Junior School
Academics
Junior School Academics
Overview
We offer a progressive and inclusive curriculum that ensures that each of our pupils is given the tools and support to develop key skills in a caring and nurturing environment. Our vision is to develop our students’ cognitive ability, creativity, and emotional well-being so that they become ethical global citizens and equal thinkers.
Pastoral Care
Nurturing Environment
Because of ever-increasing social, sporting, and academic pressure, healthy emotional intelligence is important as it develops resilience, motivation, empathy, reasoning, and good stress management, which equip the girls to navigate their way when facing challenges in their lives.
The Roedean School Pastoral Team, made up of the Deputy Head: Pastoral and a team of psychologists, is committed to the emotional and social well-being of our community: our students, teachers, and parents.
Authentic connections with the pupils and with you, the parents, make all feel safe, heard, and supported.
Academics
Junior School Curriculum
Foundation Phase
We instil a love for reading from the very start of Grade 0, so that by the time our pupils leave St Margaret’s (our Foundation Phase) they are confident, fluent readers. Using Jolly Phonics, a multi-sensory programme that teaches children to read and write using synthetic phonics, our students are soon decoding words and expressing themselves in writing.
The programme continues throughout the Junior School years by extending the earlier phonics teaching with further spelling, grammar, and punctuation concepts in the Jolly Grammar Programme.
Upper Junior School
After their grounding in St Margaret’s, the pupils migrate up the hill to the Upper Junior School. Teaching and learning in the separate subjects is complemented by our commitment to current National and Global initiatives and programmes that enhance learning.
We have also implemented the Steerglobal AS Tracking tool, which allows us to monitor the mental well-being of our students, to identify those who are at emotional risk, and to intervene and provide the necessary support as early as possible.
Curriculum Focus Areas
Our aim is to provide a world-class education that is centred around the holistic development of each student and which offers equality of opportunity, ensuring that every pupil is included and supported, and that no pupil gets left behind. The curriculum in the Junior School has moved away from a traditional approach, providing many challenges, and engaging our students in solving problems, applying themselves creatively, and expressing their understanding effectively.
Cognitive Education
The Cognitive Education Programme underpins the entire curriculum at Roedean, from Grade 0 to Matric. It plays a large part in building an effective learning community, with the goal of producing independent, creative, critical, reflective, and ethical thinkers who will be equipped to thrive in the rapidly changing world in which they will work and live. The programme aims to develop and enhance the students’ ability to exercise metacognition, reason logically, think strategically, solve problems, innovate, create, imagine, and to communicate effectively.
IT Integration
Our IT staff create a variety of interactive learning opportunities with the aid of computers, iPads, drones, virtual reality goggles, Sphero Robots, Lego Robotics and Bee-Bots, to list but a few. Our IT curriculum is constantly evolving and our students are introduced to relevant and up-to-date technology to create real-world learning experiences. With exposure to a plethora of online platforms, it has become imperative to ensure that our pupils are taught to be smart digital citizens who are safe and ethical online.
To assist in this endeavour, our students follow the CyberSharp Digital Citizenship Curriculum.
Junior School Academics
Academic Events