Tma 011111

MY ROLEI am a teaching assistant in a rural public school in East Sussex. I currently support   reception and year 1 class for a total of 5 hours a week. I work closely with a small group of children who need more attention in certain areas of their development and studies. I mostly help the children with their skills in literacy and numeracy, especially those who are learning English as their second language. As Hancock and Colloby (2013) state, you can relate someone else's experience to your own, to help you to understand theirs better, so I use my personal experience of having arrived in England and not speak a word of English and having to make new friends in a new environment, and relate it to the new children to make it as easy and friendly for them to learn English. I also want them to feel confident that they can ask me anything and approach me when they are having troubles. An example of this is a child from Taiwan, who arrived in September. She didn't speak English, nor did she understand us, but having worked closely with her, she has now began to communicate her needs to us and even shocked me when she came out with a   full sentence.
In the morning, whilst the teacher welcomes the children to the class, it is my responsibility to collect all the homework bags, look through their homework books to make sure the parents have read and signed it, collect their old reading book and replace it with the next one on the list, helping the teacher to maintain records of what the child has read. It is also one of my duties to assist with the marking, correcting   and do the tidying up whilst the teacher is talking to the children. The children address all the teachers and teaching assistants as “Miss” or “Mister”, however I have a more social type relationship with most of the children and I believe that most don't put me in the same category with the teachers. When I am on duty during break time, I like to talk with the children, share jokes or even join in the...