Fleetdown Junior School

Fleetdown Junior School was built in the 1960s and is situated on the Fleet Estate, Dartford in Kent, United Kingdom. The school is built on two floors around a quadrangle garden area that features a pond.

Outside there are two playgrounds with three fields for sporting activities and environmental science studies. The views from the school fields look south over the Darent Valley and the North Downs.

We share our site with Fleetdown Infant School (external site) and a private nursery. The two Fleetdown schools are specialist schools for children with hearing impairments.

For more images of our school, go to our Image gallery.

For information about the area around our school, go to Welcome to our area.

Fleetdown Junior School is situated on the Fleet Estate, which is to the south east of Dartford in Kent, United Kingdom. To the north is the River Thames, to the west London, to the east the Medway Towns and to the south the beautiful Kent countryside.

Fleet Estate

The older part of the Fleet Estate dates from the late 1930s. It forms the north west area of the estate and used to be called the Downs Estate. The rest of the area was developed in the 1960s and is mainly semi-detached houses. The estate has a community centre, a library and a neighbourhood shopping centre.

The area

Near to our school is the Bluewater shopping complex, the biggest in Europe. It has 320 shops and opened in 1999. It also features a multi-screen cinema and loads of restaurants. Also close by are the new Darent Valley Hospital, a new housing estate and the Darenth Country Park.

Transport links

We are very close to the M25 and the tunnel and Queen Elizabeth II Bridge crossings that link Kent and Essex. Dartford Station has excellent train links to central London and Kent. The high-speed rail link connection between London via the Channel Tunnel and the rest of Europe is also nearby, with Ebbsfleet Station about 2 miles away.

For more images of our area, go to our Image gallery.

Select the year group you wish to view from the list below, then click any thumbnail to view the full-sized image:

• Year 3 These children are aged between 7 and 8
• Year 4 These children are aged between 8 and 9
• Year 5 These children are aged between 9 and 10
• Year 6 These children are aged between 10 and 11

What we set out to do, our Golden Rules and Home School Agreement.

All the teachers, staff and governors at Fleetdown Junior School look forward to working in partnership with you and your child to develop their potential intellectually, personally, socially, physically and morally. Everyone is welcome at our school, regardless of race, colour, creed, culture or special needs.

Our aims

The junior school years of a child’s education are vitally important to their future and we aim to form a partnership with our children, their parents and our governors to care for and educate our children in the best possible way. Our vision matches the aims and objectives of the legislation known as Every Child Matters. The five aims are for all children to:

• Be healthy
• Stay safe
• Enjoy and achieve through learning
• Make a positive contribution to society
• Achieve economic well-being

The ethos and values of the school

• We want children to be enthusiastic learners and to realise the importance of continued learning through life
• We want our children to be happy, healthy and well motivated
• We aim to make learning interesting and rewarding, and children of all abilities will be encouraged to fulfil their potential
• We want children to experience the feeling of success that comes from doing their very best and reaching new levels of achievement
• We will endeavour to provide a safe, caring, stimulating and challenging environment
• We will try to ensure that children value themselves, other people and their learning environment
• We are committed to providing a broad and relevant curriculum designed to meet the needs of all children and we are determined to continue raising standards
• We follow the National Curriculum and share its aims, which are: firstly to provide opportunities for all our children to learn and achieve; secondly, to promote their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development; and thirdly, to prepare our children for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of life
• With parents co-operation we will actively promote a high standard of behaviour through an awareness of individual social responsibility and recognition of others needs and differences
• We encourage the children to set their own rules to govern behaviour and through Circle Time they have discussed and agreed a set of Golden Rules
• We encourage the children to participate in the decision making processes of the school and play their part in ensuring the safety and happiness of all the children

Golden rules

These were chosen by the children at Fleetdown:

• Try your best in everything you do
• Listen carefully
• Tell the truth
• Be kind and polite
• Respect other people and their property
• Look after our school

Our school colours are maroon and grey. The Fleetdown uniform is:

• A plain white shirt, blouse or polo shirt
• Grey trousers, skirt or culottes
• Maroon sweatshirts or cardigans
• Dresses in maroon gingham or traditional stripe may be worn in the summer term
• Sensible and safe black outdoors shoes
• Socks, tights and hair ribbons should be black, white or school colours

For health and safety reasons we advise that children may not wear trainers, boots, high heels or open-toed sandals. However trainers may be worn in the playground during lunchtimes or during outdoor PE lessons.

School sweatshirts, embroidered with the school logo, are normally available from the school office in the summer term. We also sell reversible navy blue jackets embroidered with the school logo.

Please remember to mark clearly all clothing and equipment with your child’s name.

PE kit

Every child must have a PE kit consisting of:

• A plain white or school design T-shirt and black shorts
• Black tracksuits or jogging bottoms for use outdoors in cold weather
• Plimsolls for PE
• Trainers and/or soccer boots for outdoor games
• Shin guards for football

PE kit needs to be in school every day and stored in a suitable bag. Cloakroom and classroom space is limited and therefore large bags are a safety hazard and should not be brought to school.

Please remember to mark clearly all clothing and equipment with your child’s name.

The National Curriculum

We are a junior school and junior school children are aged between 7 and 11 and are in National Curriculum year groups 3 to 6. This is called Key Stage 2. Year groups consist of 2 or 3 classes. Larger classes have Learning Support Assistants. Children are also integrated into the main school from the Unit for Hearing Impaired Children.

The school has a statutory obligation to teach the National Curriculum, which consists of:

Core subjects

• English
• Mathematics
• Science

Foundation subjects

• Religious education
• Information technology
• Design technology
• History
• Geography
• Art
• Music
• Frenc
• Physical educatio
• Personal, social and health education (PSHE) and citizenship

Each subject follows a programme of study, which sets out what pupils should be taught. Attainment targets for each subject set the expected standards of pupil’s performance. A brief outline of your child’s curriculum will be sent home at the beginning of each academic year. These may give you ideas for visits or other activities that could support your child's learning. Please remember though that these plans cannot be fixed and are subject to change.

2007 to 2008 academic year

Select the appropriate year group from the list below to view the plan that you want to view:

• Year 3
• Year 4
• Year 5
• Year 6

Curriculum files are generally less than 100KB in size and are PDF documents.

For curriculum plans from previous academic years, go to the Curriculum archive.

It is our aim that the curriculum should be broad, balanced and relevant and meet the needs of the individual child. Although the National Curriculum is covered mainly through subject lessons, links between these subjects are often made so that the curriculum is not taught in isolated blocks. Drama, art and music are used in conjunction with many subjects to enhance and enrich the curriculum.

We follow a ‘Thinking Actively in a Social Context’ approach to some activities most notably to our Creativity Projects. Our Creativity projects involve the whole school and sometimes the children are regrouped for these projects and learn alongside children from each of the four year groups.

We also have ‘Thinking Projects’ for all year groups. These projects are designed to improve the children’s reading and thinking skills as well as their ability to understand other people’s feelings.

Clubs

We run an extensive programme of clubs which are led by friends of the school, private companies, our own staff or parents of pupils. Breakfast Club and Schoolfriend Club mean that children can be at school from 8am until 6pm.