School website: http://www.danetre.northants.sch.uk/default.asp
WEEK ONE
Wednesday 24th June, Session one: Children took part in some ice breakers and introductory activities where they could meet pupils from different schools, practice their speaking and listening skills and improve their confidence in speaking in front of a group.
Group juggling went very well, with 8 balls flying around at once. This is a hand-eye co-ordination and observation skills game as well as a useful way to get to know everyone’s names. Everyone ended up laughing when the balls seemed to have a mind of their own!
Mrs. Weedon and Mrs. Letts from the Northants Study Centres helped the group get competitive during ‘player card maths’, using Cobblers players’ squad numbers to form sums using variations of the four mathematical functions. Both teams worked well together (they had only just met!) and used tactics to decide who to place in what position.
Mrs. Taylor from Daventry District Council’s transition team talked to the group about creating their own personal ‘network hand’ where each finger represents a person they can turn to for help and advice when starting secondary school. These can include friends, family members, other trusted adults, teachers, a class tutor and pastoral staff.
Mrs. Barton (a learning mentor from Falconer’s Hill) showed the children how to make origami football T shirts and encouraged them to write on them their thoughts about leaving primary school. She asked them to write down what they would like to leave behind (this could be negative behaviour, a teacher, a particular room or subject, ‘bad’ friends etc), what they would like to take with them to secondary school (this could be a favourite piece of equipment, a friend or teacher, individual skills they possess etc) and a magic ‘wish’ of something they would like at secondary school. Ideas ranged from having a good time, making new friends, being better at maths, having a fresh start, working in proper science labs, playing different sports and being more confident. This is a great way to get children talking about their worries about changing schools whilst keeping things positive. The idea that you can ’start afresh’ was appealing to some pupils.
Mrs. Janney, Key Stage 3 assistant from Danetre School, was on hand to answer any questions covering a wide range of areas including homework, behaviour, the house system, punishments, form tutors, different subjects and lunch/break times. She read through with the group the pupil contract for Danetre school, the ‘Partnership for Learning’ which outlines what is expected from students, parents and staff. They completed a gap fill exercise using key words and discussed what they meant. Mr. Haywood, Key Stage 3 manager popped in to meet the students and have a chat with them to put them at ease about secondary school. These pastoral members of staff will be directly responsible for the children when they start in September in year 7.
The session went very well with everyone enjoying themselves and getting a lot out of it. This is a great example of partnership working and all staff involved were very impressed with the group’s positive attitude and excellent behaviour. They all put lots of effort in and are starting to bond as a group.
WEEK TWO
This week, students worked in teams to play ‘gutter ball’, where communication and teamwork is essential. Fair play and tactics are also needed to play well. Getting the ball in the hoop was slightly easier than reversing the line and going backwards!
We worked in the student resource centre which is a great facility with computers and big screens. For the ’school information’ part of the session, Mrs. Janney got the children to draw their uniform onto a template. Each ‘house’ has a different coloured tie. There were some artistic efforts!
In the ‘PfS’ section of the day, the year 6s looked at ‘cricket and the 5 senses’. They watched famous batters and bowlers in action from the Ashes 2005 series and put themselves ‘into their shoes’ to write about what they would be able to see, hear, taste, see and touch around them. The next stage was to produce some powerpoint presentations with descriptive sentences and photos. The children’s ICT skills were great and they were able to experiment with backgrounds, formats, text and layout. They worked on their literacy skills in pairs and came up with some really interesting sentences. Miss. Letts and Mrs. Weedon were really pleased with the amount of effort put in and the fantastic results. See their work below:
Next, Mrs. Barton got the children to put everyone’s names into a wordsearch using a free computer programme (www.puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com) . This was to show that this group can rely on each other as friends/as a team when they start at school in September.
We finished off with some famous sports persons’ and team name anagrams. We used letters from Lewis Hamilton, Andrew Flintoff, Rio Ferdinand, Manchester United and so on. The pairs found over 40 words for some of them! A record for this activity, well done to all.
WEEK THREE
The hoop game got the children working together to move hoops around the circle, play catch up and swap 2 hoops at the same time. No hands were allowed, only bodies to move the hoops. This game is dependant on whoever is standing next to you. We got pretty good by the end of the game with hoops of different sizes going around the circle smoothly, and with minimum cheating!
Mrs. Taylor talked to the group about behaviour and consequences. She asked them to draw a cartoon strip of how an incident/their actions had had negative consequences in the past. They also had to think of how to make a different choice in the same situation and act in a positive manner instead, that would result in better consequences. Some students chose to focus on falling out with a friend, getting into a fight, disobeying a teacher and how to react to someone being nasty to them.This activity got pupils to reflect on how their choices and behaviour has consequences and that they are in control of every situation. We talked about how you can’t be responsible for someone else’s actions but you are responsible for your own and can choose how to act.
For the ‘Playing for Sucess’ sports part of the session, Miss. Letts taught a literacy, numeracy and ICT lesson all rolled into one, choosing a fantasy football team. The pairs acted as club managers and chose premiership players to fill their team, they had £50 million to spend. They used transfer figures to check their budgeting as they went along. Most pairs had to change their mind and get rid of more expensive players such as Rooney, Ronaldo and Terry and exchange them for less well know and ‘cheaper’ players.This is quite a difficult balancing act but everyone managed it in the end.
They presented their team on a fantasy team sheet and used the comuters to research information about their players. The children were asked to write persuasive sentences about their players as to why they had chosen them. They couldn’t just write “Because they are good at football”, they needed to research specific skills, positions, team history, goals scored, backgrounds and international appearances etc. Some pupils could do this from their heads, as they have a vast football knowledge. There were some great persuasive sentences at the finish.
AUTUMN TERM
WEEK FOUR
We welcomed the students back, now in year 7, and heard about how they had been settling into their new school. They were asked to tell staff what behaviour rules, expectations and reward system the school has and how they adhered to them. It was great to hear all their stories and see them in their new uniform looking so grown up.
The transition content was led by Anna Letts. She asked the pupils to talk in pairs about various secondary school experiences. They then reported back their feelings about the similarities and differences between primary and secondary, what worries/problems they had at the beginning of term and what they did to solve them and what three things they like about secondary school. (As well as a variety of other questions) Everyone was really honest and shared their opinions confidently. It was good to compare these thoughts and feelings to those we discussed in the summer sessions.
As a teamwork activity, the students worked in small groups to construct cricket wickets, looking at how the bales and stumps fit together. They needed to show good communication and co-operation skills to be successful. The wickets’ ‘falling ability’ was tested.
A Northampton Town Football Club match day programme was used for joint numeracy/literacy work. Students had to solve the maths clues to find the right page numbers then use their reading skills (scanning, skimming, looking for key information, summarizing) to solve crossword answers. These were based around players, the club, Sixfields stadium, mascots, sports phyisotherapy, community football events and visiting teams.
Mrs. Janney, KS3 assistant head led a section about favourite and least favourite lessons and asked children to write down why they had these feelings. This is to be followed up in the next lesson for some problem solving work.
Some ‘brain breaks’ served to have a bit of fun and focus on speaking and listening skills. We played the ‘name game’, did some right/left sided brain activities and colour-word brain gym.
The children were given free Cobblers match tickets for the game against Bradford on Saturday 3rd October. This is a reward for all the hard work they have been putting in during this project. www.ntfc.premiumtv.co.uk
WEEK FIVE
Mrs. Janney led a ’solution-focused’ session around classroom scenarios. These issues were taken from the student’s work the previous week when they wrote about their favourite/least favourite subjects. Everyone in turn was asked to suggest a possible solution to scenarios such as “What would you do if…..” ‘you forgot your homework?’, ‘you had your hand up for a long time and the teacher didn’t call on you for the answer?’, ‘you were bored in a lesson?’ There were positive and negative suggestions, which will feature in a discussion next time.
A playing card memory game came next as a ‘brain break’, whereby teams had to communicate effectively with each other to remember and describe where certain cards were and put them into order.
‘Double Dice’ maths is a mental maths game whereby players roll two dice and other team members ask them questions around addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, percentages and rounding up/down. The first player to gain all their counters, wins.
Playing cards were used for a quick game of ‘maths snap’ using multiplication, addition and subtraction strategies.
Two year 8 students were invited along to answer questions about their transition experiences at Danetre. After talking about questioning and interviewing techniques, the year 7s planned their questions to ask, such as “What worries did you have and how did you overcome them?”, “Did you get lost and what did you do?”, “Do you prefer this school to your primary and why?”, “How did you make friends?” and “Did you have any family or friends already at this school and how did they help you settle in?” The two year 8s were excellent in providing clear answers and were very honest about their experiences. They had some good advice on how to handle a wide variety of problems and situations such as forgetting homework, after school clubs, preparing equipment and kit the night before, which teachers to ask for what, where to go if you lose something, what to do if you are bullied, how to get extra help and how to find your way around the school.
To finish off, a speaking and listening game called “Who’s in the box?” Each person has a go at choosing a celebrity out of the box to describe while the rest of the group guesses who it is. Some were easier than others and the variety of descriptive language was wide. This was a really fun game which engages students easily, they don’t realise they are practicing some useful learning skills.
WEEK SIX
Anna brought the Saints rugby kit into school to talk about safety, protection, materials, flexibility and comfort of the various parts. Students took notes about the scrum cap, body armor, boots, gumshield, shirt, shin pads and gloves. This is a good and interesting way to practice note-taking which is needed in many subjects and we talked about how to listen out for key information. After the talk, pupils tried the kit on.
Mrs. Janney asked the group to think about positive and negative solutions when it comes to certain scenarios in school. Students had to rate the choices good, bad and say whether they had taken that action in the past. During circle time, everyone fedback their thoughts and Mrs. Janney helped reassure some people what to do if they are stuck.
Using a publisher document in ICT, transition leaflets were created, pulling together content from all the transition information, thoughts and recent activities. The year 8 interview transcripts were also used to write the leaflet, areas such as ‘Worries’, ‘What to do if…’, ‘How secondary school is different from primary’, ‘How to make new friends’ and ‘Where to go for help’. Pupils used graphics, altered the text and format. There was a lot of useful and invaluable information which could easily be used as advice for year 6 students next year. This shows how far the year 7s have come, they are able to look back and advise others using their transition experiences.
Helena Weedon led ‘cup/speed stacking’ which is a great way to work on co-ordination skills. The group had to undertake various activities using the cups and had a lot of fun.The timing mat was used to see who could stack cups in a certain order the fastest. This proved to be a hard-fought competition!
This is the last time the study centres’ staff will see this group, so we wish them the best of luck for the rest of their secondary school time.
