The Boyle And Petyt Primary School

Upper Juniors

The class teachers for Upper Juniors are Mrs Prentice (who teaches on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday Mornings, plus half of Tuesday afternoon) and Mr Corner (who teaches half of a Wednesday afternoon, and Thursday and Friday mornings). Mrs Prentice and Mr Corner share the teaching of Reading, English and Maths; Mrs Prentice also teacher the class Science and Computing, while Mr Corner takes the class for PSHE. The class is also very lucky to have the support of Mrs Ross every morning.

In order to prepare our Upper Junior children for their transition to high school and best utilise the skills of our team, all other subjects are taught by a range of teachers:

Geography and History- Mrs Moore
R.E- Mrs Jenkinson
Art/ D.T.- Mrs Ross
Music and Singing- Mrs Newton (Music specialist)
French- Madame Hatch (French Specialist)
P.E.- Kanga and the swimming teachers at Craven Leisure Pool
Forest Schools- Mrs Ross (Qualified Forest School Teacher)

Homework

Our approach to homework in Upper Juniors is to encourage the children to practise skills and recalling knowledge, which will help them with learning in class. With that in mind, homework for both year 5 and 6 pupils is made up of reading, spelling practise and times table practise; year 6 pupils will also get homework set in SATs Club.

At certain times in the year, we may give additional homework relating to specific events- such as learning lines for performances etc.

Here is an overview of weekly homework:

Spellings:

New spellings will be given out after the spelling test on a Monday. We recommend practising these spellings little and often: 5-10 minutes on at least 5 separate occasions.

The reason for this is that we are not just setting spellings for a test. Learning spellings and spelling patterns helps our children build fluency in their written communication; practising little and often will help this new learning stick in the long-term memory.

Times Table Practise:

All children have access to Time Table Rock Stars. Like with spelling practise, the aim of this homework is to help build the children's mathematical fluency and embed times table recall into the long-term memory.

Therefore, we recommend children should practise on TTRS, for at least 5 minutes on at least 5 different occasions each week. We will be tracking their participation with the teacher analysis tools.

Reading:

Children should read at home on at least 5 separate occasions a week for at least 10 minutes. At least two of these times should be their class reading book. We want to nurture a life-long love of reading so we are more than happy for the other 3 occasions to be magazines, comics or their own choice of book. Please ensure each occasion is noted in the reading record.

While children in Upper Juniors will most probably read by themselves we recommend that ideally they should read to an adult or older sibling once a week at home. It is also still good for the children to be read to as well.