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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.

How multi-sensory learning works

Letters in sand
Multi-sensory learning is a not only a great way to help children develop their literacy skills, it's also great fun. Author of Spelling Made Magic, Clare Winstanley, explores the technique.

If your child is struggling with literacy, employing a new sense can help to add a new perspective to a topic. The idea is that your child can use a multi-dimensional approach – with more chance of success.

Make learning fun

Here are some multi-sensory methods you can try:

Audio
This can work in two ways. Singing can help children learn spellings (think chanting ‘M - i - double s - i - double s – i – double p – i’ to spell ‘Mississippi’) and enable them to ‘sound out’ in their head. Listening to recordings of poetry or stories that children are working on also helps children mentally process and understand the pieces of work.

Visual
Digital camcorders enable children to film themselves doing an activity, play it back, and assess how they have done. This technique can help children to increase their confidence by seeing how they have completed a task. The films can also be used to measure progress.

Touch
Children can learn to process information by being able to feel what they are doing, such as practising writing in sand or on carpet with their fingers, or making letters using modelling clay.

Movement
Also known as Educational Kinesiology, this is movement combined with learning. It involves using natural core and motor skills to improve areas such as memory, concentration, handwriting and communication skills.

Smell
Introducing the smells relating to a topic, such as what a particular environment would smell like. Would it be fresh, sour, delicious, unpleasant? The smell response can evoke ideas that can be used in storytelling and give meaning to words.

Kinaesthetic imagination
This involves discussing how something would feel, sound or smell to evoke an imaginative response, widening your child’s vocabulary.

How do these methods help?

Consider how you read or write a story. Think about the way a scene is set and the responses it evokes – all of the senses are called upon. Multi-sensory techniques add to a child’s literacy skills by helping them use their imagination for creative storytelling, including the use of characters, language and scene setting. They develop the tools with which to describe what the character might see, say or feel.

In other topics, multi-sensory techniques can aid memory by putting an extra dimension to the topic. Instead of just reading about a period of history, for example, they can visualise and imagine how costumes might feel or they might listen to how music of that period sounded or taste a popular food of the time.

Multi-sensory techniques can also be especially helpful with learning spellings. Encourage your child to try chanting or singing difficult spellings, which can help the mind absorb them. Or try using sand or glitter in a tray to help children to learn to write their letters with their hands. Another fun activity is to make letters out of modelling clay, cookie dough or fudge.

Not everyone learns well by rote. By introducing the sense of touch or by modelling the letters, children can practice their spelling and also have a greater connection to the way letters are formed.

Other resources:

Spelling Made Magic by Clare Winstanley is available now from TheSchoolRun's book shop.