​

Botanic Primary School, Belfast

2017 - 19 SEN/INtervention Teacher & Class teacher

During my part Time Position as an intervention teacher in Botanic, I also filled in as class teacher for primary 6 in the final Term of 2017-18. This role has been varied and has also included subbing from Nursery to Primary 7 as and when required. Botanic has a high proportion of children from the roma community whom i work with daily as part of my intervention and SEN work. As part of a team teaching role with Primary 4, I am in charge of ICT and PE. I have been using some new ICT teaching resources such as Sumdog and code.org . I have also digitalised the Schofield and Sims Mental Maths tests in order to use the data more effectively and identify common errors. Training from Jane Considine has changed the way we are teaching reading and writing and the children are becoming more effective at using the 'lenses'. This has been an equally demanding and rewarding role, learning more about working with different SEn, cultures and teaching styles. Botanic has won many awards in ICT and Eco issues; as well as doing extremely well in the 2018 ETI Sustaining Improvement Inspection . IN 2019 I will be running a vegan after schools cookery club as well as completing two 6 week Forest School pilots and painting the back drops for the end of school show.

St. Clare's PS, Belfast

2014-16 Intervention Teacher as Part of the Greater West Belfast Project

2016-17 Class Teacher, Ks2, Primary 5 (8-9 yeArs Old)

  As Key Stage 1 Intervention teacher with the 'Greater West Belfast Project'. My responsibilities involved taking small groups for literacy support, baselining and targeting work for the development of children with additional needs. This role involved the constant assessment, planning, monitoring and review of the children under my care and use this data to set SMART targets.

     I use a variety of both standardised and non-standardised assessments such as PM Benchmarking, D.R.A., Mist, Hodder, PTE and other formal and informal assessments to identify and diagnose specific difficulties. I initiated the strategy of using assistive technology such as videoing running records to have clear evidence of fluency, confidence and physical strategies that are often missed in paper analysis. I understand the importance of ensuring children are reading from an instructional text and the potential discrepancy between reading accuracy and comprehension.  I have analysed and levelled pieces of writing after being trained in the process by the school SENCO.

     I liase closely with the other teachers to plan, evaluate, implement and review IEPs and our general teaching of the curriculum. I am a valued member of the SEN team and also regularly cover classes at all key stages.

ICT has been heavily incorporated into my training, with extensive experience of using iPads in the classroom, creating interactive flipcharts using Prometheon boards and Active Inspire; and creating my own C2K classrooms. I use iPads daily with my groups – re-enforcing the phonics programme through the Spellosaurus app and helping pupils to create stories and express themselves using ‘Book Creator’. For our recent General Inspection I created an interactive display board where the viewer could scan a QR code beside the child’s photo and listen to an online sample of their reading. The SEN and withdrawal lessons received excellent feedback during the inspection.

In St. Clare’s I have had the opportunity to work with children with complex needs such as ASD, ADHD and processing difficulties among others. I use a multi-sensory approach to help children overcome specific literacy difficulties. I teach the Linguistic Phonics programme on a daily basis and have used a variety of reading schemes such as Big Cat, Rigby Star and interactive Bug Club books. I took responsibility for the use of the Bug Club software in the school. This included training other teachers and monitoring the use and impact. I also ran a Bug Club afterschools club to allow children to access the software even when they did not have internet access at home. I supported the dyslexic friendly environment of St. Clare’s through encouraging questions, personalised SMART targets and differentiated expectations.  

Working with these pupils in St. Clare’s has given me an insight into the difficulties pupils with specific literacy difficulties experience e.g. rate of processing, short term memory problems and an ability to manipulate phonics. I use a variety of strategies to alleviate these difficulties.

 In the academic year of 2016-17 I was lucky enough to have my own class. This has afforded me the opportunity to extend my skills across all areas of the curriculum and to work with a wider variety of needs and abilities.

Various, Belfast Education And Library Board

Sept - Dec 2014 : Substitute Teacher (All ages and Stages)

My first few months of work provided me with great opportunities for working in a variety of environments, key stages and classes. This period also included one month working in an SEN unit in Holy Trinity. This provided me with greater insight into the difficulties faced by some children and it is an area I would like to work further in during my career.