The Leeds Rhinos Foundation’s Big Lottery Funded Education programme TryZone has been running a pilot project aimed at easing the transition to secondary school for year 6 students this year with a group of students from Shire Oaks Primary School.
With the 2014/2015 school year coming to an end, the group from Shire Oaks Primary School are benefiting from the TryZone ‘Zone 6-7’ project that focusses on the transition from primary to secondary school.
The project has been running since February with twelve girls from the Headingley based primary school attending the purpose built TryZone education centre at Headingley Carnegie Stadium on Tuesday evenings, with the aim of increasing pupil’s confidence, self-esteem, resilience and team work skills in order to make transition to secondary school a more comfortable experience.
Zone 6-7 is one of currently a number of projects run by the Big Lottery Funded TryZone centre that works with families and people of all ages in the Leeds Community and has involved staff from partners British Gas, who have supported the programme's running.
As part of the project schedule so far, the Zone 6-7 pupils have had the opportunity to do a wide range of activities with the TryZone project Tutors Clayton Stott and Janet Sylvester, looking at team building skills in week one and moving on to focus on healthy lifestyles, stereotyping, body image and relationships and issues around coping more about leading healthy lifestyles through making healthy diet swaps.
“We’ve been looking at soft outcomes such as confidence and team building in the sessions so far, which are some the key themes we’ve put in place for this project, that along with dealing with conflict, making positive choices and creating self-esteem are very important to young children moving into a bigger and often more challenging new setting such as secondary school.
Other sessions in the programme have included a session looking at pictures in the media and discussing stereotypes and misconceptions around people identities and body image along with Zone 6-7 project the pupils and staff have begun called #OperationIncubation.
Operation Incubation has seen the group follow the process of incubating eggs up to their hatch date with equipment provided by Meanwood Valley farm, who also provided an instructional session for the group on caring for the eggs and with the hatchings due to take place this week, it is an exciting time for the group.
Over the coming weeks the group are due to make a return visit to Meanwood Valley Farm with some more sessions on coping with the transition to secondary school planned with their project Tutors, as the children finish out their final school year at Shire Oaks.
Zone 6-7 is the latest project aimed at young people and operates alongside the RAD (Resilience and Determination) and Active Zone projects ran by the TryZone centre.
For more information on Big Lottery Funded TryZone education projects visit: www.leedsrhinosfoundation.org/education/young-people.php.
A video of the Zone 6-7 sessions is available to view below: