delegates some of this responsibility to class teachers and the special needs coordinator (SENCO). Support arrangements vary from school to school. In large secondary schools, assistants normally are managed by the SENCO who explains roles and responsibilities in respect of particular children or groups of children. In a primary school, or special school, the SENCO may have less of a role in managing your direct work. If you work closely with one particular class teacher then he or she is likely to play a major part in guiding your day-to-day work.

Whether it is the SENCO or the class teacher who works most closely with you, it is important that they ensure that:

• you are clear about your responsibilities in the classroom;
• you have time to discuss your role in supporting individual education plans for children;
• you are given clear and realistic requests;
• you understand the learning implications for the pupils who find literacy and numeracy difficult;
• you are encouraged and supported in your work.

What will I be asked to do?

In general terms, your role in giving support is discussed in Chapter 2. In supporting pupils who have difficulty in developing literacy or numeracy skills, the teacher may ask you to work in one of four ways:

• working with the pupil in the classroom;
• working with a small group;
• working individually with the pupil;
• developing or choosing resources.

In all these ways of working, your main purpose is to encourage the child to work independently, without support from you if at all possible. Some pupils become too dependent on assistants who work with them and learn to feel helpless when the assistant is not there.

Working with the pupil in the classroom

Enabling a pupil to be a part of the whole class is an important role for an assistant to play. Most children want to belong to their class group so if support can be given within the classroom then this ideally is the way it should be given. Children have quite strong views about this issue and it is important to get their ideas about what works best for them. Some are very happy to have an assistant close by to support the work they are doing. Others, particularly older children and teenagers, hate the idea of having a ‘minder’, so for these pupils, support may best be given outside the main class group. The pressure to conform and be like everyone else becomes very strong in adolescence and pupils fear that they may be ridiculed if others think they cannot read or write well.

Be sensitive to the wishes of the pupil and talk with the teacher about the best location for support to be given. There is an increasing recognition that all children need to be included in mainstream classes as much as possible so this must always be the first location to consider support arrangements. Only if conditions in the mainstream class cannot be made compatible with effective learning for the child, should alternatives be considered.

Working with a small group

You may be asked to work with a small group, either as part of the Literacy Hour or as a specific activity appropriate for a small group of pupils at another point in the school day.

When a small number of children sit round a table they naturally form a social group. Ideally this leads to cooperation and joint learning, but if handled badly it can cause conflict and negative comparisons. So whenever you have a small group together it is important to set down expectations for behaviour before you work with them on the task. Depending on the age of the pupils you may have to demonstrate and teach the behaviours you need from the group in order for them to settle to the task. Some examples might be:

• follow directions first time;
• when one person speaks we all listen;
• sit on your chair properly;
• keep noise level low.

When you are working with a small group it is important to ‘keep all the plates spinning’. This means having all the pupils engaged in doing the task for as much time as possible. You will need to give each child attention at intervals during the activity and not spend too much time with one child or the others may get restless. It is therefore essential to ensure that each pupil knows what they have to do at the start of the activity and has all the equipment necessary.

Many children who have poor literacy skills also have poor memories so it will be helpful to give frequent reminders of what the activity involves.

Working individually with the pupil

Some pupils find it hard to concentrate in the main classroom and become easily distracted by noise and movement. Others, as mentioned already, hate to be picked out as different by having an assistant working alongside. For these pupils, it is sometimes more effective to locate the assistance outside the classroom where quieter conditions may enable more effective working and the pupil is not distracted by others. When you work in a one-to-one relationship with a pupil it can be quite demanding and you will need clear directions from the class teacher about what you should be doing. For this work to be successful you need to establish a positive relationship, so it will be helpful to find out some of the child’s interests so you can have conversations about these topics and encourage him or her to talk. Try to listen for points which reflect the child’s skill in some way and comment on these points, e.g. ‘You are a very good granddaughter, helping your gran like that’. ‘What a lot you know about Manchester United, I am really impressed by all the facts you tell me.’ This sets a ‘can do’ tone for the session and is particularly important for children whose self-esteem is poor because they feel they cannot read, write or do number work.

As mentioned above, in-class support is usually preferable to isolated activities but there are some tasks which may be better done away from the class group (but only when the pupil cannot concentrate within the classroom setting and conditions cannot be changed).

Such individual tasks may be:

• following specific programmes of work;
• accessing particular reading/spelling programs on the computer
• reading/sharing a book;
• finishing off a piece of work which is different from that in the classroom.

Working away from the class group should be minimised as far as possible both for one-to-one and small group work.

Developing or choosing resources

This may or may not be an appropriate thing for you to do, much depends on the particular child or children you are working with and how the teacher sees your role. However, it is a useful role for assistants to play, particularly if you are supporting pupils who have literacy or numeracy difficulties. As you become familiar with the schemes of work the class is following and of the particular abilities of the pupils you are working with, you will be aware of what they can and cannot do.

It is therefore very helpful if you can look in advance at what might be required, what worksheets will be used, etc., and take some time to modify these under the teacher’s guidance so that the child is not presented with a task they have no chance of understanding because it is at too high a level for them or there is too much information on the sheet.

Modifying tasks and materials to be understood at a number of different levels is called differentiation and if you can do this with the end result that the pupil is successful in the task, then this is a valuable contribution you can make.

If you are working with younger children on developing language activities or number skills you may find it is better to invent your own games for children to play. Many assistants, as part of training courses, have developed some innovative, bright and attractive resources, activities or games to inspire the children and young people with whom they work. There are a great many resources and activities commercially produced to support language, literacy and numeracy (some of which are referred to in later chapters of this book). You will benefit from knowing what is available in the school resources cupboard so that you can choose specific activities to match the needs of the pupils you work with. Games and visual aids can be of enormous benefit, particularly if they make learning more fun.

What specific tasks will I be doing?

In supporting children who have literacy or numeracy difficulties there are particular activities which you may be asked to support. Advice on how to do this follows later in this book but the following list is a guide to what you may be asked to do as part of your role together with some examples of what this might involve:

• helping pupils to have equipment ready and be able to use it;
• helping the pupil to understand the task;
• helping the pupil to understand the sequence needed to complete the task;
• helping the pupil in knowing where to find relevant information;
• checking the work pupils produce and helping them to correct their own mistakes;
• giving the pupil strategies to help in remembering information;
• guiding computer-assisted learning programs;
• sharing a book/hearing a child read;
• preparing audio tapes, encouraging the use of a dictaphone and acting as scribe;
• encouraging the use of a word processor;
• reading textbook sections or questions and testing the pupil’s understanding;
• helping to catch up with missed work;
• observation of how a pupil works or manages a particular task.

Helping pupils to have equipment ready and be able to use it

Children who have literacy difficulties are often disorganised in their thinking so it will help if you can encourage the child you are working with to have equipment ready for the lesson. A pencil case kept in a usual place with a sharpened pencil and working pens, rubbers, etc., can avoid the need for time-wasting at the start of an activity. (Some children have perfected his particular time-wasting activity as a strategy for avoiding work they find hard!)

Some children benefit from using a handheld spellchecker so you will need to check whether they understand how to use it for maximum benefit.

Helping the pupil to understand the task

Children with literacy difficulties often have very poor short-term memories for verbal instructions given by the teacher. You can help by using a technique called ‘perception checking’ which simply means that you prime the child to listen to the instructions, then following the instructions, you say to the child ‘Now tell me what the teacher just said’. If the child knows that you are going to be checking his or her listening, then he or she is more likely to make an effort to listen and understand. However, don’t expect the child to remember long instructions as there may be genuine difficulties in doing this. Practising this skill is, however, very important.

Helping the pupil to understand the sequence needed to complete the task

When instructions are given by the teacher, most pupils are aware of the sequence of actions needed to get to the end of the task, e.g. start with headings, look up information, make notes, do diagrams, etc.

Children who have literacy difficulties often find it difficult to sequence ideas in th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Roles and responsibilities
• 2 Giving support
• 3 How children learn
• 4 Supporting children learning to read
• 5 Supporting children learning to write
• 6 Supporting children learning to spell
• 7 Giving support in the Literacy Hour
• 8 Supporting children’s numeracy skills
• 9 Giving support in the daily maths lesson
• Some final comments
• Appendix A: Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index