This article is written by Sam Denno, Twinkl’s National Education Lead for Secondary English, host of The English Teacher Feature and Obsessed with Assessment podcasts, Secondary English teacher, and Founder of Beyond Secondary Resources.
There are a lot of moving parts during the year 6 into year 7 transition. At different points in my teaching career I have felt both overwhelmed by the scale of the operation, and at other times completely ignorant of what is happening between schools over that period. This will sometimes depend on what sort of a relationship your school has with its feeder settings, or how much the school leadership chooses to delegate to heads of departments and teachers.
As an English teacher, it is useful to be aware of key touchpoints in the transition timeline and to have a firm grasp on what this means for the environment in your own classroom and across the department.
Pre-transition
Understanding your pupils
I would strongly advocate for gathering an appreciation of what a primary school journey looks like, both in terms of core literacy skills and in terms of assessment. Ask yourself these questions:
- What do reading and writing look like in year 6?
- What do pupils have to do for the KS2 SATs tests in reading and SPaG?
If you don’t know the answer to these questions, then it’s worth seeking out the information. There are plenty of online materials that support with this, such as the Department for Education’s reading and writing frameworks. On my own podcast, The English Teacher Feature, I have recorded a miniseries on the writing framework which explores what pupils are taught in the primary phase and the implications of this on secondary settings. You can also find past SATs papers in various places on the web.
Where possible, know your feeder schools
Again, this is often determined by how much is delegated to English classroom teachers, but it is worth getting involved with the transition process as much as possible. If your secondary school is conducting visits to the feeder primaries then volunteer to be a part of that in order to have dialogue with the year 6 teachers.
Crucially, aim to get involved in year 6 pupil induction visits to your secondary if you can. The more you know about the pupils themselves and their literacy skills, the more grounded you will feel on day one of the new school year.
As I stipulate in my introduction, none of these opportunities may be available to you and the whole transition may pass you by. If that’s the case, don’t worry about it, just make sure that you have equipped yourself well for year 7 lessons in September.
Post-transition
Speak to your SENCO
There may be children that it is worth particularly keeping an eye out for in terms of ability or need. Speak to your SENCO about your class list and ask them if they have any pointers. SENCOs will have spent time talking to feeder primaries and gathering an understanding of the incoming cohort so they are a good starting point for intelligence.
Expectations
Be firm and consistent with routines. Class teachers will each have their own set of expectations that might be wholly their own, or dictated by school or department expectations. It is vital that you know exactly what you want from pupils at the start of the year and that you are consistent in communicating what that is. Be clear about classroom routines, exercise book usage and homework policy. Regularly reiterate whole school policies around behaviour, equipment and uniform.
Establish an early relationship with parents or carers. Make regular phone calls home for good performance or poor behaviour and always be explicit to them about the expectations you have of their child.
Seating plan
From year 8, you have the advantage of knowing more about your students beforehand, but at the start of year 7 you will have far less attainment, behaviour or social circumstances “data” available to you. Be willing to rethink your seating plan early in the term in order to bring out quieter pupils, to support students who are clearly struggling to make friends, or to manage more confident new starters who are becoming too verbose.
All about me
English provides a brilliant opportunity for self-reflection and “all about me” style mini-projects. The chances are that year 7 pupils will be carrying out similar activities in other spaces, but in English we can lean into writing via autobiography, carry out speaking and listening tasks that invite students to talk about themselves, and encourage pupils to explore their identities as readers and writers.
Twinkl offers a range of Beyond Secondary resources designed for transition tasks.
Benchmarking
We can learn a lot from pupils’ KS2 SATs results, but the measurements don’t necessarily reveal how well-equipped they are for the secondary curriculum. It is important that we benchmark pupils’ reading and writing abilities as soon as possible. This will likely be a top-down approach for the whole English department and may involve in-house reading and writing tests or off-the-shelf diagnostic assessments. Once a benchmark is established, the same or similar test can be run at intervals through the year to establish progress over time and identify skill gaps.
Embed a reading for pleasure culture
Reading for pleasure offers benefits to reading competence, attainment in English as well as the wider curriculum and it enhances mental health. Make your classroom a space in which reading is spoken about with enthusiasm. You could:
- Talk about what you’re reading at home and aim to read some books that have relevance to your pupils.
- Ask pupils what they’re reading and show an interest.
- Discuss new book releases, particularly when they are part of popular series or written by prestigious authors of young-person fiction.
- Display posters of books relevant to pupils in the classroom.
- Show an interest in media stories about books or book-adjacent films / games etc.
- Encourage use of the library.
- Carve out reading for pleasure time in lessons, where there is no onward expectation of work.
Use the Twinkl Beyond reading for pleasure booklet as an aid for igniting reading for pleasure habits.
Support
Create space for year 7 pupils to ask questions about their new environment as a whole, but specifically about English at secondary school. Offer time at the beginning or end of a lesson for anyone to make a query, but also make it clear when and where they can approach you if they don’t want to ask something in front of the whole class.
Many new pupils will inevitably struggle with reading their timetables or navigating their way around the school. Be supportive, kind and understanding when these issues arise.
The English department
Make clear everything that the English department has to offer. Do you or your colleagues run any reading or writing clubs? Where is the English office if they want any support? Who is the head of English? Where is the school library and how do they use it?
Oracy
Get them talking! Oracy is a big part of the incoming curriculum for 2028/29 because it is excellent for exploring concepts and topics, for scaffolding work and for problem-solving questions. It’s also effective for making friends with new people at the start of the year. Aim to build oracy elements into your lessons as much as is practical, making sure that you have clear ground rules for how you want talk to happen.
Explore the Beyond Secondary oracy schemes of work.
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