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 triangular numbers?
What are triangular numbers?
When certain numbers of dots are arranged into equilateral triangles as follows, these are triangular numbers:
Triangular numbers do not appear in the primary-school national curriculum for maths, but they are taught at secondary school and may be taught to very able Year 5 or 6 children.
A child may be shown the above diagram and then asked to work out how many dots will be in the fifth or sixth or seventh diagram.
Some children at this point will draw the diagram to work out the answer, but others may work out that there may be a quicker way. For example, they may see that the number of dots along the bottom of the triangle is the same as the number of the diagram (the third diagram has three dots along the bottom, the fourth diagram has four dots along the bottom) so they will know that the sixth diagram will have six dots along the bottom.
They may then notice that each diagram is the same as the last, except with a new bottom row of dots added, so the seventh diagram will be the same as the sixth, except with 7 dots added at the bottom, therefore the seventh diagram will have 28 dots.
There is an algebraic formula for working out the number of dots, which children will learn in KS3 maths.
If children are sitting 11+ or entrance exams, it is likely that a question involving patterns such as these will come up.
Children need to be logical and methodical in working these questions out. It will not always be necessary for them to find a formula for working them out, but it is important they have an efficient method for considering how the pattern will continue beyond what is shown on the page.
