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to keep our content available through a partnership with another educational provider, but this provider has since withdrawn from the agreement.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 is brainstorming?
What is brainstorming?
Brainstorming is a process whereby a question or problem is posed, then a group of people give ideas which are noted by a scribe, who writes them down for the group to see.
This process can be used by adults during training sessions, but is also used by teachers, wanting to gather and share ideas from their class with a view to helping them produce a quality piece of writing.
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For example: a teacher may want children to write a description of the troll in 'Three Billy Goat's Gruff'. They may either have a blank whiteboard or flipchart ready to jot ideas down, or they may have prepared a frame to organise information as follows:
- What does he look like?
- What sounds does he make? What does he say?
- What does he smell like?
- How does he feel?
A teacher could go though each element in turn, asking children to talk to their partners about the different elements of the troll.
All ideas would be jotted down and the teacher might try to elicit more information from the children to extend their ideas, for example: a child may say that the troll feels angry.
The teacher might try to draw their attention to physical feelings as well: 'He spends a lot of time sitting in water, how do you think that makes him feel?'
They may also encourage children to extra describing words to the words they have chosen, so if they say he roars, a teacher might say 'How does he roar?' to which the children may answer 'loudly', 'viciously' or 'stupidly'.
The follow-on activity from this may be to write a paragraph describing the troll, using the notes that have been gathered on the board.
Brainstorming is an excellent way of pooling ideas so that children are provided with a range of rich vocabulary to use in their writing.
