S1: here they come!
Almost 200 primary seven pupils from the Fa’side area attended a two-day event at Meadowmill to have fun and make new friends ahead of their move to Ross High School in August.
Our Fa’side Connected Communities team held the first transitions event in 2022 as a way to help children make the move to secondary school post-pandemic. Successful feedback from everyone led to it becoming an annual fixture.
Activity and resilience
All young people were sorted into mixed groups at the beginning of the day so they could meet their peers from other schools before enjoying seven different sessions focused on activity and resilience. Our Arts Service held a dance class while East Lothian Orienteering ran an introduction to the sport. Active Schools Future Leaders, a group of senior pupil volunteers, led basketball and football while Ross High and our libraries teams worked together to create a team building session.
Ross High’s Mental Health Youth Worker Gemma Burns focused on resilience while Recharge was also on hand.
The event was free of charge with ASDA Tranent donating water and fruit to keep everyone energised and Enjoyleisure allowing the use of Meadowmill.
Feedback on the day was positive with young people reporting reduced anxiety about the move to high school and having made new friends with their soon to be school mates prior to the holidays.
'Real collaborative working'
Our Connected Communities Team Manager Andy Cheshire said: “The transitions event is now a mainstay of our team’s annual calendar. It demonstrates real collaborative working and has clear benefits helping young people feel more confident about their move from primary to secondary school.
"A huge thank you to all partners, young people, schools and of course our wee team in Fa’side that pull all this together annually. It was really uplifting to see some of the young people who benefitted from this event four years ago make a return to deliver the basketball and football sessions as ‘future leaders’ with the Active Schools team and hopefully this can continue year on year as well.”
Wishing all our P7s a successful start to S1.