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to keep our content available through a partnership with another educational provider, but this provider has since withdrawn from the agreement.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:
- Learning packs
- All the worksheets from the 11+ programme, if you are following this with your child
- Complete Learning Journey programmes (the packs below include all 40 worksheets for each programme)
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 arrays?
What are arrays?
Arrays are a pictorial representation to help children understand times tables. For example, a child may be given the following word problem:
I have 3 bags. There are 5 pennies in each bag. How many pennies do I have altogether?
A teacher might show the children that the first bag has five pennies and draw the five pennies in a line. Then they would explain that the second bag also has five pennies, and draw a second line. They would continue until they had drawn 3 lines of 5 pennies like this:
The teacher might then explain that rather than counting all the pennies individually, you could work out the answer by counting each line in 5s. The teacher could then point to each line and count 5, 10, 15 to show the children that there were 15 pennies in all.
Teachers in Key Stage 1 will teach children how to count in 2s, 5s and 10s and make sure they are very confident in this, before going on to show them how to work out times table problems like this one using arrays.
This is because children need to be able to count up in steps of different numbers before they can use arrays to help them.
In Year 3, children are expected to learn their 3, 4 and 8 times tables. Teachers may still use arrays for children struggling with their times tables at this stage. Many children find a pictorial representation helps them enormously with working out a worded problem.
Arrays: how they help children understand multiplication and division
Arrays are useful for showing children the relationship between multiplication and division (called 'the inverse'). If you showed a child the above diagram, you could explain to them that it shows 3 x 5 or 'three lots of five', but it also shows how 15 can be divided into 3 equal groups, or 5 equal groups, therefore it demonstrates the following four number sentences:
It is important that when children learn their times tables, they also learn the division facts associated with them, so they are not just learning 6 x 5 = 30, but 30 ÷ 5 = 6. Children need to have quick recall of multiplication facts and division facts and arrays can help enormously in the first stages of understanding the relationship between multiplication and division. These are called Fact Families and teach children how if they know one number sentence, they can use the inverse to learn three other related facts.
