Juniors

The Junior Department is made up of Years 3, 4 and 5. Every class has a form teacher who teaches the majority of subjects to their class. You will begin to see more teachers for different subjects as you progress through the juniors. The role of the form teacher is really important to ensure that you are happy and successful both in and out of the classroom.

Junior Assemblies - Every Thursday all the Junior department have an assembly together where we celebrate the successes of the week. We enjoy awarding the stars of the week and maths times tables certificates. If you have achieved anything else outside of school we would love to share that as well.

Star of the Week - Each week a child from each class will be chosen by their form teacher to be Star of the Week. They will have impressed their form teacher by showing one of the Walhampton learning characteristics. These are:

• Empathy

• Resilience

• Curiosity

• Originality

• Risk Taking

• Initiative

For the academic year 2020-21, we have a wonderful teaching team to look after you. They are:

3JM - Jo Myles

3JW - Jo Wood

Year 3 Teaching Assistant - Sarah Hamilton

4MF - Mel Fidge

4ML - Mary Lawson

4AW - Adam Webb

Year 4 Teaching Assistant - Charlotte Husk

5MHF - Michael Hamilton-Foyn

5MN - Mary Norris

Independent learning - As you progress through the Junior Department we expect you to become more independent in your learning. We want to help develop your love of learning and facilitating your ability to find things out yourself. There are many home learning project ideas that you are encouraged to do in Year 3 and Year 4 such as mummifying oranges and making Viking Longboats! Once you get into Year 5 you will receive an independent home learning journal where you get to choose a minimum of two projects a half term.

Prep - As you move through the Junior Department the academic expectations will change. Appropriate home learning will be set via Google Classroom for each year group but will include Spellings and Maths fluency activities. Reading is essential throughout the juniors: we expect that you will read at least five times a week at home and record it in your reading record.

Times tables - Learning all your times tables is very important in the Juniors. We will support you to master all of your multiplication and division facts to 12 x 12 by the end of Year 4. In Year 5 and 6, you will keep improving your speed and confidence so that you can use the knowledge in lots of other areas. To help do this you will have a tables test of 15 questions three times a week, which will include division questions as well. As you move through the Juniors the timings to complete each test gets shorter - so you need to get quicker! (Year 3 = 3 minutes, Year 4 = 2.5 minutes, Year 5 = 2 minutes).

Games and matches - In Years 3 and 4 everybody gets to play in matches and festivals on Tuesdays. Year 5 will play matches on Wednesday afternoons.