Summer School

Intent

Our summer school Get Set for SJL’s aim was for every student who attended GET SET to feel comfortable and confident at the start of the new term, to reignite their love of learning, and to inspire awe and wonder with new knowledge and experiences.

We wanted to reduce anxiety around the transition process, developing and strengthening the essential social learning habits, literacy, and numeracy that they had missed during preceding year and a half.

RESET and GET SET

The key foci of the week were to:

1. Look forward, not back
2. Build confidence, reduce anxiety
3. Offer a broad & balanced offer of activities – a cross-curricular model
4. Put a focus on wellbeing
5. Introduce SJL culture
6. Work to develop learning habits, not teach particular ‘subjects’
7. Ensure literacy and numeracy were a golden thread running through the curriculum

Implementation

• Get Set for SJL consisted of 5 days of activities for the new Year 7 cohort.
• Sessions were cross curricular and used the SJL Houses as their inspiration to introduce students to life at SJL.
• 73% of incoming Year 7 students signed up for at least one day across the week.
• Out of 144 attendees, 50 joined us from schools where 3 or less students were coming to SJL.

Impact

• 95% of parents agreed or strongly agreed that Get Set helped to prepare their child well for the new school year
• 98% of parents agreed or strongly agreed that their child enjoyed the sessions offered

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Get Set for SJL has been incredible at helping the children to create new friendships, orientate themselves with the school and remove any apprehension or anxiety about starting school. I think the children have been really lucky to have the opportunity to enjoy this ‘softer’ start to secondary school.

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Thank you so much! Prior to this week we had a very anxious child about starting secondary school, but now she is excited and happy about starting and has made some friends. Thank you particularly for understanding that play, having fun and having the confidence to interact are vital prerequisites to being able to get on with the work.

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My son loved his time with you this week. He was so excited about going and this has given him a huge amount of confidence about starting the school year in September. Thank you to everyone involved!

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Such a brilliant idea and lovely experience. The SJL Team, food and activities were all amazing! Twitter updates along with videos and photos were fantastic. Looking forward to starting. Thank you for a wonderful week.

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Thanks so much for a fantastically planned week of events, with lots of fun, humour, learning and variety of opportunities. Clearly a lot of talented effort and time went into this, and we are hugely appreciative. Our daughter had an amazing time. Well done and huge thanks to all the organisers and staff.

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My son has enjoyed himself immensely, made new friends and now feels excited about school as a result of all your efforts after two years of struggling with school due to Covid. That is a huge achievement as he was not motivated at all sadly at the end of his year 6 schooling. Amazing start and great first impression for my son and his life at secondary school…. he can’t wait for the term to start!

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