Teaching Approaches to Promote Consistent ... - Learning Wales

support mechanisms are used. There is no consistent mechanism in use and this is tobe expected since the pupils being supported are individuals with specific needs.Most teachers welcomed the various initiatives. It was not possible to observe themin action and the scope of the project prevented the drawing of any conclusions ontheir effectiveness in raising pupils’ achievements. Two observations from classteachers were nevertheless interesting. Firstly, pupils in Year 4 in one school wereremoved for ALS for 30 minutes on three mornings a week. On their return the classteacher found their behaviour difficult to manage. Secondly, a teacher in anotherschool cited Springboard as particularly successful because it was run by teacherassistants with close links to the class teacher.One school used ALS “as appropriate” and another made use of some ALS materials.Similarly all had booster groups, in two cases taken by the head teacher, with ateacher in a third school noting really good relationships, though, oddly attendancewas a problem. Springboard was an option in mathematics adopted in five schools 13 .5.2.9 Teacher assistants (TAs) and learning support assistants (LSAs)Finding 29: All schools employed TAs and/or LSAs and all found themuseful.The introduction of a variety of classroom assistants has clearly made a hugedifference to the way in which teachers work with their classes. Again there was nocommon way in which they were consistently used but schools tended to allowteachers to decide on the best way of using these assistants in particular classes.One teacher praised the contribution of the school’s teaching assistant to Year 6 work:“We have a full time TA for Year 6…this is invaluable and we use her asappropriate…”(Y6 teacher, school F, group En).It was noted that this school did not mention using TAs in other year groups.13 Time did not permit data collectors to seek information about the quality of collaboration betweenTAs and class teachers.64