Assistant practitioner Review

Daily interactions with children such as making observations of my key children, working with them and providing activities suited to their development etc. Tasks also include nappy changes, mealtimes and cleaning up. Responsibilities include making sure children are kept safe from harm and being observent and vigilant at all times of the day. If i am not working in the setting, I would have set assessments to complete by my assesor and webiners to attend every so often.

New skills include better writing skills from daily observations and assessments on term basis. Other skills include being more vigilent with my surroundings and also being able to multitask. Existing skills include being more organised, this is due to heavy workload of weekly observations, children planning and assessments to complete

I enjoy parts of my programme such as the discussions and assessments that I have with my assessor and my webinars I attend online. I also enjoy interacting with the children however I feel that I have too much work to complete in the hours I have at my setting. For example, my nursery expects me to complete 7 observations as well as 7 plannings for children everyweek. On top of trackers for the 7 children on term basis. As well as Assessments, modules and research that I have to complete from my assessor.

Programme is very well structured however the only problem is that I have been unaware of some of the webinars I should be attending. I have support from my Assessor through the phone and she has been very helpful. In terms of training and support from the nursery, I feel that at the start of my apprenticeship I havent had much help and im expected to get on with the work without exactly knowing what to do. After working there for some time, I feel less tense and more organised because of the daily routine.

I have a monthly meeting with my manager to talk about work issues and general talk about my day to day role. However I feel that during the time at the nursery, because of the intensive work load and amount of children and how busy it can get at the nursery, the support isnt there as much when a problem arises and you need the help. You are in some ways left to tryto solve it unless you raise the awareness but then sometimes, you feel like a liability because there can be shortages of staff and everyone is busy with their own responsibilities

My training provider is always there to help over the phone and sometimes through messaging. She would email me presentations, youtube videos and links regarding the help I need and she can be helpful at times. However it can also be difficult to arrange times for meetings because of the amount of apprentices she is also supporting and because of my work hours as the nursery also wants me to work.

I have learnt a lot on my apprenticeship and it has helped me on my day to day basis at work. It has given me a lot of knowledge and ideas on how I could improve and what I can do to improve on my skills. I have put theory into practice such as the Maslows heirachy of needs as well as how children behave.

Because of covid, there are not much social events however my company has meetings on a weekly basis and has spoken about meeting together, Any extra curricular activities are mostly to do with work purposes itself such as going in to help organise the rooms or going in to learn more about child development.

Yes

Because I have so far enjoyed it and had good support from my assessor. I feel like I have learnt so much

I would like to be told more about finding the nursery and what was expected at the nursery. Although I like realise training and they have been supportive themselves in regards to the structure of the course. I think I would have much preferred if I was told more about the structure of my settings such as the set hours and the amount of work I would recieve from that end.