Help prepare students for their first day

When students head back to school in 2022, many will be making the step up to intermediate or secondary school for the first time.

New Zealand education experts offer some tips to help parents prepare, to make the transition easier for their children.

Children starting at intermediate or secondary school have three common worries: getting physically lost, making friends and coping with the learning requirements.

Getting lost can make students feel lonely, stupid or anxious. Try to visit the school with them before it starts. Go with an older sibling, or known person who attends the school, to walk around the school, or ask if anyone is available to show your son or daughter around the school grounds and identify the main buildings.

Help them identify the assembly hall, toilets, school office, gates and classroom blocks. This will increase their confidence about the first day.

Tell them it is common in the first week of school to get lost and to ask for help if they need it.

Making friends is a common student concern when starting intermediate and secondary school. Funnily enough, by the end of the first month of school, nearly all students report new friends as being the best part of school.

Encourage your son or daughter to arrange to go to school on the first day with a person they knew from their previous school.

It is much easier to walk through the gates with someone they know and they are more likely to recognise other familiar faces.

If your child knows no-one else starting at the school, give them some strategies for meeting new people. Tell them most people will be feeling nervous and lonely.

Encourage them to approach a student or pair of students within the first minute of entering the school gates.

They should be prepared to approach two or three groups, just in case.

If all else fails, they could take a map of the school and pretend to study it while waiting for teachers to call students in.

Most schools begin the year with material they know students will be able to manage. Some level of anxiety can be good to challenge students’ expectations of themselves.