i did CS today!
Totally unprepared untill i arrived at 8 and then got told i was doing it!
And oh boy was it hard.
I was in my own yr 1 class so know all the children.
Oh yeah guess what because our school 'doesn't' use CS i won't be paid!

What lessons did you have to teach?

No warning is a bit bad !

I spent a large ammount of last school year teaching year 1 cos the teacher wasn't capable !!

I'm not sure its right not to pay you. Won't that create a possible insurance nightmare if you aren't being paid at the right level?

mak a fuss clucky that is out of order...who told you..the HT or senco?

Teaching special people tomorrow in RE to year 3 need ideas for what makes a person special. Who are specail people in the parish [catholic school], in the country and in the world.
Also vikings need to give a timeline worksheet with dates, writing and pictures all mixed up how do I explain how to reorganize it.

How about -for the R.E- draw circles (inside each other)on the board and on the inside one put parents/relatives - next friends - teachers and so on gradually working outwards - nuns/priests - pope. ?? Children to give own ideas. Did something similar a while back.

Thanks for that will try it and see how it goes.

Cheers D will let you know how it goes

Re went really well but had to abandon viking timeline as it was too difficult and ran out of time

I'm a cover supervisor.

I cover in Year 1 on Tuesday pm when the teacher is out doing PPA and all day Thursdays.

I really enjoy it, the planning is always there and all i have to do is deliver it and mark the books at the end, no worries

Do you work in year 1 normally cos when I agreed to do cover supervision I thought it would only be in my class so when I was told I would be covering a different class in a different key stage I was very surprised. As I have only ever worked in year 1 for 18 months and 3 mornings in year 4 for 12 weeks. Think I will ask for more experience in key stage 2 if this is gonna be a regular occurrence. We have a new head and she had agreed for 3 teachers in key stage 2 to go on courses and the 4th teacher has PPA friday afternoon so no teacher was in key stage 2 at all. All 4 classes run by TAs.

Before this new school year i was covering up to yr 3. So somedays i would come in the staffroom and look in my tray and find a note asking if i could cover a certain class. Now i just cover year one but i'm sure if a few teachers were out and they had no one to do it they would ask me. Currently we are thinking about having set ppl as cover supervisors, so they would be called when needed, not sure how that is all gonna work tho.

I work in a high school in Cardiff and in my experience the classes I have seen being taken by Cover Supervisors leave a lot to be desired. Maybe through no fault of their own because (as already mentioned) they are not actually allowed to teach but only - as the name suggests - "supervise" a class and give out the work that has been left behind by the subject teacher. This though, is where the whole thing falls down.....in my experience, the work that has been left behind has not been work at all, but things like wordsearches and crossword puzzles! I'm talking here about year 8 and 9 classes in science lessons!

One day last week, one of the year 9 classes were actually left some "copying" work for them to do ( that I think is an actual cop out and boring for the kids to do.) All the cover supervisor lessons I have been involved in as a TA for those classes, in my opinion have been a complete and utter waste of time. I can understand why some of the teachers leave this type of unchallenging "work" for the cover supervisor to hand out as lots of our kids, at the best of times don't work anyway when the subject teacher is actually there teaching! The kids idea of coming to a lesson, is to do the bare minum, if at all any work at all! So it is no surprise that when they are faced with a lesson with either a cover supervisor or indeed a supply teacher, they pull out all the stops and act out even more! Especially when they see that all they have prepared for them is some hastily thrown together wordsearch sheets. The few brighter and conciencious pupils in the class actually find this very difficult to deal with as it is not challenging enough and they find themselves whizzing through the papers, whilst all around them chaos and general mishbehaving is going on - as the rest of the pupils are either refusing to do the "boring work" or running around the lab chasing each other about.

I really dispare when I see these kind of lessons and think that on the whole, both cover supervision lessons and supply teacher lessons are a complete and utter waste of time. The whole education system needs a good swift kick up the backside and review these so called "lessons" that are obviously not working and ultimately letting our children down so badly!

Anyone else out there experienced such lessons with particularly involving cover supervisor and or supply teachers?

There, Rant and rave over for now!

Over to you now!

Ciao!

I'm a TA with NVQ3. I have 'taken' classes in dire emergency situations (teacher fainting, snow making half of staff late in). or for the odd half hour now and again. I do not cover or take classes on a regular basis. I will agree to do that when the system is overhauled and the anomaly is addressed between what a TA gets paid for the responsibility of taking a whole class and, in lots of cases planning in their own time, and what the school is saving on supply cover.