Moving to high school after the holidays?

Here’s one young person’s experience.

Most of us have a few questions and even worries about moving to high school 

This great article by Abby Spence who moved to Bannockburn High School last year might help 🙂

Before I came up to High School I was worried about lots of different things. However, I am very glad that my worries have not become a reality! My first worry was that people might pick on me and that there might be nobody there to stick up for me. I want to tell you that nobody picks on you because you have dyslexia – in fact nobody even knows that you have it!

I didn’t feel confident about bringing out my coloured overlay in class. Nobody mentioned the fact that I was using a purple overlay and lots of other pupils were using them too. We now have every colour of overlay available in each department across the school because we worked hard during Dyslexia Awareness Week to buy these.

I was very worried about people asking me to read aloud in class. In fact people don’t ask me to do this very often. If you don’t want to read aloud you won’t be made to do this.

Another thing that concerned me was finding my way around the school and getting lost in a much bigger building. This worked out much better than I had thought. When you have your timetable the room numbers are written on it. The first number of the room tells you the floor where the classroom is eg Room 302 is on the third floor. You quickly learn too what floor the different departments are on. The senior pupils are also there to help you find your way around the school.

I was also worried about the work that we would have to do. I was afraid that the tasks set might be too hard for me. In fact the teachers are happy to work with you if you find tasks difficult or give you different sheets to do to help you learn best. I was also worried about the amount of homework we would get. There is not as much homework as I thought there would be, although you sometimes have to finish off work if you haven’t got it all done in class.

I was scared too that tests would put too much pressure on me. Here is what happens when we have a test in class. We have to do the test on our own and then we get to do it again with an adult reading the questions and writing the answers. The reading helps me to understand the words better and the writing means that we don’t have to bother about the spelling.

I have met lots of new friends since coming up to high school as everyone is looking for new friends when they are in S1. All you need to do is chat to others and you will find that you have lots of things in common. I have also quickly got used to the times of the buses.

High school is much, much better than I thought it would be!!!!!!