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Improving Pupil Participation in the Classroom

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How to Improve Pupil Participation in The Classroom

Student engagement and pupil participation in the classroom are crucial to both learning and personal development. However this can be difficult to maintain, especially on the run up to Christmas. Focusing and engaging children in lessons proves challenging, as they readily shift their attention to what interests them when not fully absorbed in the current material. There’s nothing unusual about children zoning out in lessons. Education recruitment agency Initial Recruitment are here to provide some key insights on improving pupil participation in the classroom.

Pupil Participation in Classrooms

Don’t skip the warmup

You wouldn’t start a gym session without an appropriate warm up to get your muscles going, and a lesson is no different. Start the class with a warmup to get children engaged from the offset. Promote a pupil centred approach through question and answer sessions or mini competitions to create a buzz in the room. Once the warmup is over, children should be ready to sit down and focus on the lesson in front of them.

Create a Pupil-Focussed Learning Environment

When children are tired and begin to zone out during a lesson, its all too easy to slip into a teacher-focussed learning environment in which you simply stand in front of the class and talk. However, this is going to do nothing towards improving pupil participation in the classroom. Instead, use this as an opportunity to engage children in peer teaching, teamworking activities and collaborative projects. If you create an environment in which both teachers and students are working with AND learning from each other, you’ll soon begin to see you’ll spend less time managing student behaviour and more time witnessing exceptional results.

Embrace Different Learning Styles

Just as there’s no one size fits all approach to teaching, you will know that children learn and absorb information differently, whether they be visual, kinaesthetic, or aural learners. Take time to find out how each individual learns best and create tasks best suited to each individual.

What’s more, get to know your students’ extracurricular activities and hobbies in order to tailor your lesson planning. Incorporating these factors allows students to instantly connect with the message you are communicating. Simple tasks such as asking students to come up with a mind map of what they enjoy doing out of school will help harness this.

Teamwork makes the dreamwork

Enhance student interaction through group work and discussions within the lesson, ensuring that you monitor and guide children in order to ensure that it is effective. Encourage open-ended conversations that invite questions, respect everyone’s ideas, and work together to reach a final agreement. Giving children a change from solo work will allow them to share ideas and ensures active participation from all pupils in the classroom.

Avoid cliques by creating fluid teams based on individual strengths to enable primary school children to gather different strengths from those around them. Change up the groups every morning in order to allow those less confident to shine, avoiding the possibility of established roles within groups.

It is not only collaboration between pupils and class teachers that contribute to improved pupil participation in classrooms, it is imperative that special educational needs (SEN) teaching assistants collaborate effectively with the class teacher. SEN teaching assistants possess knowledge about their child’s specific needs and challenges, and they comprehend how to effectively promote development. Children with SEN needs are then able to fully maximise their education and achieve academic goals through utilising an adapted and tailored approach to learning.

Make Lessons Fun

Remind children that school can be fun and give them something to look forward to at school by creating engaging and educational quizzes instead of assessments, helping to ease stress and therefore generate more accurate insights into pupil performance. Using quizzes or collaborative assessments for instant evaluation as a teacher enables you to gather information in real-time, allowing you to promptly identify knowledge gaps and steer the direction of future lessons.

Keep pupil participation at a high by following formal assessments with physical activity or an educational game, eliminating ‘dead time’ within the classroom by keeping brains active and creating positive associations to assessments. Make every lesson an experience by introducing classroom games to assist young primary school children in enhancing their language an communication skills.

Give Children a Choice

Add value to lessons and encourage emotional engagement by introducing an element of choice to lessons. Indeed, children are much more likely to engage in a lesson if they feel they actively shaped its layout. Whilst expecting and allowing children to be entirely independent and responsible for their learning is possibly not the wisest choice, create options for visual, kinaesthetic an aural learners to facilitate the shift from a teacher focussed to student centred learning environment.

A fantastic way to introduce the element of choice in the classroom is to throw away the seating plan, allowing children to sit where they want in the classroom. Prevent cliques by ensuring that children cannot sit next to the same person for more than a week.

Pupil Participation in classrooms

Teachers and teaching assistants must harness the three types of engagement to maximise pupil participation in the classroom; behavioural engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement. Once students grasp these three factors, they will actively listen and absorb information from their surroundings, turning disruption and sinking into chairs into a thing of the past.

If you are an experienced teacher, ECT / NQT or teaching assistant, we’d love to hear how you improve pupil participation in the classroom. Share your stories on Facebook, LinkedIn or X (formerly known as Twitter) and don’t forget to tag us!

As specialists in primary education recruitment, if you are looking for a new role in education, we’d love to hear from you! Get in touch with education manager, Becky Oram, today to find out what teaching opportunities we have in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.

What To Expect From A SEN Teaching Role

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What To Expect From A SEN Teaching Role

If you’ve ever thought about a career in SEN teaching or as a teaching assistant but are unsure of what to expect, keep reading to gain insight and determine if this path suits you.

Teaching children with special needs can be rewarding and challenging, making it a daunting yet exciting field for teachers and teaching assistants. Whether you’re a supply teacher, NQT/ECT or a TA, working in a SEN school might be completely novel to you.

As specialists in SEN recruitment, Initial Education have outlined the top things to expect when working in a SEN school.

“When I first came into the special sector, people told me a lot about what pupils couldn’t do and I felt they knew what they couldn’t do. I always wondered what they might do.”

Mr Britten, Headteacher on BBC’s Life in a Special School

Have patience

The saying ‘the patience of a saint’ has never been more relevant when working with special needs children. You’ll fast begin to notice that each student has their own way of learning and interpreting information. Being patient with this is crucial.

Dyslexia and Autism, amongst other learning disabilities, make learning more challenging for young children. This can mean that more often than not they require extra time, patience and reassurance in the classroom. You will find that some students have shorter attention spans than others as they sit down to complete a task and quickly deviate from it. Others may require your attention elsewhere, so remaining calm and patient in order to put out one fire at a time is one of the best things you can do.

Every day is different

As part of a SEN school, each day will consist of working with and assisting young children with learning difficulties. Whether they be physical, emotional, behavioural, visual or hearing. As a supply teacher, you don’t need to provide a lesson plan, but you should adjust your teaching style to match the varying abilities of your students by following their individual learning plans. SEN schools typically maintain smaller class sizes (6-12 students) and a higher staff-to-student ratio, ensuring that you won’t find yourself alone, unlike mainstream schools.

Working in a SEN school is so rewarding

Whilst the prospect of stepping away from a mainstream school to a special school may seem daunting, it can be one of the most rewarding things you do during your teaching career.

By supporting children that need it most, you’ll get the chance to have a real impact on a child’s learning. You can open the doors for them to explore future opportunities that they didn’t believe possible. Watching a child come out of their shell, master a skill they have been struggling with or simply connecting with and building relationships with those around them can some of the most rewarding events you witness.

Prepare to be inspired by the sheer determination your students display every day, despite the challenges they encounter. We can guarantee that those around you will fill your day with laughter and smiles.

Communication

Language and communication play a vital role in achieving success in an SEN school. It’s often considered best practice to use straightforward and approachable language while steering clear of sounding patronising.

Try breaking down tasks into shorter, more digestible sentences. Adapt your approach if you discover some students are still struggling. If you’re working as a 1:1 teaching assistant, ask the teacher what communication techniques are best to use. Some children will comprehend everyday communication, whilst others might communicate more effectively though eye movements or technology.

Makaton is a technique used by students that are non-verbal or struggle with communicating verbally. It’s a wonderful and invaluable communication technique in SEN Primary schools. Many SEND schools will also have students that communicate through British Sign Language (BSL).

BSL is designed to assist those with hearing impairments, Makaton plays an essential part in supporting spoken language, featuring elements of BSL interspersed through sentences. You won’t be asked to use this method if you don’t know it, but be prepared for students to use it.

Pupil Profiles

When going into a SEN school to work as a 1:1 TA or as a teacher, pupil profiles are essential. A pupil profile details a student’s educational and medical needs, alongside an analysis of their specific motivators in order to keep children engaged and focussed on the task in hand.

Plan to arrive early to review profiles, and discuss with staff about any other behaviour before the start of school.

The number of pupils with Special Educational Needs (SEN) make up 15.5% of the population and is increasing year on year. With an abundance of SEN teaching and teaching assistant roles available, there’s no time like the present. As a SEND teacher, you gain a host of valuable and transferable skills. These can contribute to making you so much more employable in your future career, wherever it may take you.

If you’re a teacher or teaching assistant looking for a new challenge, get in touch with SEN specialists Initial Education. Find out what opportunities we have available in SEN schools.

Key Strengths of a Great Teaching Assistant

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Teaching assistants form an integral part of our education system and are crucial to supporting both teachers and pupils in and outside of the classroom. Working 1:1 with students that need a little more guidance or working in larger groups in primary and secondary school settings, a great teaching assistant is able to encourage and develop students to get the best out of their learning.

So, we’ve established the importance of teaching assistants, but what really are the key strengths of a great teaching assistant I hear you say, well the team at Initial Education have come up with the key strengths that they look or when hiring teaching assistants.

Building and maintain strong relationships

Whilst maintaining long-lasting bonds with pupils seems an obvious requirement for a good teaching assistant, great teaching assistants are also able to build those relationships with their colleagues and parents to ensure that pupils have a strong support network built around them. Trust is crucial to any successful relationship, so get to know your pupils, their parents, and teachers in order to get the most out of the learning environment.

With relationships built on trust, it’s not uncommon for a teaching assistant to stick with one pupil throughout their primary or secondary school career thanks to the fantastic bonds that are built between themselves and a pupil.

Be prepared to be flexible

Teaching isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach and what worked with one class may not work with the next, meaning that teaching partners should be ready to adapt to different teaching styles on a daily basis. This is particularly pivotal when working in supply contexts as responsiveness and thinking outside of the box is fantastic for personal development.

Teamwork and Communication are KEY

Teamwork and communication are not only buzzwords that you use to bulk out your CV, indeed they are vital strengths to a great teaching assistant. Teaching assistants act as an intermediary between teachers and students, requiring you to relay and explain information accurately in a manner that your students will best understand. As we’ve discussed, it is so important to work closely with teachers and parents to ensure that student needs are correctly addressed and this strong communication skills.

Additionally, as a teaching assistant you will often be required to work with a number of different classes and pupils on a daily basis, amplifying the importance of exceptional team working and communication skills to encourage successful learning development.

Enthusiasm and Passion go a long way

A great teaching assistant will have a passion for working with and developing children, whether that be in early years, SEN or mainstream primary and secondary. An energetic approach will create an exciting atmosphere in the classroom, encouraging students to want to learn. What’s more, great teaching assistants will build on that passion but partaking in online courses designed to improve your competencies as a TA.

If you’re looking for a career change and think you would make a great teaching assistant, or if you’re simply looking for a fresh start in a new school, we have a great candidate and client base and we would love to hear from you!

Complete our online form and a member of the team will be in touch!

Click here for the online form or give us a call on 07827 323208.

Hiring an NQT : What To Look Out For

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Hiring a new, inexperienced NQT or member of staff can be a tough decision, and although you may feel yourself gravitating to those candidates offering years of experience, a young or newly qualified teacher can bring so many strengths to your educational setting. Indeed, the drive and passion of new teachers is unrivalled, bringing with them a new approach and energy to the curriculum. Take a look at Initial Education’s key things to look out for when you’re hiring new teachers.

Flexibility and adaptability

At Initial Education we believe that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and the best teachers are those that are able to adapt to differing and challenging situations on a daily basis without getting flustered. When hiring an NQT, look at whether they have completed supply work previously or worked with both mainstream and SEN schools as this is a clear indicator of an individual’s ability to adapt to alternative environments.

Enthusiasm

Love what you do and do what you love. Teaching isn’t easy at the best of times so when hiring NQTs, look out for those that have a true passion for what they do and why they do it. Passion and enthusiasm go a long way in teaching as a teacher’s energy can easily be reflected onto those in the classroom, creating a great learning environment for all those involved. Indeed, when hiring an NQT you should consider that they are likely to incorporate new technologies into the classroom fresh from training, keeping pupils engaged and reinforcing their love for school.

Patience is underrated

A crucial skill that is often overlooked, educators that display patience and a degree of tranquillity are hugely valuable. Regardless of age group, pupils learn differently, misbehave, or simply struggle to process information in the same way. When hiring an NQT, look for those that are able to remain calm, cool and collected in even the most frustrating of situations in order to get the most out of their students.

Communication

Fundamental to teaching success, look for teachers that are able to effectively communicate with pupils, their parents and other teaching staff. Indeed, contributing to the learning development of students requires exceptional communication with other teachers in order to tailor your approach to each class. Additionally, building trusting relationships with parents and pupils is great for keeping students engaged in their learning, making the best teachers those that are able to demonstrate that they are able to provide effective and constructive feedback.

Furthermore, look at your existing team of staff and take into consideration the benefits that they would obtain from bringing on a newly qualified teacher. Indeed, this provides fantastic opportunities for existing staff to develop their own leadership and mentoring competencies, alongside reflecting on new techniques and practices.

Consider an agency

If you’re worried about the calibre of staff that you bringing to a school, whether they be newly qualified teachers of those with years of experience, consider looking to an agency for assistance. We’ve done the leg work for you and have a pool of the best NQTs and experienced teachers in the area, saving you time and worry. What’s more, we make safeguarding children our top priority, so when taking on a new teacher or teaching assistant from Initial Education you don’t have to worry. All our candidates are interviewed, and references are thoroughly reviewed prior to registration, in addition to an up-to-date enhanced DBS check.

If you’re looking for teaching staff for supply, temporary or longer-term work, we have a great pool of candidates and would love to hear from you, just get in touch.