“This was such an historic, thrilling time for us all.”
Mr Boyd, Headmaster

On 3 and 4 July, The Island Free School held two hugely successful Transition Days, giving new students and staff the opportunity to meet up in the beautiful stone school in Ventnor where we will be initially based. Transition Days are held across the Island to give Year 6 students a taster of what life will be like at their new secondary schools – and the feedback we had from our students was ‘bring on September!’.

On Thursday 3 July, 125 pupils from 28 different primary schools were welcomed by Headmaster Mr Boyd, who hosted a very special assembly, introducing the children to his ‘challenge chest’. Pupils were asked to solve a series of clues so that they could crack the code to open the chest and win an iPod (well done Georgia!).

Pupils were given sample lessons and activities included:

• Finding their own superpowers in Drama
• Kitchen chemistry in Science
• An historical costume challenge in History
• Making photographs with sun paper in Art
• Writing a postcard in Latin.

On Thursday evening, parents came back with their children to look around the school and meet their child’s mentor. All pupils selected a musical instrument to learn over the next year, and chose activities for the enrichment hour that will take place at the end of every school day.

On Friday 4 July, the pupils were treated to a day working with the super-cool choir, Sense of Sound. This started with an African call and response song, and students went through various exercises to learn how to harmonise and structure songs. In the afternoon, they split into groups to produced their own pieces based on current songs. At the end of the day, we all came back to the hall for a wonderful ‘sing-off’ before the pupils were dismissed until September.

“This was such an historic, thrilling time for us all”, says Headmaster Mr Boyd. “There was a real feeling of excitement as the children arrived in buses from all over the Island, and it was wonderful to get together as a school for the very first time. The students were exceptionally well behaved, and so smart and creative. The teachers were very impressed and are now busy planning lots of activities for our first term and beyond. We can’t wait for September, when we’ll see everyone again, and the school officially opens. In the meantime, enjoy your summer everyone!”