Last year I realised something - our open days were boring. Sure, children and their parents came, and many ended up at our school, but they lacked any real engagement, and we found many that joined the following September seemed like they had never been here before.
So, this year, we decided it was time for something different - including a new name. Now, instead of generic-sounding open days, we are hosting Tremendous Thursdays throughout October and encouraging children to come to each one.
Because we are in Cornwall, many children know they will be coming to us - rather than choosing us from a selection of schools - so we wanted to make sure the experience reflected that by ensuring we prepared children for the transition to a secondary environment.
Taster lessons
We are now hosting more taster lessons on subjects they will study with us, especially new subjects where they may not know what to expect, like design technology and PE (which we know can be especially intimidating to younger pupils).
We are doing similar things for traditional subjects like English where, to prepare them for studying Frankenstein, we get students to work in pairs and they describe a monster to each other and the other has to draw it.
In science, they work to make batteries from fruit using electrodes and see which gives the highest voltage.
All of this helps them not only start to see learning at secondary can be fun and engaging, but also helps them to make new connections and see that they will still be able to make friends.
Learning the layout
We also rethought how we helped students learn the layout of the school. So rather than a stuffy tour led by a teacher, we set them a quiz with questions from humanities subjects, such as history and geography, that sends them across the school on a scavenger hunt.
For example, a history question about the Roman’s love of music directed children to find the music department, while a geography-themed question led them to the canteen.
More on primary-secondary transition:
Ensuring they get to spend a proper amount of time in the canteen is important, too, so they get to know this space and feel comfortable there before they arrive. As such we ensure everyone gets to eat a meal there during our events.
This not only removes some anxiety about what eating in a “big-school” canteen feels like but, by having teachers and support staff eating too, makes many open up and ask questions they often didn’t do in more formal Q&A sessions we used to run.
A positive start
Since starting the sessions earlier this month, the feedback has been hugely positive and not only helped those already set on coming to the school to feel less anxious - but also convinced others to make this their first-choice destination.
Teachers have been onboard, too. They’re hopeful the changes mean that new starters will be more confident and comfortable come September, by both being able to navigate the site more easily and be more ready for the new sort of lessons and topics they will cover.
We have also seen many friendships start to be formed on the basis of initial connections made on a Tremendous Thursday visit. We hope these are rekindled when they arrive and make the transition that little bit easier - for them and us.
While there is always more to do, I truly believe the new approach we have taken is ensuring that children have the absolute best start to their secondary journey. And that’s pretty tremendous.
Nick Ward, principal of Pool Academy, part of Athena Learning Trust
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