✕

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 talk partners?

What are talk partners?
Find out what a talk partner is and why having a talk partner will benefit your child's learning in the classroom.

What are talk partners?

Using 'talk partners' in a lesson, means a teacher asks a question and then asks the class to discuss their answer to this question with a partner.

Teachers are now encouraged to use talk partners as often as they can, as it is believed the benefits are as follows:
 

  • Children are actively engaged in a lesson. If they are not required to talk about what the teacher is saying it is quite possible they are not thinking about what is being asked.
     
  • Children are given confidence by discussing an idea with a peer first. They may be unsure of their answer until they have a chance to talk it over with someone else.
     
  • Children are given time to think about a question and properly formulate an answer. Sometimes children need to talk about something before being able to give a good answer.
  • If teachers rely only on children raising hands to give answers, it is common to find that the same few children raise their hands each time. After children have talked about something in a pair, a teacher can choose a pair to offer what they have discussed, without waiting for them to put their hands up. This means that the quieter children who may not normally offer contributions are encouraged to speak up.