July 2015

Who can be an expert in every topic for interventions in primary school? We share how to boost TA subject knowledge across the core subjects. 

On World Book Day, Reading Planet author Phil Dillon completed his first ever author visit. He talks about his experience of sharing his book 'Look at my Book' and discusses talking bananas called Dave...

Our teams at Rising Stars and RS Assessment have worked together to produce this nifty book band table for schools who use our Reading Planet reading scheme along with our reading assessments.

Use our new book band suggestions as an additional outcome alongside Reading Age and to inform book allocations to find the right fit for all your young readers. 

We need our learners to develop their ‘mental toughness'. By this we are not trying to develop superheroes who approach problems and learning as if they are invincible. Instead, our learners need to develop a healthy self-efficacy, where their self-esteem is built on learned accomplishments and can withstand failure.  

Peter Clough’s model of the 4 Cs provides an effective framework for schools and teachers to support their learners. It consists of four attributes that help learners to develop mental toughness- challenge, control, commitment and confidence.

This summer, we’re expanding our Reading Planet Rocket Phonics strand with 48 new Target Practice Readers. Here’s everything you need to know about the books...

As teachers, we often use curriculum-based tests to help us understand what learners can and can’t do, and how this measures up against expectations for their age and stage. This information is then used to plan support and interventions for learners who are struggling. While often effective, this approach sometimes means that we end up addressing the symptoms of the difficulties rather than the underlying causes.

After a lengthy consultation period, the DfE published the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan on the 2^nd March 2023, which sets out its plans to change the SEND and alternative provision system in England.

Improving educational outcomes is important to us, and we understand that choosing the most impactful resources is challenging. So, everything we do at Hodder Education is created to ensure it will help engage learners and have a positive impact on teaching and learning. As part of this commitment, in 2021 we launched a two-year Impact Trial working with two independent evaluators to measure the impact of Reading Planet Rocket Phonics on pupils' reading attainment. 

Aoife Bruen, Product Manager for MARK, outlines an exciting update that we're working on for MATs and School Groups who use MARK, ready for the Summer Term . Our new feature will allow Multi Academy Trusts and School Groups to extract assessment data from across all of their member schools at the click of a button in MARK.

Many learners with maths difficulties or dyscalculia have maths anxiety and they also tend to have a fixed mindset about their ability and/or potential in maths. These children may have had years of experiencing failure in maths, having to follow a fast-paced curriculum and often being taught in a procedural way where the emphasis is on fact recall and speed. They have learnt to believe that they are no good at maths and never will be. But it doesn’t have to be that way!