In the course of your assistant training you either tutor a selected pupil, or you meet him/her in a class during your work as a teaching assistant.  A teaching assistant supports teachers by helping to supervise activities in the classroom, working with children on individual basis, and usually work with a particular pupil or pupils. Your task is to focus on a pupil with learning or behavioural difficulties, or a gifted pupil, and to implement a diagnostic activity according to the procedure of a diagnostic process.

At this stage select ONE pupil who you are interested in. You can choose anyone whom you want to support in their learning. The chosen child can be for example a pupil with lack of motivation, showing little interset in a education or a particular subject, a pupil who is having unbalanced educational results, experiences recent changes in their schooling attitudes, or it can also be a talented/gifted child who might need different teaching approach.  Choosing a child with SEN is not advisable, as this portfolio task focuses on 1st level support measures. However if you do happen to choose a pupil with SEN, there is no point in diagnosing them again as they have already been professionally diagnosed. In such situation study their IEP and focus on finding out, whether the measures from IEP really support the pupil and why yes/no. 

Make sure that you will have access to the pupil on a regular basis and you will be able to observe their learning processes (e.g. you are their teacher, teacher assistant in their class, their tutor or you are helping them with school preparation in any other way).

Download the portfolio task teplate below.

Describe the pupil, his/her difficulties and state the reason why you selected him/her. 

Formulate the hypothesis - your assumption what might be causing pupil's difficulties in learning, what might be prohibiting them from achieving better results etc.