School Name: Tennyson Road Primary School, Luton
Teacher: Carla Gotch, Assistant Head Teacher
About the school
Tennyson Road Primary School is an outstanding school in Luton. We have a growing number of pupils on roll, now spanning two sites with 510 pupils (almost three-form entry). We have a high proportion of pupil premium and EAL pupils.
Why we subscribe to The Week Junior
We currently take three copies of The Week Junior, which are shared between our Year 4 and Year 6 classes, and we keep an archive of the magazines to share with the rest of the school.
We began subscribing to The Week Junior two years ago, and it is a great resource to have in school for a number of reasons. We found that The Week Junior:
- helps to broaden pupils’ knowledge of current affairs
- provides an unbiased, educated view of world events
- is very factual and reliable
- is simple to read, with an inviting layout.
But most of all our children love reading it. It is one of the first things my pupils go for during independent reading time; I often find they try to hide it so they have it first in the next reading session!
How we use The Week Junior
We use The Week Junior in a variety of ways; it’s an incredibly flexible resource that can be used across the curriculum.
In our school it is mainly used for independent reading because the children love reading it so much — it always gets picked up.
However, there are always pertinent topics and articles that we use — either in English lessons for comprehension or writing stimuli, or during our afternoon subjects and termly topics.
We also love the big debate each week, and have seen great improvements in spoken language skills as the issues chosen for debate are always very topical and get our pupils talking — a couple of favourites were ‘bottle flipping’ and ‘boys vs girls’.
Our verdict
The best thing about The Week Junior is the content, it’s trustworthy, age-appropriate, high-quality current affairs for children. The layout is excellent with lots of ways into each article, which is particularly good for those children who are more reluctant to read. It’s also always varied, fun and exciting with really random information thrown in, which my pupils love.