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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 Look, Cover, Write, Check?

Child happily writing in school book
Look, Cover, Check, Write is a strategy your child will be taught in schools to help them learn spellings. Find out how the technique is taught in the classroom so you can reinforce learning at home in the same way.

What is Look, Cover, Write, Check?

Look, Cover, Write, Check is a strategy used to help children learn their spellings.

A child is given a word to spell and:
 

  • looks at it
  • covers it over with a piece of paper or their hand
  • writes the spelling again next to the word
  • uncovers the spelling to check if they have got it right.

This is a good method to teach children so that they practise learning the spellings of words, but also so that they are testing themselves.

Look, Cover, Write, Check in the primary-school classroom

Children are usually given weekly spelling lists throughout their time at primary school and this strategy is often suggested by teachers for children to use at home.

Teachers sometimes give children Look, Cover, Write, Check grids so that they can test themselves a few times. For example, if a child were learning spellings ending -tion, these might be put in a column on the left and then a few more blank columns provided so that children could practise writing the spelling a few times to learn it.

Teachers may also write out spellings children have got wrong in their writing and encourage children to use this strategy to learn these spellings as well.
 

To use the method at home, download and print our free Look, Cover, Write and Check template:

For more ideas to help children prepare for the weekly spelling test try 5 unusual ways to help with spelling, 9 spelling tips from real parents, great spelling games, teachers' tricks for spelling and lots more articles about primary-school spelling.

For year-by-year guides to what spelling patterns and rules children learn in primary-school, read our parents' guides: