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TheSchoolRun.com closure date

As we informed you a few months ago, TheSchoolRun has had to make the difficult decision to close due to financial pressures and the company has now ceased trading. We had hoped to keep our content available through a partnership with another educational provider, but this provider has since withdrawn from the agreement.

As a result, we now have to permanently close TheSchoolRun.com. However, to give subscribers time to download any content they’d like to keep, we will keep the website open until 31st July 2025. After this date, the site will be taken down and there will be no further access to any resources. We strongly encourage you to download and save any resources you think you may want to use in the future.

In particular, we suggest downloading:

You should already have received 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep. If you haven’t received these, please contact us at [email protected] before 31st July 2025, and we will send them to you.

We are very sorry that there is no way to continue offering access to resources and sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.

What are definite and indefinite articles?

What are definite and indefinite articles?
Definite (the) and indefinite (a, an) articles explained for primary school parents, with examples of how they will be taught in primary-school grammar lessons.

What are definite and indefinite articles?

Articles are words which tell us whether a noun is general (any noun) or specific. There are three articles:
 

  1. the (specific or definite)
  2. a (general or indefinite)
  3. an (general or indefinite when followed by a noun which begins with a vowel)

For example:

The indefinite article 'a' (in red) tells us that the person who wrote the sentence was seeing the cat for the first time.

In this sentence:

The definite article 'the' (in red) tells us that this was a cat that had been seen before, or was known by the person writing the sentence.

The definite article is referring to a specific noun, whereas the indefinite article is referring to something more general, for example:

This means the person speaking wants any book, they are not referring to a specific one.


In this sentence, the speaker wants a particular book.

 

Use of definite and indefinite articles in primary-school texts

Often, in a story, a person or thing will be introduced using the indefinite article and then afterwards will be referred to with the definite article. For example:

First, 'a witch' is used because the witch has not been seen before. Then 'the witch' is used because she has already been introduced and can therefore be referred to with the definite article.

How children are taught about articles in primary school

Articles are determiners, words which come at the beginning of the noun phrase and tell us whether the noun phrase is specific or general. According to the primary curriculum, revised in 2014, children should be taught correct grammatical terminology, so they will learn that articles are one of many different kinds of determiners.