Year 6 is the pinnacle of primary school. It’s when the children who once gazed in amazement at the giants who were in their last year of school realise that these giants were just kids.
It will have literally have felt like it’s taken a lifetime to get there, but there’s a lot to learn in the last year of school. Here are some highlights to expect in Year 6:
Primary school hierarchy
Just like you’ll have scuttered out of the way of the bigger kids as an infant, you might see younger children doing this to you when you’re passing them in the hallway. Remember whether you thought anyone was scary and whether you’d like to feel like that again.
With hierarchy comes responsibility – you get to choose whether those younger than you, who probably all look up to you, are scared of you or admire you. You get to choose whether you’re a good influence on them or not, as part of the group of kids at the top of the school.
Being respected feels good
In Year 6, you’re usually bigger and older than most of the other children in the school. You’re also going to be a lot more confident than most of the other children because you know your way around like school is your second home. You know all the teachers and can probably also name all of the other children and they probably all know you, too.
Having known you for many years now, your teachers will probably become more relaxed with you, especially if you are well behaved at school. They’ll say hello in the halls and maybe even trust you to go into the staff room to go and get something, or make a cup of tea.
Being trusted with things that others aren’t and being greeted as though you’re an adult shows that you’re respected and that feels good. You’ll notice when others don’t have the same privileges, perhaps because they’re not well behaved and will be able to see how hard it is to earn respect and how quickly respect can be lost.
You have to make your own choices
In Year 6 you will have a fresh lot of decisions to make. Unless you know someone who has been through the move to secondary school the year before, you’re going to have to trust your instincts when things change. Something simple like how you get to school now will change and you may have to choose which bus stop to walk to. You’re also going to have to choose which activities you get involved in when you get to secondary school. Whilst most subjects are compulsory, you may have a choice between new things to learn like languages and this is a choice you should make for yourself.
You can choose your friends
Depending on the size of your primary school, you’ll probably have a large group of friends – some of which are your best friends and some of which will have been your best friends in previous years. Your parents are probably also friends with their parents, which means you do more together with some friends than others.
When you go to secondary school, you can find that you’re split up from your best friends and end up making new friends with people who perhaps live in different places to you – who went to different primary schools. You’ll be able to choose your friends based on who you get on with best and who you actually want to spend your time with at break and lunch times as well as out of school.
However, keeping in touch with the friends that have been with you throughout primary school is also really important. It can be hard to do this if you’ve not got any lessons together, but perhaps you’ll at least share bus journeys to and from school. Staying friends is also a choice and it’s one to make in Year 6.
Embracing change
For many children, Year 6 is when the biggest change in their life so far happens. Just like how some people move house after they’ve lived in one place for all of their lives, leaving the school where they have been going to for all of their lives is a massive change to go through.
Year 6 is the year when you get to decide how you start to deal with change. Will you worry about it, even though you can’t control what happens when you go to secondary school (and you have no idea what will happen and whether it will be good or bad, anyway), or will you approach secondary school with an open mind and look forward to the new opportunities and challenges coming your way?
Year 6 leavers hoodies
For many, Year 6 is the best school year of them all – where being at the top of the school only means new and exciting things are yet to come and even then, they seem a long way away when you’re busy enjoying yourself being the kings and queens of primary school.
Enjoy Year 6 and make sure you use your leavers hoody to help you remember it and everyone you spent the year with.
To view a range of leavers hoodies suitable for Year 6 students, visit our ‘leavers hoodies for kids’ pages.
