6. Making the Most of Your Teaching Assistants

We've all had this moment. You look up at your classroom door, at the beginning of a lesson, only to see an unexpected face, and all the error messages start going off inside your brain. You have a Teaching Assistant scheduled to you today. They have arrived with a smile. It should bring some relief, but you have an overwhelming sense of dread and frustration because you didn't know or your forgot that they were coming, and now you have to bring them up to speed, or come up with something for them to help with, in about 3 seconds. Or maybe that's just us?...Hopefully not! Join us today as we share some of our own experiences from working as Teaching Assistants and unpack 7 evidence-based recommendations for how to make the most of Teaching Assistants & SLSOs to support you and your students' learning.Recording this as PD? Here are the relevant Australian Professional Teaching Standards: Focus area 3.2 - Plan, structure and sequence learning programs Focus area 3.4 - Select and use resourcesHelpful LinksMaking Best Use of Teaching Assistants - Guidance ReportSupport Scaffolding Framework for Teaching Assistants - DiagramSelf Assessment Guide - Teaching Assistant Implementation