Children's Learning in Primary Schools

A guide for Teaching Assistants

Mike Cowdray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136280443
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

What does learning look like? What are different subjects really about? Why are transferable skills so important? How can we overcome the difficulties that children encounter in their learning? And what questions and prompts are likely to prove useful in helping children to get the most out of their lessons?

The over-arching role of Teaching Assistants is to support teaching and learning in schools. To do this effectively, they need to understand the curriculum content of all the subjects in which they provide support and know what learning outcomes are sought. This accessible book provides an overview of the knowledge, skills, understanding and attitudes that children learn in each subject in their primary years.

Written with the non-subject specialist in mind, and drawing on research and best practice in the classroom, this extremely practical book aims to provide the reader with the information they need to:

• deliver focused lessons to individual pupils, groups, or the whole class;

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• concentrate on the most important elements when making classroom resources;

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• make valuable assessments of the children's learning, and keep useful records of their achievements, progress and difficulties;

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• take a full part in discussions with colleagues – selecting objectives, devising interesting activities and delivering exciting lessons in each of the subjects.

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Including a wide range of examples and activities, this book will prove an invaluable companion for all students working on STLS and Foundation Degree courses, and Teaching Assistants currently working in primary schools.

CHAPTER 1
An Introduction

Primary education – a starter kit

Primary schools are incredibly important places. Their job is to provide the children with a reliable starter kit – that is, a toolbox full of the essential knowledge, skills, understanding, qualities and attitudes that will give them a flying start in life, and at the same time act as a firm foundation for future learning. And it should be fun, satisfying and rewarding in its own right, too!

Life expectancy for people living in the UK is now more than 80 years and rising. This means that children starting school now can expect to see 75 years or more of change. If we look back 75 years from the present day, we find the 1930s – and it would be impossible to list all the changes that have taken place in the world since then. So, in order to be confident and successful through a lifetime of changes that are as yet unknown, the questions we need to ask ourselves are:

• What do children need to know?
• What skills do they need to learn?
• What do they need to understand?
• What qualities and attitudes do they need to develop?

In this book, we look at what children learn in their primary schools. Crucially, it is about what they actually learn, not just what they do.

But let’s talk about you …

You obviously take pride in your work and enjoy working with children. You are extremely conscientious and want to do your best, both for them and for your own satisfaction. I expect you are fairly comfortable with the pastoral support part of the job, but would like to know more about teaching and learning support – perhaps, in some lessons, you are not always convinced that you are helping the children as much as you could.

Clearly, different schools have slightly different expectations of their Classroom Assistants/Teaching Assistants (from hereon in, called TAs) – some are employed to give general help around the classroom, others provide support for a particular child or group of children, while others might cover absent colleagues, provide assistance in particular subjects, or lead lessons. However, a common feature is that the role of the TA is to support the children’s learning, as well as their personal and social development and welfare.

Ofsted suggested that the contribution of TAs towards a good maths lesson is one where they ‘know the pupils well, are well briefed on the concepts and expected misconceptions, and provide support throughout the lesson that enhances thinking and independence’ (Ofsted 2009: 5). I see no reason why this should not also be true in all the other subjects.

Being a conscientious TA, you want to contribute to every lesson in such a way that all the children in your care are able to join in and benefit from the activities as much as they can, and therefore make progress in their learning. You will be asking yourself:

• What is this subject really about?
• What knowledge/skills/understanding/attitudes should the children be learning?
• Which of these are the most important in this particular lesson?
• How do these fit in with the child’s whole programme?
• What should I be doing to make sure that the children get the most out of this lesson?
• How do I know when I am doing a good job?

And these are the very same questions that this book sets out to answer.

What does the book contain?

At the heart of the book is a desire that children should make as much progress as possible throughout their primary years – that is, every child, every day, in every area of the curriculum.

Clearly, we need to accept that children don’t all start from the same place, and neither do they all progress at the same rate. Indeed, even an individual child is likely to learn at different rates in different subjects. But we do know that one of the greatest spurs to success is success itself. So – what should the children be learning in school, and how can we help them to step on to this upward spiral of success?

In the early part of the book, we explore the different types of learning that the children will meet (Chapter 2), and some of the difficulties that children might encounter in their learning (Chapter 3). In Chapter 4, we look at the children’s first year or so in school, before their learning is divided into separate subjects. Later chapters focus on individual subjects. Each of these includes:

• a broad overview of what the subject is actually about;
• a description of some of the experiences offered through the subject;
• a description of what the children should be learning, in terms of knowledge, skills and understanding;
• opportunities offered by the subject for learning the so-called transferable skills;
• examples of questions and prompts that we can use, to help the children learn more effectively.

I believe this will help to clarify any areas you might have been a little unclear about, so that you can better:

• focus on the important elements of the subject when you make classroom resources, supervise activities and deliver lessons to individual pupils, groups, or the whole class;
• pinpoint particular objectives for individual children or groups;
• make helpful assessments of the children’s learning, and keep useful records of their achievements, progress and difficulties;
• be confident that you are making a difference in the children’s learning;
• take a full part in discussions with your colleagues, as you select objectives, devise interesting activities and deliver exciting lessons in each of the subjects.

And this will help the children directly to:

• learn new facts and remember them;
• gain new skills and develop them further;
• understand new ideas and clarify them in their mind;
• develop a positive attitude – to learning, to themselves and to other people;
• adapt and use their learning across a range of new and unfamiliar situations.

How is the book arranged?

I suspect that, when you were at school yourself, you were probably more interested in some subjects than others, and that, when you were about 14 years old, you were allowed to choose certain subjects at secondary school while dropping others. And I guess that the teaching was better in some subjects than in others. In short, your background across the whole range of subjects would probably best be described as mixed, with many strong areas and some less strong.

Therefore, this book is set out so that you can dip in anywhere and, in just a few minutes, get a good idea of what the children should be learning in each area of the curriculum.

Throughout the book I have used a lot of lists and bullet points. In this way, I hope to present the information in the most straightforward way possible, without your having to search through masses of text to find what you want.

I have also included lots of questions and prompts. These are intended only to be examples, but please do use them and adapt them in any way you see fit, to help the children make sense of the things they see, hear and do.

Finally, please accept that my intention is to give just a flavour of each subject, setting out the sorts of things the children should be learning – the lists cannot be exhaustive. In each area of learning there is a path along which the children will travel – younger children will just be starting out, while we hope that the older ones will be well along the way.

How do we know if we are doing a good job?

A simple model of good teaching is:

• Find out where the children are now in their learning (in terms of knowledge, skills, understanding and attitudes).
• Together with the children and their parents, decide where we want them to be.
• Then help them to move from one to the other.

Of course, the children don’t need to have mastered something to have made progress – perhaps they have become aware of something new, or joined in an activity that requires the use of a new skill, or gained partial understanding of an idea. Each of these provides a foundation for further learning in the future and represents progress in its own right as well.

In order to judge how well we are doing our job, we need to ask ourselves:

• Do the children trust us and relate to us?
• Do we have a good idea of where they are now in their learning?
• Do we know what they are supposed to be learning next?
• Can we think of interesting and motivating ways to make ideas clear to them and take them to the next level?
• Can we tell when learning has taken place?
• Are the children learning?
• Do they know they are learning?
• Are they learning as well as they could be?

If you can answer yes to each of these questions, then it is likely that you are indeed doing a good job.

CHAPTER 2
Different Types of Learning

What are primary schools trying to achieve?

The aims of each school are expressed slightly differently, but they usually include phrases such as:

We week to provide an environment, where pupils:

• – are safe and healthy;
• – enjoy their learning and make good progress across the whole breadth of the curriculum;
• – develop personal, social and emotional maturity;
• – develop confidence and independence;
• – learn to contribute actively to society.

(DES 2004: 9)

Our task, then, is to provide a rich diet of lessons, activities and experiences, through which the children can learn whatever is necessary to make progress in each of these areas (as well as any others mentioned in the school’s aims, of course). Much of this learning will take place in formal lessons, but a significant amount will occur at other times of the day and through other events, such as assemblies, breaks, visits, and so on.

However, learning is not a straightforward process. For the most part, progress is made through a series of steps and stairs – with a few blind alleys thrown in for good measure! There is no guarantee that the children will make a smooth transition from one stage of learning to the next.

What are we trying to do in lessons?

This is a big question, but the answer is not so difficult: we want the children to make progress in their learning, that is, to move on from where they were before the lesson in at least one area of learning.

In terms of the subjects themselves, there are three distinct types of learning:

• acquiring facts and knowledge;
• learning and developing skills;
• understanding ideas and concepts.

(DfEE and QCA 1999: 17)

Then there are the so-called transferable skills, attitudes and qualities, which are not subject specific. These not only help the children to learn effectively across a whole range of subjects, but also help them to build and maintain sound relationships, develop independence and responsibility, maintain self-esteem and become rounded individuals, capable of becoming the sort of person they really want to be. Although they include a mixture of skills, attitudes and personal qualities, these are usually referred to, collectively, as transferable skills, and are described in more detail later in this chapter (QCDA 2010: 14–15).

In class, we balance these four types of learning by ...