Shirebrook teenagers have filmed a new video giving a students’-eye view of their school for new starters who will not get the chance to familiarise themselves with the building because of the coronavirus lockdown.
Students at Shirebrook Academy spent a week filming sequences which explain how to find different departments, locate the toilets and even how to work the photocopier to ensure that the new Year Seven intake will be able to find their way around the school when they join in September.
Shirebrook Academy runs a comprehensive transition programme to prepare future Year Sevens for their new start and would currently be busy sending its staff and students into its local feeder primary schools to discuss any concerns or issues that they might have.
It also usually invites Year Six students in for normal lessons during the last two weeks of the summer term so that they can hit the ground running in September.
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However, although the Academy is will continue to open to vulnerable students and the children of key workers and is planning how to safely accommodate Year 10 students after half term, it has reluctantly decided not to bring any Year Six students on site.
Instead, all its transition activities will be online, including a variety of learning activities and a bespoke telephone contact programme with those that would have had enhanced transition.
It means that none of the students will be able to see the building for themselves, and so, to make up for it, the handful of students still attending school, whose ages range from 11 to 16, have busied themselves by making the familiarisation video.
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Those students who have been forced to study at home, meanwhile, were invited to write down tips to help next year’s Year Sevens settle in.
Helen Wakefield, assistant principal at Shirebrook Academy, said: “Transition to secondary school is a time of great change in a young person’s life and we know that many students would be anxious about this, even without covid-19, which is why we do so much work to prepare Year Sixes for joining Shirebrook Academy.
“We won’t be able to start that work this year because of the lockdown, and so we asked the students to make a video that the new Year Sevens would be able to watch to ensure that they wouldn’t be totally unfamiliar with the school when they arrive.
“We are really disappointed that we cannot provide our usual transition programme but we’re delighted with the video.
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“The students have been extremely creative and approached it from a totally different angle to that which I would have chosen, simply because they have a better understanding of what the important things are from a student’s perspective.”
Among the written comments which will also be made available to the Year Sevens was advice from 12-year-old student Cameron Derry, who had a warning for unwary students.
He said: “Make sure you have a pen, pencil, ruler or you will have to go to detention.
“In PE you can do trampoling and football, in textiles you can make fun things like phone cases and at Dinner time you can get a choice of things like, pizza, chips, jacket potato and even hot chocolate.”
Another student, Tamara Marciniak, 11, said: “Don’t be scared, be happy, this might be something big for you, but enjoy this educational ride, there is support out there.
“We have an amazing pastoral team who you can refer to and who will help you with anything.
“If you treat each other with respect you won’t get behaviour points. Behaviour points are bad points for unacceptable behaviour.”
And Ella Murcott, 12, had some good timely advice when she said: “If Covid-19 has taught me anything, it is to treasure my time at school, so please treasure it or you will regret it.
“Don’t forget to have fun.”
ENDS
