Working in Foundation 1 (nursery) as a TA

[SnowCurl]

Can any teachers and teachers advise me what is like working in a primary school nursery? What would be a typical day as a TA? What would you hope for (expect) from your TA? I only have experience of my own children, and working with years 2, 7 and 9. Thanks x

*teachers and TAs

I started as a TA in nursery and loved it, would go back to nursery if I had the choice (currently KS1). It is very full on though and you will end up with paint/playdough/snot/milk/glitter all over you.
Typical day would have been helping set up provision inside and out, welcoming children into nursery, supporting children to sit and engage with short focused inputs on the carpet, then supporting their play in the classroom and playground, noting observations, sorting out squabbles, drying tears, helping them with snack, reading etc etc. Then tidy up time, toilet, teeth and story or singing. I also did some focused support work for children with language and communication issues, and cleaned up a fair amount of wee and poo.

Things I like about nursery are the relationships with the children, the sense of working as a team (when they're in provision the distinction of teacher/TA is much less evident then say in a KS1 lesson - the kids tend to see all the adults as 'my teacher'), the spontaneity, being able to pick up on children's interests and spot the right moment to intervene and help them develop their play or their understanding. Lots of singing and dancing and rhymes and stories. Gosh I miss it.
You would need to have at least some understanding of EYFS areas of development and characteristics of effective learning. We also used Leuven Scales to assess well-being. Different settings and different teachers have slightly different styles for writing observations but I would definitely expect that to be part of the role.

Thank you for that. Do you feel you have a better understanding of child development and how they learn having started from the beginning?

Interesting question.....Not sure that experience in nursery has made a huge difference to how I see my work in Y2, other than maybe in that it makes me more frustrated by the constraints of the KS1 curriculum. EYFS is so much about promoting creativity and independance and supporting children to follow their own enthusiasms and interests, then you hit KS1 and the National Curriculum makes everything necessarily more adult-initiated. I suppose having worked with the younger children makes you better places to support those who are still emotionally or cognitively 'young for their age' further up the school.
Having worked in Reception probably made more difference to my understanding of where the children are coming from in terms of maths and English - because I have seen the foundations of phonics and early maths work using numicon etc I think that helped me to understand where the lower attaining children in y2 were coming from and support them more effectively.

That makes a lot of sense actually. X