What is the role of an Early Years Teaching Assistant

What is the role of an Early Years Teaching Assistant?

Early years teaching assistants play a pivotal role in supporting children during their initial years in education. While you can expect the role to vary from school to school, you’ll still be able to make a big difference to the pupils you help, both in and out of the classroom.

Expect to support teachers during lessons, providing one-to-one support to youngsters when required and helping to maintain behavioural standards to minimise any disruption. This may include assistance for pupils with special educational needs (SEN), ensuring that they have the best environment in which to learn.

What does an early years teaching assistant do?

Early years teaching assistants have a unique opportunity to help nurture each child’s natural curiosity to learn, with a degree of freedom over this is done. This will include supporting a teacher with lesson delivery, such as sourcing and printing worksheets, creating eye-catching wall displays and collecting pupils’ work. All of these tasks enable the main classroom teacher to focus on the delivery of lesson content and behaviour, helping to cut their workloads and potential stress levels.

For young pupils, early years teaching assistants can also play a pivotal role in identifying their strengths and weaknesses. This can make a big difference to a pupil’s development, as it ensures that teaching is tailored to their specific needs. In instances where pupils are shy, nervous or unsure of their surroundings, staff can also help them to feel safer in the school environment. Early years teaching assistants can also help those with low self-esteem or with behavioural issues, as these youngsters can often benefit from additional attention.

What other skills might be required in the role?

Depending on your experience as an early years teaching assistant, you may also play a role in helping teachers to create lesson plans. Here, your knowledge of individual pupils and their specific needs will enable you to shape lessons that best support their learning requirements. Good communication skills are a necessity in the role, as you’ll need to speak with other school staff, pupils and sometimes their parents on a regular basis, providing information in a way that all can understand. Ultimately, you’ll be helping each child you support to develop a set of essential skills that they’ll use throughout their lives.

If the thought of being an early years teaching assistant is appealing, get in touch with us today to discover how we can help with your career progression.

How Tradewind can support Early Year Teaching Assistants in their job search

We have hundreds of teaching assistant roles available, find your perfect job here.

We have lots of resources online to help support your TA job search, from writing the perfect CV to our top interview tips. If you have any worries about starting a new Teaching Assistant role, we have collated our top 10 tips for new TA’s.