Moving to Secondary School

Moving to Secondary School

Advice and activities to support transition

By Lynda Measor with Mike Fleetham

Moving to Secondary School helps teachers to understand and ease pupil’s anxieties and to focus on the positive. It tackles worries about organisational aspects of secondary school life, such as school size, timetables and workload and personal concerns about making friends, being bullied and getting on with teachers. It also considers how teaching differs between primary and secondary and looks at how special programmes can offer continuity in students’ learning.

Evidence suggests that this time is one of both profound anxiety and optimistic expectation. Such strong feelings and daunting changes inevitably affect children’s emotional well-being and sense of self. Successful transition is crucial to a child’s secondary school career.

Pupils who fail to settle are more likely to become alienated and disruptive and suffer the well-known academic ‘dip’. “Moving to Secondary School” helps teachers to understand and ease children’s anxieties and to focus on the positive.

This book is full of tried and tested projects and activities including:

• Taster Days and Fun Days
• Teacher Exchanges
• Special Parents’ Evenings
• Summer Holiday Projects and Induction Activities
• Ways to Utilise Peer Groups
• Creative Writing, Role Play, Discussion and Games
• Transition Passports and Diaries
• Exercises to Promote Self-confidence and Improve Social Skills

Together with photocopiable resources, carefully described case studies and a comprehensive section giving further support materials, this forms an invaluable guide that teachers will turn to again and again.

Age Suitability: Ages: 10-12 (Upper Primary), Ages: 12-15 (Junior Secondary)