I am a T.A in a mixed rec/y1 class. Have been working in the same class for 5 years now. 4 of those years I worked alongside a lovely teacher who predominantly facilitated the group work of the y1's, although I did also take groups on a regular basis. This last year I have been working alongside a new teacher. New to the school and fairly new in the profession, she has had a great year. Listened well to the advice I could offer but she really hit the ground running and achieved an awful lot this year. She has taken the y1's for their group work a lot more than my previous teacher as she said it is good practice for the teacher to do so. I have dipped in and out where she has requested me to do so.
I have just been told that I am to be working alongside another teacher this year. Still in reception/y1 but with a teacher who is currently a pure reception teacher. She is not happy about the move to rec/y1, and I do understand that as I believe that this is one of the hardest classes to teach in the whole school. My current teacher has given the new teacher some input into how she can make this work with the y1's next year and the response of the new teacher was "oh that's ok because Mrs .... will be doing that anyway" and then to ask her if I do all the book marking currently.
From conversations I have had it would seem that the new teacher wishes to focus all her efforts on the reception children and have me facilitate the learning with the y1's.
From my limited experience this doesn't appear to be standard practice and I just wanted to gain some insight into how it is done in other schools. I have no problem with working alongside the y1's and will do this happily if it is the best for the children.
But I don't want to do this if it is not considered best practice and would like my voice to be heard from the off if needs be.
So how is the workload split in your school please?