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 practice sheets
Learning to write letters the same size, with ascenders (the tall strokes of 'b', 'h', 'k', etc.) and descenders (the ‘below the line’ parts of 'p', 'q', 'y', etc.) the correct relative size, is no easy task. Children also need to learn to write on a line (or in straight lines across a blank sheet of paper), which takes time and lots of practice.
Our blank handwriting practice sheets are designed to help improve your child's handwriting skills when they are writing a selection of words of your choice.
The penmanship paper is available in two formats. Both have shaded areas to show your child where to place the small letters ('a', 'e', 's', 'o', etc.) and the lower parts of letters such as 'h', 'b', 'k').
- If your child is learning joined writing for the first time Format 1 (New writer) is probably the best choice.
- If your child is older and normally writes in a smaller size, Format 2 (Improving writer) is probably the best choice.
Encourage your child to sit their patterns on the bold base lines and make them a consistent size; they will need to make the ascenders approximately twice the size of the small letters and the descenders the same distance below the line. The paper has no guide lines to mark the heights of ascenders and descenders; encourage your child to judge their size by eye (this is because once guide lines of this kind are removed children who are used to using them often make their tall letters touch the writing line above, cluttering the horizontal space between the lines and making their writing hard to read).
When your child understands the relative sizes of the letters and can manage to keep the sizes consistent without the help of the guide lines they are ready to use normal single-lined sheets of paper. Make this change as soon as they are ready.
For a step-by-step learning journey of handwriting worksheets, from first patterning to joined-up writing, see our Handwriting Learning Journey.
For expert advice and information about improving your child's penmanship read our handwriting articles and videos.
