School values and ethos

At Upton Juniors we aim to instil children with an enthusiasm for learning and prepare them for future life.

We want all children to experience success and enjoy their learning whilst at school. We aim to achieve this through high standards of learning and teaching within a happy, structured and caring environment.

The skills of true thinking (reasoning, creativity, judgement and memorisation) allow individuals to grow intellectually. Our children are given the chance to perform these mental operations at an appropriate level for their development, in accordance with the National Curriculum.

Through a variety of teaching and strategies, we aim to instil children with an enthusiasm for learning and prepare them for future life. Teaching methods, ranging from whole class ‘chalk and talk’ to individual personalised programmes of study are chosen, as appropriate, to meet the task or skill focussed upon.

During the course of the year, the children will encounter a range of teaching methods. They will mainly be taught by their own class teacher, but there will be times when teachers are exchanged enabling us to best use the individual expertise of a large, talented teaching staff.

Our curriculum strives to ensure breadth and balance and makes it difficult to work within the parameters of separate subjects for all of the school day. In fact, children learn faster and more effectively when skills and the concepts are linked between subjects at the same time.

We plan topics carefully so continuity and progression are smooth and aid development. Topics enable us to identify skills, concepts, knowledge and ideas from individual subjects and bring them together in a cohesive way.

Our children are generally taught in their mixed ability class groupings, with all children studying the same area. However, work is appropriately differentiated (either simplified or extended) to match all ability levels. In the upper school the year teams group children by ability for maths ‘sets’ when the children work with their peers from other classes across the year.