Primary to Secondary Taster Lessons

[Stylovert]

I have been tasked with preparing taster lessons for our prospective new year sevens, with a free choice of what to plan.

I teach English and am totally stumped. I need a short, interesting activity somehow related to the curriculum area, but that the kids will really enjoy.

I'm open to any suggestions? Thanks in advance for your ideas

I still remember when I was in Y5, we visited the y6 teacher and we analysed a poem, looking at stuff which I now know as literary devices, metre and theme.

I have to do this too, unfortunately I teach D&T so we are making air powered plastic bottle cars. But, if had to do an English lesson I would probably demonstrate how to make something and then get them to write a set of instructions for it. Or get the pupils to follow a set of instructions to show comprehension and they get to take something home.

• unfortunately I teach D&T not English can you tell

Could you do something useful- description of day, maps of school, annotated book about school to keep? Might help some of the summer anxiety for some people.

What about an activity based around contemporary song lyrics? Or some dialogue from a movie/TV show?

Thanks for the suggestions. I like the idea of them having something to take away and/or being useful to them.

elephantoverthehill air powered plastic bottle cars sound fantastic, but unfortunately for English, so much more fun!

That's why I teach D&T.
.

Have you see the online plot generator? Can you get a computer room or tablets and generate, the illustrate stories using that? The other thing that's fun is to get those paper person cutouts from Hobbycraft, create characters then put them in a play. It's the sort of thing I do with my six yo but it's worked up to year 12 when needed!

I'm an Economics teacher though so feel free to ignore me!

My English colleague likes "analysis Jenga". You could write a story that way, going round, a sentence at a time. Or play Consequences.

Basically think icebreaker.

Just check out before they come up what they have been doing at primary - a few years ago now we came a bit of a cropper by pitching too low and had to deal with quite a few whinges. Went and did loads of work on it and now know my KS2 much better. Won't be making that mistake again...hell hath no fury like an underestimated primary teacher!

I would agree with Elizabeth.

At the very least, look at the KS2 standards exemplification to see what standard they are likely to be working at currently.

A newspaper report about the school might work - or if you can get hold of some tablets, a television news report to be scripted and delivered to camera in different locations, including interviews (with the students taking on different roles)?

If it needs to be quite short, task different groups with writing / speaking about a specific area of the school. Record or write each section as a small group, then you can stitch the whole thing together and deliver it back to them - electronically or in written form - in their primary schools.

Print of a picture - add some wording so it’s a jumble of stuff

Split into teams

A is the drawer and can’t move
BC and D take it in turns to view the picture hidden from A outside the room - they get 30 seconds viewing time and 1 min to relay the information to the drawer

Best or closest picture wins

Needs communication and description

We do different forms of poetry for our taster sessions. They learn about acrostics, haiku, limerick etc then they pick a topic out of a hat and write a poem on the topic in their poetry form of choice. They seem to like it.