Teach Primary 18.8

Are your pupils SATs ready? Discover how DreamBox Reading Plus, the online reading development programme, can identify your pupils’ skills gaps and accelerate reading progress on page 63. See page 63 readingsolutionsuk.co.uk WE L COME Hello! POWERED BY. . . SHAREENWILKINSON offers detailed advice on preparing for 2025’s SATs reading paper “Being able to fully explain a concept is beneficial for embedding knowledge” P56 JONBIDDLE dives into The Legend of Podkin One-Ear “It’s a book that is rapidly heading towards classic status” P45 KAYTIEHOLDSTOCK discusses the important role of the art lead “We need to fight for improvements in the quality and quantity of art within schools” P24 Don’t miss our next issue, available from 6th January www.teachwire.net | 3 H ow time flies. Not only is this the last Teach Primary of 2024, it’s also my final one as editor. Charley is back from maternity leave, and has already lined up all sorts of interesting and useful articles for the next issue of the magazine. At the risk of sounding like an Oscar winner, I’d like to thank all the contributors I’ve worked with over the last year, as well as my lovely colleagues – a special shout must go out to our talented designers. It doesn’t seem long either since our annual Resource Awards, but they’re back! Turn to page 71 to discover the winners and runners-up in all nine categories; the standard of entries was really impressive, giving our expert judges some difficult decisions to make. This issue is a SATs special, and includes an invaluable selection of best-practice teaching ideas for both English and maths. Ruth Astley brings a timely reminder that maths SATs aren’t just about numeracy (p65) and Rachel Ede offers a range of activity ideas to help energise your SATs prep (p67). On page 56, literacy expert Shareen Wilkinson reviews the 2024 reading paper and uses her findings to plan for SATs success in 2025. There’s a thought-provoking feature from Nikki Gamble and Jo Castro on page 50. They propose rethinking the concept of talking partners, and instead switching focus to listening . Have a read – you may end up reconsidering how you go about pair and group work. Dialogue is something of a focus in November’s leadership section too, as our contributors look into attendance issues, and how to get parental buy-in on getting and keeping children in school (p37). I hope you’re still feeling some of the benefits of the half-term break, and that the rest of the year goes well for you and your class. Do drop us a line if you’d like to suggest a new feature or resource. Lydia Grove, editor @TeachPrimaryLG