At the end of Year 6, your students are excited about summer but may not be feeling quite ready for Year 7. Successfully transitioning students from primary to secondary school makes a huge difference to how your class fares once you have waved them goodbye – and there are some simple ways to streamline the planning and preparation involved. Here are four simple steps plus how-to videos from the iUgo teacher planner that can save you time and energy; while ensuring you have done everything to prepare your class for their next education milestone.
Step 1: Identify which students need support to transitioning from primary to secondary school
Students’ needs change throughout the year, so it’s good to start with a quick review of each student and highlight your diverse learners, as well as those that need extra subject or transition support to get them ready for next year.
If you are part of an iUgo school, try adding “Transition” target tags to your target list. Targets are simple but effective for differentiating between students’ needs when planning, because they can be customized and are visible across the iUgo planner. Use them as an instant visual record of who is transitioning to a different class or school.
Step 2: Create new teaching groups according to student transition need
Creating transition teaching groups is another efficient option for quickly differentiating your planning and preparing students with similar needs as a collective. Not only does it streamline the number of differentiated plans you need to create, it also helps to develop a mutual support system within the group so that students don’t feel isolated.
In iUgo our flexible drag and drop system for creating student groups allows you to quickly organize your class groups any way you need to, including for support during student transition.
Step 3: Adjust your lesson planning to meet the needs of your student transition groups
You don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to differentiating your lesson planning during a time of student transition. Your mainstream planning can act as a scaffold that can be heightened, lowered, reduced or expanded according to what your transition groups need.
This is where a digital planner like iUgo can save your team time and brain power. Once you are happy with your mainstream planning, you can copy and fine-tune it to meet the needs of your transitioning group or class.
Step 4: Draw all your planning together into one place for each class
New curricula, new resources, new apps, new skills – there’s a lot of time and intelligence involved in choosing the right elements and weaving them into a productive lesson that engages your class. This is where your skills as a teacher shine.
Transition planning has an eye to the future knowledge and skills your students will be using when you are no longer there to guide them. Whether you prefer to step into your class each day with a prepared basket of resources or a laptop, you want everything you have selected at your fingertips, so that you can focus on sharing them with the students in front of you.
If you are an iUgo school, this is also the magic of your daily planner. You can connect each lesson directly to the relevant unit and lesson planning for your class. Your differentiated planning for your transition groups is right there, including all your carefully selected curriculum objectives, resources, links and your most recent notes and next steps for each student.
Good luck with transitioning students from primary to secondary school!
We wish you all the best with your preparations for student transitions this year. For more information or support from the iUgo teacher planner, explore this website. If you have any questions, start a new chat, or contact us, we’ll be happy to help.
