Cool Moves

WLAC’s Cool Moves programme is for 10-11 year olds in their final year of primary school. Cool Moves helps children to manage their transition to secondary school.

The move to secondary school marks a major new phase in a child’s life. Many children respond well to change, are excited about going to secondary school and feel ready to move. Most children will manage the transition successfully. However, any change brings uncertainty and can trigger anxiety. There are a lot of unknowns. Children know that they will be expected to be more independent and they are likely to be moving into a much larger school community. Many feel daunted. Especially if they face other challenges at home. This transition happens at a time when children are also experiencing the physical and psychological changes of early adolescence.

WLAC’s Cool Moves is a flexible programme that we have been running for some time. Like all of our work, it is client led. Our therapists work with local schools to understand what format will be most effective. For example, we can work intensively with a small group of 6-8 children over a 6 week period. Or we can run a whole class workshop over one day or two half days.

The pandemic interrupted this programme and we know that the pandemic has also heightened anxiety and behavioural issues amongst many primary school aged children. Ashburnham and Servite Primary Schools were very keen for us to return to their schools and start running groups as soon as we were available. We ran workshops with nearly 50 children this Summer Term.

Cool Moves aims to:

·       give children a safe space to identify and share their worries about secondary school

·       increase children’s awareness of their feelings

·       help children to identify preferred futures for the transition

·       enable children to identify their strengths

·       engage children in positive self-talk to build their self esteem

·       encourage children to identify their support network i.e. people they can talk to

·       teach children stress management techniques

Children have said that they like:

·       Thinking of and saying advice to friends

·       Learning about secondary school

·       The games and activities

·       Saying our feelings

·       Having fun playing together

·       Role plays

A therapist’s perspective

Roz Sambrook-Smith is one of our Cool Moves therapists. Roz is a Tavistock trained child and adolescent psychotherapist who joined WLAC in February 2023. Her background is working with children and young people in primary and secondary schools. She also works with children, adolescents and families, where needed, providing 1-1 counselling and psychotherapy at the WLAC offices.

Here Roz offers observations on a recent Cool Moves workshop she was involved in

The workshops were a brilliant way of helping children acknowledge and externalise their fears about moving on to secondary school so they can start to process and emotionally prepare themselves for the next phase of their lives.

There was a great mix of creative and practical activities so the children could start to get to grips with several useful strategies to help them understand and manage their feelings when they feel overwhelmed.  Each theme gave them a chance to bounce off ideas with their friends and explore their worries in a collaborative, interactive and safe way.

The x-ray feelings machine was particularly fun as the children worked together to think about and draw the feelings in their bodies. Each group then presented their ‘body maps’ to the class with a sense of pride, humour and growing confidence. 

It was wonderful to see the children gradually relax over the course of the workshops and respond so well to some of the concepts of the ‘nasty parrot’ and ‘safe place’ with such enthusiasm and curiosity.

There were so many powerful messages and important life skills learned in these sessions. Some children embraced these eagerly and others may need time to process what these strategies mean to them although I think that every year 6 child should have a chance to benefit from such helpful, enriching experiences.

Feedback from children at Servite Primary School

Most children said they felt less anxious and more confident because they had more strategies to cope with the secondary school transition.