WELCOME TO OUR
JUNIOR SCHOOL!

 Our Junior School is taught by a specialist in this age group, Mrs Sophie Lasota.  She is supported by Middle School staff, in particular Dr Joy Cameron, P.E., Mrs Heather Muir, Music, and Snr Jorge Salgado, Spanish. 

Junior School cares for children from their first entry into school life at Year 1 until they are ready to take that next big step and transfer to Middle School.  It's a family-like atmosphere in Juniors, lots of play, just as much hard work, stories and conversations, hands-on in the classroom and extremely dirty digging in the garden or muddy games outdoors (most of our kids go home filthy but our lovely mums and dads think that's as important and as much fun as everything else!).  You won't be surprised to hear that the result of all this is a happy, healthy and hard-working little bunch who progress confidently. 

So what's in our Curriculum?

READING - of prime importance.  Learning to read fluently and happily underpins everything else and our target is to have all our pupils reading to a good standard by the end of Year 1.   We use the Jolly Phonics scheme, backed up as required by other resources.   So far in our short history, we have always matched the reseach carried out into phonics teaching which shows that children who learn in this way are normally one reading year ahead of the average by the end of primary one.  Research also shows that such children continue to progress well ahead of the average and that the gap between them and children who have learned by other methods is considerable by Year 7.   Children who enrol at Moray Firth School later than Year 1 are assessed for reading and if there are difficulties, we will set up a programme to ensure they are fluent as quickly as possible.  READING IS FUN!  READING OPENS DOORS TO OUR WORLD!

ENGLISH LANGUAGE - we plan carefully the development of language skills such as comprehension and analysis, spelling and grammar.  We mainly use Jolly Grammar and Nelson skills books.  At Upper Junior levels, we have just introduced the brand new Junior English from Galore Park.  We know this series at older stages and are looking forward to "experimenting" with our Juniors!

SPANISH - taught from Year 1, Spanish is our chosen second language throughout Moray Firth School.  Our policy is always to employ native speakers and we are fortunate in having the services of Snr Jorge Salgado, now in his fifth year with us. 

MATHS - TJ Maths is used from the start, with additional resources as required.  This excellent scheme offers interesting homework assignments, assessments and other useful materials and is carefully planned to take pupils through Scottish levels A-F.

THE WORLD ABOUT US - this is our own programme, introducing our Juniors to our world, its history, geography, enrivonment, society and science.  The World About Us is a rolling five-year programme, so our Juniors gain access to a wide variety of studies without repeating anything. 

THE ARTS (art, drama, music) to which is devoted around one afternoon a week for each aspect, with growing emphasis before performances:

HEALTHY LIVING, which includes how to live and eat healthily, and PE, taught by Dr Joy Cameron, who is responsible for the School's whole PE programme.  We have our own playing field and in winter travel to indoor sports facilities in Nairn.

PRACTICAL SUBJECTS such as gardening and building - and let's not forget about looking after our hens and ducks! 

PROGRESS AND TARGETS IN JUNIOR AND MIDDLE SCHOOLS

Like almost all schools, we carefully monitor and record progress.  And like almost all schools, we carefully caution parents about targets and tests!  These should be considered always in relation to each individual child's abilities, aptitudes and attitude not to mention attendance.  Targets are very important as a general guide to hoped-for achievements for a large population of children but that is all they can be.  However, they do provide useful benchmarks for checking progress in children - and teaching in staff!

Because we believe that Reading underpins all future work, almost all new pupils will undertake a baseline assessment in Reading, and often also in English and Maths, so that we have starting points from which to measure progress.  Parents should note that these are assessments and not tests which children must pass.  We're not a selective school: we accept pupils of wide-ranging abilities, so some pupils will race ahead of targets and some will struggle to reach them - we are here to help them all.  

We believe whole-heartedly in our own curriculum, so we do not teach either the Scottish or English state curriculum.  However, their tests and measures provide a useful benchmark for progress, both for staff and for parents.  The Table below shows the approximate equivalents between Moray Firth School stages and the national ones. Note that all ages are approximate and given for the start of a session.

2006 Field Trip to Edinburgh Juniors find cows outside our National Gallery!	Summer 2006 Sketching classically-inspired architecture in Inverness.