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Liverpool Girls' High School, Liverpool
In-School Initiatives. Transition processes
A new transition program for students moving from primary to secondary school was built upon previous peer support transition programs run in the school. The new approach introduced late in Term 3, 2003 used a peer buddy system to link prospective Year 7 students with the current Year 10 students at Liverpool Girls. The initial contact was made through a letter written by a Year 10 student to a Year 6 student, who wrote a reply that was then followed up with a second letter from the Year 10 student. This communication exercise took place prior to the Orientation Day when the pairs of student correspondents met face-to-face to talk about some of the issues involved in making the transition to secondary school. This contact also provided the new Year 7 students with a known Year 11 buddy when they began first year in secondary school.
Teachers at Liverpool screened the letters written by the Year 10s to ensure that the contents were not inappropriate in any way and a very small number of students were taken out of the program as a result of this intervention. Some students were happy to be buddy to more than one prospective new student and this resolved matching the numbers of students.
The program was introduced at the end of Term 3 when the 2004 enrolments for Year 7 were confirmed. It was then possible to contact the teachers of the students from the 37 feeder schools to explain the steps involved in the program and to seek their support for it. At Liverpool Girls, the Year 10 students were informed about the program, and matched with a prospective Year 7 student. Time for the information session and for writing letters was allocated during the twice-weekly 'Thinking Skills' classes that include MindMatters topics. A template letter was developed and because there were problems with the school email system, students sent the letters by 'snail mail'.
The Year 10 students engaged well with the process and were excited by the activity and enjoyed receiving and responding to the mail. Staff considered this program was a less confrontational method for Year 6 students to meet older students. The peer buddy system will be run again with the following improvements:
- Staging the commencement of the program to allow students more time to receive and reply to letters (a particular problem using 'snail mail').
- Reorganising the agenda of Orientation Day to allow time for all pairs of buddies to meet each other.
- Accessing email, if possible, to speed up the timing.
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