Getting to know the class, the individual strengths and weaknesses of the children you will teach for the next year, and setting the level of challenge at just right (not too hard, not too easy) is key to good teaching.

In primary, we are privileged to be able to take this process at a breakneck speed. At the end of the first week, we are clear who is who; we’ve heard them all read, marked their first pages in their brand new books, and set the first spelling test. Because we are (mostly) teaching fewer than 30 children, and we are with them day in, day out, teaching across the curriculum, the getting to know you process doesn’t take long.

But there are some children who it can take us all an age to get to know; some children for whom, even at the end of the year, we will find it difficult to make a meaningful comment upon their report. The children they don’t teach. The children with SEND.

So how does the everyday teacher get to know the child who spends more time with the teaching assistant than anyone else, or in an intervention, outside of the classroom? How do you build that bond of trust between teacher and child that means that when you lead, they will follow? How do you build a relationship when, as in the case of the child with a 1-1 support, there is another adult in the way?

You can talk to their past teacher, their TA, the class TA, the dinner supervisors and the Sendco. You can talk to their parents. You can read their EHCP, or short term plans, reports and advice from other professionals. You can listen to what they have to say, attempt to paint a picture from their opinions, their views. You can even study their school data, plot their progress on a graph of expectations if you wish.

How does the everyday teacher get to know the child who spends more time with the teaching assistant than anyone else?

You can keep the child behind one assembly and have a natter over a spot of colouring, do a bit of bonding. Or you can go out into the playground and play with them, or stand back and observe how they get on with their peers - or not.

But, when it comes down to it, none of these ways into understanding the way they do their learning are a substitute for one thing. It is the way that teachers have been finding out about their charges ever since the profession began: by asking questions, engaging them in conversation about their work, marking it, finding out what they do and don’t know - as well as what their next steps might be.

You will need to do a bit of planning. You might need to ask a TA to do something else related to, but not directly involving the child in question. You might need to overcome a bit of trepidation and the feeling that you don’t know what you are doing, but hang in there. This is what we do.

We teach.

Nancy Gedge is a consultant teacher for the charity the Driver Youth Trust, working with school and teachers on SEND. She is the TES SEND specialist, and author of Inclusion for Primary Teachers