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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to keep our content available through a partnership with another educational provider, but this provider has since withdrawn from the agreement.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 is a trigraph?

What is a trigraph?
Your child will be taught about trigraphs as part of their phonics learning journey. We explain how teachers explain trigraphs to children and how you can reinforce learning at home.

What is a trigraph?

A digraph is two letters (two vowels or two consonants or a vowel and a consonant) which together make one sound.

A trigraph is a single sound that is represented by three letters, for example:

In the word 'match', the three letters 'tch' at the end make only one sound.

Other examples of trigraphs are:

igh as in sigh
ore as in bore
air as in fair
ear as in dear
are as in dare

All the trigraphs above trigraphs will be taught to children in Year 1.
 

Teaching methods vary as to how these are taught, but the process may go as follows: A teacher may choose a trigraph to focus on for a few days, for example: tch. She may start by writing a word on the board: 'match' and asking children to say it out loud. She may then underline the letters 'tch' and encourage the children to make this noise.

The children may then be asked to do a number of activities of the week. These may include any of the following:

  1. Simply writing the letters 'tch' on their own mini-whiteboard, to practise forming the letters in order and joining them together.
  2. Being given some cut-up words cards, some with 'tch' on the end and some with an ending they have learnt previously, such as: 'ck', for example:
clockmatchrocksock
catchsnatchtickstack

Children then need to put the words into two groups, according to their endings.
 

  1. Fill-the-gaps worksheets, where children are given a picture and then a word with the ending missing, for example:

ha_ _ _

  1. Cut-up phonics cards, where children have to put phonemes together to make a word, for example, children could make the words hatch, catch, witch and latch with the following cards:
haca
wila
tchtchtchtch