3. Choose an activity
Choose one or two activities to do in pairs or small groups. Follow the links for each activity’s instructions, worksheets and resources. Activity sheets are in Google Docs format. You can download them in Word, print them or save them to your own Google Drive for working online.
1. Sorting out who does what
In this activity, you sort a wide variety of tasks into teacher responsibilities/teacher aide responsibilities/shared responsibilities. It‘s an opportunity to clarify your roles by identifying agreements, confusions and areas that may need to be discussed.
2. Looking at school documentation
In this activity, you read your job descriptions and related school policies, then talk about how these reflect and relate to the information in this module.
3. What Windley School did
This activity is based on a case study of Windley School, a multicultural full primary school in Porirua. The case study explains how the school made changes to get the best from all their staff, including support staff.
The activity invites you to discuss how teacher aides support teaching and learning in your school.
4. Working as a team
In this activity, you work together to generate practical ideas for how teachers and teacher aides can work together collaboratively. An activity sheet provides prompts and questions for generating ideas.
5. Agreeing on who does what
In this activity, you work through a survey to reach agreement on critical issues, such as how the teacher aide will be involved in classroom planning, how they will work with all the students in the class, how to manage student behaviour and the ways the teacher and teacher aide will communicate with each other. The instructions include survey questions and an activity sheet to help you discuss the issues and document your agreements.
6. How do the roles differ?
This activity provides you with a sample set of guidelines that clarify the roles of teachers and teacher aides for a wide variety of tasks. Some roles and responsibilities have been left blank for you to discuss and complete. The instructions include a completed set of guidelines for you to compare your answers with.