Buddies help preps settle in

By Elizabeth Lillis
SCHOOL is in for students in Pakenham for 2007.
New students have started their school journeys with prep students settling into life in a new environment.
About 100 prep students started their school life last week at Pakenham Consolidated Primary School.
Principal Leonie Campbell said the preps were helped to settle in by their buddies, Grade 4 students who they first met last year.
Ms Campbell said the buddies wrote letters to the then kindergarten children last year about life at school.
“This is part of the transition program which started the middle of last year,” she said.
The older students visited preps at kinder and the kinder children also visited the school late last year to see their classroom.
“The buddies go down on the first day to the prep classes and sit with them while they eat and generally look after them,” she said.
Ms Campbell said the advantage of the buddies being in Grade 4 was they were around the school for another two years.
“Some lovely relationships are formed from the program,” she said.
“The preppies make their own friends but the buddies become familiar faces as they settle into school.”
Ms Campbell said preps that were new to the Pakenham area were not left out and were paired up with a buddy on the first day.
Ms Campbell said the buddy program helped to ease the first day nerves for many of the prep students.
“It has been a smooth start to the school year,” she said.
There are four prep classes and one prepgrade one combined class at the school.
Ms Campbell said the school expected to have about 800 students this year.
Ms Campbell said the size of the school was a sign of the times as Pakenham moved from being a rural community to an urban community.