Each year, during the summer holidays at King James, we organise a week of fun, free activities for Year 6 students who are registered to start our Academy in September. This year our Transition Summer School took on the important theme of 'Catching Up'.

Following the huge disruption upon children’s lives over the last couple of years due to Covid, we created a programme of activities that focused on three main areas - catching up with key subjects, physical activity and social interaction.

Participants spent the first two days in school where we delivered a range of fun lessons linked to key subjects in the curriculum, such as planning and budgeting for an overseas trip in Maths and writing a podcast in English. In recognition of the many missed opportunities for exercise during lockdown when grassroots sports clubs were closed and even leaving home to exercise was restricted, sport and drama activities were also an important part of the programme to get pupils active.

Catching up with friends and social interaction is particularly important for both children and adults in maintaining a healthy body and positive mind, and for building confidence, so at our summer school we worked hard to make sure our new starters had plenty of opportunities to make new friends.

Students then enjoyed three exciting days at Weardale Adventure Centre taking part in fun outdoor activities including Bush Craft, Canoeing, Rock climbing, Crate stacking, River walking, High Ropes, Archery other challenges. This environment has been proven to support pupils in building confidence, resilience and independence as they challenge themselves to complete things they may have never done before, but it also helps them to establish new friendships with pupils from the many primary schools coming together to form our new Year 7 cohort.