How Can Teachers and Teaching Assistants Best Work as a Team

You've got a TA in the room and about two minutes to tell them what the lesson is about. So they sit beside the same child every day, and that child ends up with less of the teacher than anyone else in the class.

Schools get plenty of guidance on how many TAs to employ, and very little on how a teacher and a TA share one classroom. Here you'll swap the 'Velcro' model, where the TA is stuck to one pupil, for a 'helicopter' model that drops in with a prompt and then steps back. When there's no time to plan together, you'll brief your TA with three questions: the learning objective, the key vocabulary and the outcome. And you can flip roles, so you teach the group that's struggling while your TA supports everyone else.

It's led by a working SENCO who co-wrote a book on inclusive classrooms.