St Clare College will be opening its doors for both boys and girls for a co-education experience. The need to prepare Year 6 students for this venture was felt and so the Principal, Ms Maria Ciappara together with a hard working team of people came together to develop a programme of eight days of activities.
It all commenced when Miss Ciappara, the Principal of Saint Clare College, had the splendid idea of bringing together all St Clare College Year 6 students who will be in Form 1 Pembroke Secondary next September 2013, so when we start school we won't be like: "Who is he? How am I going to make friends here?" Miss Ciappara made sure we never live this unpleasant experience by planning loads of bonding activities......and hey, it really worked, we all made new friends!
On 6 June, Year 6 pupils from Sliema, Gzira, Pembroke, St Julian’s and San Gwann Primaries united at San Gwann Primary B and after an introduction from Miss Ciappara explaining that our secondary school will not be a Boys’ or a Girls’ Secondary, but simply Pembroke Secondary, came a team of guidance teachers. We were divided into groups and each group had children from all the different Primary schools of the College so that we could get to know each other. I personally thought that it would be torture but I actually made friends because we had fun writing about ourselves on a paper and then giving them to the teacher so she could read them out loud and see if our friends guessed who we were! We also had a blast doing a knot with a string to represent that we were a team and like it or not, we had to work together… and it was fun! So on the first day we already made progress because we immediately broke barriers and were excited to get to know each other further!
The second day was one of the best days! We had a Sports Day and played football, handball, prisoners, etc. But mostly, we enjoyed winning the games, and because we are 10- and 11-year-olds, we don't really enjoy playing a game if we don't win it...and everyone knows that!
On 11 June, Miss Ciappara entertained us and came bustling in the hall of Pembroke Primary, prepared with a colourful Power Point presentation prepared on her laptop. She gave us useful tips like what we should do if the transport comes late! She also told us that bullying will be unacceptable and she also gave us the opportunity to voice out our opinions. She explained different situations and asked us what we thought was the right thing to do. She also wanted to know what kind of consequences we thought would be right for bad behaviour… our opinions were going to be taken into consideration! After that we had a 30 minute break during which we mingled and made new friends.
Next we had Art. We put our creative pants on and began painting the traditional Maltese tile on a piece of paper, and from this painting, I could tell something about each girl and boy in my group. Unfortunately, the transport came early so we didn't finish our masterpieces
The next day, we went on a little journey to Pembroke Primary for a talk about Cyber Crime. Miss Ciappara invited a police man who explained how dangerous social networks can be if used the wrong way like when people use it to fight and bully each other and not to communicate. However, if the victim reports the bully to the police, things will get ugly. Miss Ciappara insisted that, fools learn from their own experience, smart people learn from other people's experience. That's true! So now, we’re warned.
On 13 June, the Principal talked to us about good grooming. Now that we’re growing up, we need to start to learn to become independent and it is good to get to know how we can take care of ourselves without over relying on our parents.
On 14 June we all met again in the hall at San Gwann Primary for a day of Drama. Wow! It was fantastic! There were drama teachers who taught us how to act by doing charades and by doing a game that involved fast thinking and learning skills! That definitely brought us together for we had to work as a team in each game. I simply loved seeing my future friends act out their parts beautifully! That game bonded us together for we had to discuss, work and collaborate with each other in order to guess what the children were acting - some children were drama queens - in a good way! We loved every minute.
On 17 June we extremely enjoyed listening to the sharing of experiences of the two police women and a marching band in the school's playing field and hall. They really played good music… music for which the whole college liked singing to. We simply loved dancing to the music and we mostly appreciated ALL that was done for us during the seven days!
Finally, 18 June marked the last day of these bonding activities. On this day we also met Ms Leone, who will be our new Head of School at Pembroke Secondary. Stalls were prepared and we all enjoyed the last activities. How we laughed altogether! It really did not matter anymore that we came from different school, now we were just friends. We had the evaluation and reflected on how we did during the eight days, everyone enjoyed it! We appreciated how our Principal took hours of her time, so that we wouldn't feel shy in our new school next September. The activities were awesome and even when I wrote about them it made me wish to relive those moments one more time!
So three cheers for Miss Ciappara and to Pembroke Secondary!
Francesca Grima is a San Gwann B, Year 6 Student