Interview For Teaching Assistant- Please Help!

[chazzygirl2]

I have an interview for a teaching assistant post in a Primary school on Tuesday and I have been told that I will be observed teaching a 15 minute Literacy activity to a group of 4 Year 2/3 children. The problem is that the only teaching experience I have is from my dance class and I have never planned a lesson! My current role is an administrator in a school office and the new school are aware of my lack of experience so I am panicking about what to do!

I was thinking of keeping it simple, reading a short story with lots of pictures and asking the children questions based on what we've read but any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated! How much detail would they expect from me at this stage?

Thanks in advance!

Open ended questions would be good, so plan the passage and the questions.

Have they given you any guidance at all about the learning objective? I am a TA working in Yr 1, worked in Yr 2 last year so may be able to give you some ideas.
15 mins is not very long and they will mostly be looking at how you interact with the children, how well you engage them, what your discipline strategies are like. If you want to read a story keep it fairly short, maybe the first 5 mins, then a really short activity, then back to the carpet for a quick plenary. If you want to keep them on the carpet for the whole 15 mins (which should be fine at that age) make sure you do lots of interactive activities to keep them engaged, eg talk to a partner about.... and choose some to come up to the front to share ideas.
Hope that helps a bit! Good luck!

Thank you so much for your replies :) no, that's the only guidance I've been given. I was expecting a classroom observation so this has terrified me! I like the idea of talking in pairs and then coming back and sharing, thanks! Are they likely to keep my plan afterwards? Should I develop it past the 15 minutes? I'm aware that they've given me mixed key stages so I was thinking an extract from a story that's easily recognisable such as Disney- hoping it will get them animated and create a talking point!
Sorry for all the questions, I really appreciate your ideas!

They might ask for a copy of your plan before you do the activity. When I did similar, one of my interview questions was all about how I felt the activity went and at that point you could mention how you could extend the lesson.
Definitely try and have some kind of learning objective/outcome, even if its to express an opinion about a text. You could also look at improving/changing some of the key sentences to make them more interesting, adding in adjectives/adverbs, changing the appearance of a character etc. Could be a good talking point.
Maybe think about having some simple props, something like paper speech bubbles to help the children focus.
Good luck hope that helps a bit!

Also if you don't know the children's names ask for them to wear stickers, makes it so much easier!

They're asking a lot to think it's an assistant job you're going for! Does this mean you'd be writing lesson plans in future too?
Extended writing is a big deal in our school at the moment. 1 activity is when the children are given a whiteboard and a marker pen, shown a picture (a baby playing with bubbles, for example) and asked to write a sentence, then they share their sentence with a partner/group. Then on the big whiteboard we'd write 1 together. It's so the sentence changes from "the baby is playing with bubbles" to something like "the happy baby laughs as she plays with the big, shiny bubbles"

If you're going with reading a story, you could ask them to put pictures in order too, and to find rhyming words/adjectives etc.

A guided read is always quite interactive. You show the children a picture, a photo is good, could be anything from a person sat on a bench crying, someone stood in a train station etc, ask the children for ideas on what is happening, what is the person doing, where is she. Why is she crying etc. (Have a list of questions so that you don't struggle if your nervous) Ask them why they think that (they should be able to give some reasoning). They might say she is at a train station, I can see the train tracks. At this point there are no right or wrong answers. You could ask them to talk with a partner to come up with ideas. You can then read a short text telling the children the 'story'. You can then ask more questions ie How was the person feeling, again encourage them to use evidence from the text. The text could state 'she was crying' so the children should be able to point out that she is sad, unhappy, etc.

Guided reading/inference texts are used quite a lot to encourage children to show a better understanding of what they read. Hope this helps, try googling guided reading or inference texts for the age group you will be having there might be one you can use!

Good luck

www.downley.bucks.sch.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=677&type=ppt

This might help x

Thank you so much to you all for your replies. I'm very happy to report that the interview went really well and I got the job!

Well done!!x