Department Information

The Junior Department consists of three Year 3 classes and three Year 4 classes.  The Year 3 children receive specialist teaching in Music, Drama, French, ICT, DT, PE and Games.  All other subjects are taught by form tutors ensuring that these young children have a lot of contact with their tutors who can monitor both academic progress and social development.  The only setting which takes place at this stage is in Mathematics.  There are three sets in each Year group, two are parallel and one is for children with very good ability who can work at a fast pace.  There is movement between these sets only if it will benefit the child.                                                                                                          

In Year 4 close contact with the form tutor is maintained although the amount of specialist teaching increases to include Art and Geography.  

The Head of Juniors liaises with teachers regularly in order to ensure a thorough knowledge of each child. He also liaises closely with the Head of Learning Support and is aware of each child’s learning needs.  Parents are very welcome to meet with the Head of Juniors to discuss any issue relating to their child or the curriculum.  Never hesitate to make an appointment. 

Excellent pastoral care is crucial to any successful department and this is achieved through knowledge of individuals, monitoring and a well structured programme of PSHE.  The children know that bullying and verbal or physical abuse will not be tolerated at King’s.  This allows all children to feel safe and therefore able to work and play contentedly.                                                        

The department shares a classroom assistant who knows the children well and supports them by working with small groups, hearing readers, helping children to learn multiplication tables etc. all under the direction of the class teacher.  The library and our librarian are an integral part of the children’s learning.  Classes visit the library to research with books or with the laptops there.  Our librarian ensures that class reading books which are coded according to reading level are kept up to date.  The requests of individuals are responded to in order for the children’s passion for reading and information to be maintained.

Prep is set for twenty minutes each day.  During the week, reading, learning spellings and multiplication tables feature.  At the week-end more ‘open ended’ preps are set with children often being tasked with ‘finding out’.  Although prep is important at this stage, so is practising musical instruments and pursuing personal interests.