Mount Carmel have a packed transition programme in place for our partner primary schools including workshop projects, inter-primary quizzes, outreach work, school show visits and a range of partnership events. The ‘Next Steps’ programme begins in Year 5 continuing into Year 6 and helps pupils become familiar with life at secondary school.
Over the Summer term we invited almost 400 Year 5 pupils to Mount Carmel over 3 days for our ‘Next Steps’ taster days. The theme this year was conservation and the environment and each school was asked to prepare some facts about a specific endangered animal for an assembly at the beginning of each day.
All activities throughout the days were based around this theme and the pupils were very pleased to hear that Mount Carmel had adopted tigers, elephants, leopards, gorillas, dolphins and many other animals from the WWF Conservation charity for each school, presenting them with a framed certificate and a soft toy of their allocated animal as a mascot for the class.
Year 6 pupils who have been offered a place at Mount Carmel this September came for a ‘Step Up’ day in July. During the day the pupils experience how the pastoral system works, initially discovering which form group they will be part of and beginning to develop as part of the Mount Carmel ‘family’.
Mount Carmel invited parents and families to celebrate the achievements of pupils from partner primary schools during a ‘Next Steps’ Celebration evening.
Year 7 Achievement Co-ordinator Mrs Lowe and Design Technology Curriculum Leader Mr Thompson hosted the event which began with a solo performance by Year 8 pupil Lewis Wilkinson who played the part of ‘Oliver’ in the recent school production of the musical.
The British Science Association accredited Superstar Awards were presented to pupils who had completed the award during a STEM project organised by Mount Carmel during the Spring term. Certificates were also presented to all Year 5 pupils who attended the ‘Next Steps’ taster days.
To conclude the evening a free raffle which included star prizes of a tablet computer and an MP3 player and a large selection of games were then offered by Mount Carmel as prizes to the pupils.