Active Active Active Listening

Teaching Assistants support classroom management and assist with general administration. They help manage pupil behaviour and support pupils’ health, safety and emotional/social development. Teaching assistants establish relationships with learners and help pupils to access the curriculum. They support the development and effectiveness of work teams, work with other professionals and liaise effectively with parents.

Schools employ and have teaching assistants, to again, create the best possible learning environment for the pupils. As a teaching assistant I will work as part of a team working to make the pupils learning journey, a successful one. I will attend staff meetings and continue to develop my skills through in-house training and other relevant courses. I will maintain and contribute to school policies and procedures, and work in partnership with parents and carers on behalf of the school.

A teaching assistant plays an important role for the standards of behaviour expected in the classroom.

Active listening is the main key for understanding any kind of communication. Active listening means more than just hearing words. It means understanding what someone else is saying by making eye contact, body language and verbal responses.

Although the class teacher is primarily responsible to plan, deliver and review all learning activities for the class, a teaching assistant can work alongside the teacher and make contributions that can improve the teachers plan, alter the delivery to make it more effective for pupil attainment and extend the teachers initial review. “Planning, teaching and evaluation follow a cycle which gives structure to the learning process” (Baker, B., Burnham, L., 2010) and is vital in my role as a teaching assistant. I aim to describe how I aide the teacher to plan and deliver lessons and how I give feedback to the teacher about individual pupils, in order for the teacher make improvements in her planning and to be able to target individual

A lack of communication can present as a key challenge that educational assistants encounter in their position. Poorly defined job descriptions can lead to teachers and education assistants having disagreements over individual responsibilities (Chopra & French, 2004; Riggs & Mueller, 2001). Successful educational assistants must take the initiative, when in doubt, to communicate and clarify with the supervising teacher and promptly resolve disputes that might occur. Clearly differentiated roles between the education assistants and teachers continue to remain an issue that is difficult to resolve as the role of an education assistant cannot be examined in isolation. It should include the examination of the interrelated and distinct roles of the teacher and special-education teachers as well in best meeting student needs (Giangreco, Suter, Jesse & Doyle, 2010). At best, a successful educational assistant has to keep an open mind and remain adaptable to meet the variety of needs and demands while working with different teachers and students (Kay, 2005).

My role as a teaching assistant is to take on tasks such as preparing the classroom for lessons and clearing up afterwards, which allow the teacher to concentrate on teaching. To support pupils with particular individual needs, sometimes my role is to work one to one, while others work in small groups or work with one of these groups. The teacher is not able to give every pupil individual attention, assistants provide essential support to the pupils and the lead teacher. My responsibilities also include:

The reputation of the teacher is possibly one of the most fickleof all professions, the reason for this being the closed environment to which they work. As in all professions, reputation is important so to be able to carry this reputation forward it is important to earn the respect of not just pupils but colleagues, peers and the local education authority. Experience within local education authorities creates local professionals, as easy as this is to state it is just as easy to understand because of the relationships built between the teacher and other local professionals within the professional environment of the

In the role of a teaching assistant, you will be contributing to planning, delivery and reviewing of learning activities alongside teachers. When planning takes place there should be some opportunity to discuss and review pupils’ work with teachers. Panning, teaching and reviewing follow a cycle which gives structure to the learning process.

The importance of the role of teaching assistant should not be underestimated as they provide essential support to both teachers and pupils alike. As the demands put upon teachers are increased seemingly year by year, the learning support practitioner is there to contribute to all aspects of the planning, delivery and review of learning giving a broader support structure for the teachers and a more complete learning experience for the

Listening is a skill that requires active, rather than passive, participation to advance shared understanding and minimise misinterpretation. Lang, Floyd and Beine (2000) describe active listening as a skill that ‘focuses on attending to patients’ clues, ie, utterances and/or behaviors that are not explicit but may have special meaning and suggest unshared ideas, concerns, and expectations’. This essay will discuss how active listening strategies such as analysing and displaying non-verbal body language, clarifying meaning and accuracy, expressing understanding for the speaker’s feelings through empathy and silence contribute to effective communication by encouraging the speaker to convey his or her thoughts, building trust and

In this refection/critique I will briefly describe the skills sets of active listening, I will point out my strengths and the areas need further learning and development, I will also briefly mention the impact with future practices if I was to not develop my learning any further with the skillets that need further learning. Active listening skills is a board range of skills that are extremely useful in social work. The three skill clusters are: Attending Skills, Following Skills and Reflecting Skills. With each of these skills there are specific skills that are broken down to enable people to learn more efficiently.

Active listening is described as the combination of talking and listening in a way that encourages others to share more about their problems it is also seen as a form of feedback (Cournoyer, 2013). The social worker not only has to listen to the client but understand the client by being present and demonstration non-verbal cues that makes the client feel listen to and comfortable in sharing more. This practice skill was use during most of my time mentoring with the children in the program. During my time with the child it was important for me to reflect I was truly listening to my client and interested in her feelings. Based on the client opening up and sharing more intimate thoughts and feelings it can be deductive that the use of my listening

Active Listening It is most important to learn how to pay full attention to others as they communicate, and this process involves more than merely listening to the words. It involves absorbing the content, noting gestures and subtle changes in voice or expression, and

Active listening includes a variety of behaviors which communicate to the other that they are heard and understood, that the feelings which underlie the words are appreciated and accepted, and that regardless of what the individual says, thinks or feels, they are accepted as a person by the listener. Active listening demands that the receiver of the message put aside the belief that listening is easy and that it happens naturally and realize that effective listening is hard work. Good listening encourages the speaker, promotes trust and respect, improves relationships, and makes resolution of problems more likely. Good listeners are prepared to listen, show interest, keep an open mind, listen critically, resist distractions,