Today, Year 6 were visited by Carol from Kidscape and Deeba from Change4Life for a special workshop all about managing the transition to Secondary School.
We started off with a fun small-group activity where we had to choose items to take on a desert island and justify our choices.
Next, we begun to think about moving on to secondary school. We talked about emotions we might be feeling about the changes we are facing and watched a short film about managing these emotions. In our small groups, we then made a list of all the things we are excited about and all the things we are feeling more nervous about. We shared our ideas with the rest of the class which helped us to understand that lots of us are feeling the same way.
After break, we began filling in a life map so we could reflect on the changes we have already experienced in our lives. Then, we learned about automatic negative thoughts (ants for short!) where we thought about ways to reframe and rephrase our uncomfortable feelings and worries into more comfortable ones and giving ourselves positive affirmations to help us. Our activity was ‘Being Me’, when we had the chance to record what we enjoy and positive words to describe ourselves.
Our next task was all about what are the qualities we look for in good friends and how are friendships might change as we get older. We practised looking friendly and introducing ourselves to new friends, who might be feeling just as nervous as we are.
We ended our session by writing postcards to ourselves, giving ourselves positive messages and advice for the next step in our lives. We can keep these to look at when we are feeling nervous.
