LATEST STORIES
BestStart Rongotai Set for School Evening
On the 11th of September at BestStart Rongotai, we held a “Set for School” evening. This was a great opportunity to share with whanau about how to prepare our tamariki for school, and to enable parents and the teachers from our local schools to have conversations about the “building blocks for beginning school” and the process of making a smooth transition.
We have recently reviewed our approach to school readiness, talking to parents about their concerns, consulting local schools, and exploring our own understanding. This research enabled us to confidently create a new “set for school” display in our classroom, plan ongoing activities, and organize our informative whanau evening. We welcomed Tracy and Jackie from Mirimar Central School, and Kate from Lyall Bay School. It was so lovely to have them come and share their knowledge with us while also developing our relationships with local schools. We started with a slide-show presentation before inviting the new entrance teachers to come up to korero and present their own slides. We then shared how we as a team can prepare tamariki for school in a play-based curriculum. We referred to Te Whariki and linked the strands to the school curriculum.
Each kaiako on our team came up and gave a short talk about specific areas of learning, the skills tamariki learn while playing, and how these experiences prepare them for school. Christine covered the subject of social and emotional competency, Ruth talked about art, Florence’s topic was numeracy, Joy presented language, literacy and self-help skills, and Charly explained how games and big group activities contribute to learning. To wrap it up, whanau asked some great questions, and our guests were more than happy to engage in conversation, give advice and share more of their expertise.
We would love to plan another evening like this in the not too distant future. I’d like to say an enormous thank you to the teachers who came to support our “Set For School” evening and here are a few photos to show just how well the evening went!