Additional adults will play a key role in supporting newly arrived pupils to access the curriculum and to realise their potential for success and achievement. They can make an important contribution to ensuring that teaching is inclusive through overcoming barriers to learning and ensuring that diverse needs are addressed.

In many schools there may be a range of additional adults who provide support in the classroom to newly arrived pupils. These include:

• teaching and classroom assistants
• learning mentors
• induction mentors
• learning support assistants
• bilingual language assistants
• nursery nurses.

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Working together: some suggestions

For additional adults to be deployed effectively consideration needs to be given to the range of skills each can offer. It is also essential that there are opportunities to meet in order to plan classroom interventions and to clarify roles. Working with new arrivals is a shared responsibility, not a job for additional adults in isolation.

Within the classroom, additional adults can provide the following support:

• integrating newly arrived pupils into classroom routines
• boosting pupils’ confidence and speaking and listening skills by engaging them in conversation
• supporting pupils in maintaining concentration and participation
• explaining and reinforcing learning objectives
• preparing individual pupils for lessons by, for example, reading the relevant chapter of a novel in advance with them
• during starter activities, making a note of which pupils are not coping with the exercise so that the teacher knows which pupils will need an objective teaching again at a later date or will need to go back a stage to consolidate their learning of a particular concept or skill
• valuing pupils’ home languages and encouraging them to use them in their learning
• supporting pupils to work collaboratively in groups with their peers
• helping pupils to contribute to group discussions
• monitoring progress and providing feedback to teachers on successes and difficulties
• reading and discussing texts with individuals or small groups to complement the guided and supported reading of the literacy hour in primary schools
• working with individuals and groups during guided reading or writing sessions
• acting as a scribe to record ideas
• delivering national literacy strategy intervention programmes: Early literacy support (for year 1), Additional literacy support (for year 3) and Further literacy support (for year 5)
• teaching the literacy progress units at key stage 3 to small groups of pupils.

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Useful weblinks

Please note: QCA is not responsible for the content of external sites

14–19 learning: Matching staff to learning opportunities
A range of adults other than teachers are identified for this section of education, including how they might make a contribution to students’ learning.

DfES: Managing pupil mobility: a handbook for induction mentors
This booklet (2003) provides guidance for schools wishing to develop the role of induction mentors in assisting the integration and achievement of new arrivals.

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DfES: Supporting pupils learning English as an additional language
This revised guidance supports schools with the development of strategies to promote inclusive teaching and to raise the attainment of pupils learning EAL.
Six modules of training are provided, each based upon successful approaches to inclusion.

• Raising the attainment of minority ethnic pupils: the management of literacy at school level
• Whole-class teaching
• Effective use of additional adults
• Guided and supported group work
• New arrivals and isolated learners
• Use of first language in the literacy hour

DfES: National literacy strategy
The strategy produces guidance for teachers working with teaching assistants.
Publications include:

DfES: Early literacy support programme: session materials for teaching assistants
This file is designed to be used by teaching assistants running the early literacy support (ELS) intervention sessions. It is the essential guide to running the sessions each day, and includes details of resources and preparation for each session as well as a full script.

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DfES: Early literacy support programme: materials for teachers working in partnership with teaching assistants
This book contains materials to support the introduction of early literacy support (ELS) in year 1. The aim of the intervention is to ensure that by the beginning of year 1 term 3, all children are working at the appropriate objectives and are able to participate fully in the daily literacy hour with their peers.

DfES: Home languages in the literacy hour
Using home languages to support the literacy hour during shared reading with the whole class, the class teacher and teaching assistant work collaboratively, with the teaching assistant prompting, encouraging participation, explaining, translating and responding to pupils' comments in home language. On another day during shared writing, children use partner talk in shared home languages for oral composition and contribute to whole-class discussion in preferred language.

DfES: Working with teaching assistants: a good practice guide
The aim of this guide is to acknowledge the role played by teaching assistants in schools, and to demonstrate what they can achieve when effectively managed. It focuses on management and deployment rather than pedagogic issues.

Portsmouth Ethnic Minority Achievement Service
This website contains a useful guidance page for schools: Making the most of your bilingual assistant.

Teachernet: Induction training for teaching assistants in secondary schools
This site offers information on induction training courses delivered by the local education authority for teaching assistants in secondary schools. It includes training courses on literacy, numeracy, special educational needs and classroom and behaviour management. These provide more information about the role of teaching assistants.

Teachernet: English as an additional language: Induction training for teaching assistants in primary and secondary schools
This training module supplements the induction training for teaching assistants for those involved in supporting pupils for whom English is an additional language in primary and secondary schools. A key objective of the module is to help teaching assistants become ‘language aware’, and understand that they are in a strong position to support the teaching and learning of English as an additional language in the many and varied encounters they have with pupils in the course of their work.

Teachernet: Teaching assistants
This area of the Teachernet site provides access to a wide range of information on the roles of teaching assistants and other support staff including higher level teaching assistants.

Teachernet: English as an additional language: Introductory training for school support staff
This training unit illustrates the range of curricular contributions made by support staff and raises awareness of how support staff can support the curriculum and create a school ethos and climate that are conducive to high standards of work and behaviour.

Teacher Training Agency (TTA): Professional standards for higher level teaching assistants
The standards identify the values, knowledge, understanding and skills to be expected of anyone working in the higher-level teaching assistant's (HLTA) role, and set out what must be demonstrated by those to be awarded HLTA status. The standards are relevant to all staff working in schools and those not currently employed in schools but who are interested in gaining employment as an HLTA. They will be of interest to anyone involved in training, employing or supporting teaching assistants. The standards can be downloaded from the TTA site.

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