The Junior Years phase of learning recognises and nurtures students’ abilities to work towards expanding their field of individual potential – spiritually, academically, socially, emotionally and physically.
The child at this stage of development is undergoing a period of transition. They seek greater independence as they try to ‘branch out’, yet require structure and modelling and set expectations to achieve this over time. Transition through this formative time is marked by the movement from concrete to abstract thinking and changes in concepts of friendship and relationships.
Principles for Junior Years Learning
- Children are curious, enthusiastic, easily motivated and distracted, want to please, are reward driven, excited about learning new things and develop understandings about learning how “I” learn
- Children discover and define friendship groups more amid a less tactful disposition but some thrive on individual responsibility
- Children are challenged to become more resilient
- Children want to be and are more capable of negotiated (self-selected) ways of learning
- Children desire more lifelike experiences
- Children are more creative- responding to visual stimulation
- Children can be capable of becoming disengaged with schooling as they are more aware of the challenges in their learning
- Group work and independent learning/problem solving are integrated to learning in the Junior Years
- Children continue to build resilience as independent learners
Pedagogy of Junior Years
The pedagogy that best supports these children’s learning:
- Matures as the students require less scaffolding, modelling, immersing and guiding and achieve greater independence in their learning.
- Needs to match developmental age of child as they move into a pre-adolescent environment.
- Requires adaptability in spaces which pre-determine the scope of many activities i.e. limited available spaces forces more fixed place / desk learning modes while greater space allows for increased flexibility, variation in learning modes and increase in practical application of learning.
- Requires a different approach according to the various learning areas and consequently different forms of classroom physical layouts to facilitate groups, individual and whole class work as well are explicit teaching spaces structured around tasks.
- Requires the teacher’s ability to negotiate tasks and be flexible – implementing a developmental approach to the curriculum.
Curriculum structure continues in these identified areas:
- Religious Education
- Health and Physical Education
- Humanities and Social Science
- The Arts