Last Tuesday, KWS was buzzing with an extraordinary amount of energy, curiosity, and excitement as we welcomed eight classes of Year 5 pupils to our inaugural Taster Day.

Transitioning to secondary school is a major milestone and our aim was to demystify the experience and replace any worries with genuine excitement. We wanted to give these students a true sense of what makes our school community so vibrant and we are delighted to report that our visiting students rose to the occasion magnificently.

The students threw themselves into a variety of taster lessons, including:

The Wonders of Science: pupils became real scientists conducting lots of experiments with a focus on colour, in our fully equipped laboratories.
Creative Innovation: across music, dance, drama, art and DT the pupils got a taste of the specialised spaces and equipment they will use daily.
Global Explorations: interactive challenges in the Humanities and modern foreign languages.

Character development is at the centre of all we do at KWS, and throughout the day it was incredibly rewarding to see the Year 5 students actively demonstrating our core values, most notably their:

Bravery and Resilience: walking into a secondary school and facing unfamiliar people and spaces can be daunting. Year 5 showed immense grit, stepping outside their comfort zones and tackling every new challenge with a smile.
Collaboration and Curiosity: our staff were blown away by the engagement of the students and the great questions they asked. Their desire to explore, investigate, and understand how things work was a joy to watch.

KWS students involved in this day showed off a great many of our Character traits too – from the fantastic bunch of Year 7 and 8 student leaders who were tour guides for the day for their old primary schools (and fielded so many questions from Year 5s) to our Year 12 Subject Student Ambassadors helping run the taster lessons.

A big thank you to the primary school staff who brought their classes along and the KWS staff team for putting on such a fantastic array of lessons. We look forward to making this an annual KWS event.