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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

Handwriting dos and don’ts

Girl practising handwriting
Practising handwriting at home doesn’t have to be about copying out rows of letters and reaching writing targets. Make writing fun with these helpful tips from primary school teacher Phoebe Doyle.

Handwriting can sometimes be boxed into certain areas, with an emphasis on learning key words and ‘proper’ handwriting.

But opening our minds to what constitutes a valuable writing activity is the key to inspiring kids to be motivated to write, and not just for their school assignments.

Children should be given opportunities to write for themselves, without pressure – just for the enormous value and sheer joy the activity holds. Get started by following our tips.

Do…

  • Be positive, supporting and encouraging.
  • Be a good role model, and let them ‘catch you writing’! Explain what and why you are writing, even if it’s just a shopping list, a birthday card or a note to the teacher.
  • Have a writing space, a table or area dedicated to writing activities.
  • Make writing fun! Write tongue twisters using alliteration, or funny poems together, taking it in turns to note down what you come up with.
  • Let your child work at their own pace, so they’ll build up speed and skill naturally.
  • If they bring written work back from school, offer special rewards (stickers, certificates to post on the fridge, etc).

Don’t…

  • Pile on the pressure – encourage independent learning by letting your child strengthen their handwriting skill at a pace that suits them.
  • Compare against peers – remember all children develop at different times and stages.
  • Fret too much over misspellings or poor handwriting – they can’t concentrate on everything at once!

Try this…

Have a special box for your writing materials, including:

  • Pens of all kinds
  • Envelopes
  • Special letter-writing paper
  • Child-safe scissors and stapler (needed for making books)
  • Pencils – sparkly, coloured, whatever!
  • Files and folders
  • Different sizes and colours of paper

Find out how your child learns to write, and try fun writing projects that boost literacy skills with your child.