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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.

What is an information text?

Cleopatra information text
Information texts are an important part of primary school literacy lessons. We explain the features of this non-fiction genre, why note-taking matters and how to help your child at home.

What is an information text?

An information text is a piece of non-fiction writing which gives information about a particular thing (for example: Cleopatra, Ancient Egypt, recycling or volcanoes). Information texts are sometimes called non-chronological reports, because they are giving information about something without mentioning the order in which it happened.

How are information texts taught in primary school?

Children will usually be asked to research something relevant to their learning, for example: if they are learning about the Victorians in history, they may be asked to research a certain area, such as child labour or Victorian funerals. They will look at various texts and discuss the features:
 

  • main title
  • sub-headings
  • bullet points
  • paragraphs
  • pictures and captions.

They will then make notes on their topic, possibly on a spider diagram.

Note-making is an important skill and it cannot be taken for granted that children automatically know how to do it! Teachers will model this skill, by reading a sentence shown on the board and then asking children to say which the most important words are. For example, they might show a paragraph like this:

If a Victorian woman lost her husband she was called a widow. The period of time after her husband's death was called mourning. She would wear black for two years while she was in full mourning. She would then spend a period of six months in half mourning, during which time she would wear grey or lavender clothes.

They might then model note-making in the following way:

Once children have written notes from various sources, they will write a draft of their information text. Teachers will support them in editing and re-writing this report, by encouraging them to use correct punctuation and sentences that make sense containing connectives.

Children then need to plan and write their 'neat' version. They need to think about the layout, of this, including the main title, what will be in each paragraph, whether there will be a bullet-pointed list and where the pictures and captions will go. Emphasis needs to be placed on designing the report so that the layout is clear and eye-catching.
 
Looking for more literacy information? We explain all primary non-fiction texts in our parents' guide.