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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.

Key Stage 1 history lessons explained

Castle
Here’s your guide to the themes, projects and lessons that your child will experience in the Key Stage 1 history curriculum.

How did people live in the past? Who were the key men and women that helped shape society as we know it today? These are some of the questions that children focus on in history at Key Stage 1. They also continue to build on learning from the Foundation Stage, exploring changes in their own lives and the way of life of their family or others around them.

In KS1 history lessons, children are taught about:

Lesson examples

Here are some activities that your child might take part in to learn about history at KS1:

  • After looking at a poster of a castle and noting the key features, such as the windows and drawbridge, Year 1 pupils draw pictures of their own castle, highlighting its special features.
     
  • A Year 2 class is given the task of finding out information about toys from the past. They then have to share their findings with each other and use the information to place the toys in a chronological order, starting with the oldest. Once the pupils have agreed on the correct placement of the toys, they then move onto adding approximate dates, completing an illustrated timeline.

Help your child with primary-school history at home:

  • Get your child to see that history is all around them – where they walk, where they live, where they go to school. Ask questions about the type of people that may have lived there and the kind of lives they may have lived. How did children keep themselves entertained in the past?
     
  • Help your child to find answers to questions. Take them to a local history museum, the library or a historical event.
     
  • If you are going on a long journey, play games with them that are history-based. For example, get them to spot buildings that have timber frames.
     
  • Watch history programmes on TV.
     
  • The best way to teach questioning skills is to ask ‘what if' questions. Encourage them to question, not accept. If the wheel hadn’t been invented what would have happened? History is the best lesson for practising asking and answering questions.