The transition from primary to secondary school is widely recognised as being one of the most daunting experiences during a young person’s life. Going from being the oldest children in the school, to being the youngest, and very often the smallest can be a very scary experience for children emotionally, and can also lead to detrimental effects on their behaviour, attendance and attainment levels. To combat such issues in the transition of our new students, Ercall Wood Technology College offers an effective and successful peer mentoring scheme.
A team of nineteen peer mentors have completed three half day training sessions, where we discussed and learnt how to remain non- judgemental in situations along with listening skills and some role play. Confidentiality and communication skills were also discussed during the sessions. Ercall Wood’s peer mentors will be on hand at the beginning of the academic year when they will be with the new year seven intake for the first two days, ensuring that they feel safe in their new surroundings and spending time over lunch and break time with them, should the year seven students feel they need such support. They will remain in contact with the new year sevens by visiting the children on a weekly basis in their form rooms, building friendships and helping to resolve any conflict should it arise.
A number of the peer mentors this year will be working closely alongside myself offering a structured one to one mentor / mentee relationship within the school. The main objectives of the scheme will be for the new students to settle in quickly, make good progress and achieve their full potential. A majority of the peer mentors are gifted and talented students who have been trained to ensure they have the skills and knowledge to support year seven students. The mentor will assist the mentee in settling into the schools teaching and learning structure, offer appropriate advice and guidance, help mentees manage time, set personal goals and support individuals who may lack confidence with aspects of school life. A careful selection of matching mentors to mentees takes place to ensure that students are motivated to do well. The one to one scheme for select individuals, will only commence after consent has been given from the year sevens parents/carers and will be in place for an agreed amount of time, this process will be reviewed on a regular basis and monitored under the close supervision of the peer mentor co-ordinator.
The one to one programme is an extension to the peer mentoring scheme that our school already has in place. We are excited to be able to offer this new project to our year seven students. Click onto some of this years Ercall Wood Peer mentors to see what they have to say.
|
|||||||||
