Transition Morning gives Year 6 first taste of Senior School

The transition from Junior School to Senior School can be an exciting yet daunting time. While many of our Year 6 students are already familiar with the Senior School, for some even the short journey from Chaucer Road to Bateman Street represents a major milestone. As one of our measures to ensure that the girls’ transition is successful, we held a Careers Transition Morning on Monday 27 September, inviting all Year 6 students to the Junior School.

This morning, organised by Head of Careers, Mrs Mead, provides an opportunity for students to experience the school and its facilities, to help them feel comfortable and excited about the shift to the upper school. With these next steps in mind, this event also provides an early opportunity to begin considering careers and transferable skills, through fun, future-orientated activities.

To introduce the event, Mrs Mead asked the students to reflect on their recent camping trip, to introduce the idea of transferable skills. As all the girls reported enjoying the trip, they were happy to raise their hands and contribute examples of the skills that they had learned that weekend, from climbing, creative arts and canoeing and to teamwork. This helped to steer the discussion towards employability. Mrs Mead noted that all the girls were demonstrating excellent communication skills, for example, through their answers – a desirable skill for employers. Thinking about the jobs that they would like to do when they are older, the girls showed creativity and ambition. Vet, lawyers, astronauts, authors, and teachers proved the most popular roles. These goals helped to inspire excitement for their futures and the journey towards them, before focusing on the careers’ session of the morning – baking cookies with an entrepreneurial twist.

The girls attended three workshops, designed to explore the full process of creating a product, from making and marketing to packaging and pricing. In one session, led by Jaspreet Kaur, they discussed how to position, market and brand their cookies. Drawing their logos, the girls considered their target audience and how best to capture their imagination. The  girls considered how to diversify  the business in the future and how to reach a global market.

In their packaging design session, led by Mrs Kakengi, the girls constructed and decorated boxes for their cookies by following their business plan.  With the full process in mind, the girls set to work, while chatting about their brand’s name: seaside cookies, crazy cookies,  and homemade cookies were just a few of their suggestions.

In the Food Room, the girls created their product, instructed by Mrs Landshoff. With their trays in the oven and the delicious smell of baking cookies filling the room, the students waited eagerly. All the girls agreed that they would rather bake than buy cookies next time. Another student even called this workshop ‘the most fun I’ve had in ages’.

The Year 6 students loved their time at the Senior School. At lunch, they summarised their experience with one word. The girls described the day as ‘brilliant’, ‘exciting’, ‘entertaining’, ‘creative’, ‘inspiring’, ‘fascinating’ and ‘intriguing’. In the girls’ own words,they now can’t wait to come to senior school’, while another girl said that after the sessions ‘I feel I know more about business’. We look forward to welcoming the girls to Year 7 next September, and hope that they take their first careers’ session messages with them as they take their next steps at St Mary’s.

See a gallery of images from the day here.

To find out more about the careers at St Mary’s, follow this link.