- Tuesday 05 March 2024
Book list season is fast approaching, and we know this year in particular comes with some big changes and big decisions to make!
With the recent changes that have been introduced to the Ireland curriculum (for the first time in more than two decades) there’s a lot of uncertainty for teachers who have established refined and robust teaching practices and now need to re-align to new curriculum emphasises and content adjustments.
Luckily, we’re here to help, and it starts with getting book list ready for the new school year.
From bestsellers like New Wave Mental Maths, to timeless staples like Reading for Me, we have a wide range of pupil resources to choose from this year.
Our up-to-date and curriculum-aligned pupil resources make it simple to adapt to curriculum changes and brand new learning content.
But which pupil resources are going to help you the most to adapt to these new changes and stay book list ready?
We’ve created this guide to help – so read on to discover four book smart strategies that will simplify your back-to-school selection and narrow down your workbook choices.
1) Define Your Intentions
In an ideal world, teachers would shop our entire pupil resource range and have every resource they ever need at their fingertips.
In reality, you might need to get choosy, so to help you narrow down your selection, we recommend setting an intention for the pupil resources you purchase this year.
For example, do you want to use pupil resources for daily practice and revision? In that case, New Wave Mental Maths and New Wave English in Practice are excellent choices as they contain daily practice exercises and weekly revision columns.
Or maybe you want to use pupil resources for consolidation and warm up? If so, consider a workbook like Reading for Me, which contains follow up texts to help pupils consolidate their learning.
Maybe you’re just looking for easy set homework resources – in which case, all of our pupil resources are great because you can simply assign a page or activity and send it home with each pupil. All you need to do is pick a subject or learning area you’d like pupils to further practise at home.
2) Identify Pupil Interests
Each pupil has unique interests and learning areas that they enjoy and thrive at. The more you can align to these learning areas, the more engaged your class will be in learning!
Is there a subject your pupils love to learn about? Consider purchasing daily skills builders in that specific subject area.
Or, maybe you want to engage interest in other subject areas by connecting learning outcomes. In which case, consider pupil resources that contain cross-curricular activities (such as New Wave Handwriting and Science: A STEM Approach.)
3) Choose Skills Development Focuses
Is there a specific skill you believe is particularly important for pupils to master? For example, making connections between one learning area and another? Or perhaps collaborating with peers?
Or maybe you’re being encouraged to spend more time developing a skill among pupils (for example, recent changes to the Ireland Curriculum have put more emphasis on teaching problem-solving skills.)
One way to narrow down your pupil resource selection is to identify which skills are essential for this upcoming school year and align daily skills builders to that skill.
Here’s a quick breakdown of a few of the skills our pupil resources focus on developing:
- New Wave Mental Maths – problem solving, critical thinking, analytical skills
- Reading for Me – language development, cognitive skills, literacy and phonics
- My Spelling Workbook – phonemic awareness, vocabulary development, memory and recall.
- Science: A STEM Approach – creativity, collaborating, critical thinking
- New Wave Handwriting – fine motor skills, letter recognition, cognitive skills
- New Wave English in Practice – reading, writing, communication and grammar
4) Workbook Usage
Finally, you might decide to choose workbooks based on how you want to use them throughout the year.
Depending on your established teaching style, homework needs, and where you need the most support, pupil workbooks can serve many different purposes and have flexible usage.
Plus, workbooks are fantastic resources for lesson planning as they can aid just about any topic of any subject, and they’re full of texts, activities, questions, and assessments.
With that in mind, pupil workbooks can be allocated to supplement lesson planning (e.g. progress tracking, warmup and consolidating exercises, classroom revision, etc.) or empower student ownership over work (e.g. daily homework practice, independent learning, etc.)
If these tips helped you narrow down your choices, let us know! And don’t let back-to-school season sneak up on you – start browsing our range of pupil workbooks today and building your wishlist!
Sources