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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 are coordinates?

What are coordinates?
We explain what coordinates are and how children are taught to read and plot coordinates on a grid.

What are coordinates?

Coordinates are numbers which determine the position of a point or a shape in a particular space (a map or a graph).

In primary school children are taught Cartesian coordinates, which they are introduced to in Year 4. Points are marked by how far along they are on the x axis (the horizontal axis) and how far up they are on the y axis (the vertical axis).

Children will be shown a grid like the following, with numbers along the x axis and the y axis:

The coordinates of the left-hand corner of this triangle are (1, 3).

How to read and plot coordinates

Coordinates are always written in brackets, with the two numbers separated by a comma. Coordinates are ordered pairs of numbers; the first number number indicates the point on the x axis and the second the point on the y axis.

When reading or plotting coordinates you always go across first and then up (a good way to remember this is: 'across the landing and up the stairs'). 
 

Children start to learn about co-ordinates in Year 5. For example: they may be shown the above triangle and asked to write the three coordinates for the three vertices of the triangle.

This would constitute reading coordinates. They may then be given a blank grid and asked to plot the following coordinates: (1, 1) (4, 1) (1, 3) and (4, 3) then join up the points to make a shape (which in this case would be a rectangle).
 

In Year 6, children learn to draw, locate and complete shapes that meet given properties. For example:

The square's coordinates are (3, 3), (5, 2), (6, 4) and (4, 5).

They may also be asked to reflect, rotate or translate a shape on a coordinates grid and then give the coordinates of the new shape they have drawn. 

In Year 5 or 6, a child might be given a shape that has some coordinates marked on, but where the coordinates grid is not marked. They will then need to work out the coordinates of the unmarked vertex of the shape, for example:

In this case the unmarked coordinates are (3, 6).

In Year 6, children are sometimes asked to work out coordinates in all four quadrants. This means they have to think about negative and positive numbers. For example: