Lansvale Preschool is committed to striving for the best for children and families to ensure that we maintain and enhance our culture of forward planning for continuous improvement. Through a strong workplace culture of professional inquiry, deep interrogation of research and through connections to academic partners and other preschool settings we aim to align our practice with evidence based pedagogical approaches. We courageously question ourselves and our way of working. Our innovator's mindset allows us to query the default and explore whether a better option exists.
Our highly functioning P-6 school espouses rigorous evaluative thinking and proactive self-assessment in reviewing and refining all programs. This is undertaken authentically by all stakeholders annually and through external validation by educational experts independent of our school. In the preschool Assessment Rating Process the preschool was found to be exceeding in all Quality Areas. In External Validation of our school P-6 an independent panel found our school to be ‘Excelling’ in 12 of 14 in elements of the School Excellence Framework. As a result of this validation, the preschool is currently seeking to work with our university partners for ongoing reciprocal research opportunities, strengthen links with Early Stage 1 and engage with Lansvale Public Schools ICT resources.
In addition to school wide review processes the preschool undertakes critical reflections of practice through daily reflection between educators focusing on the planning cycle. Educators use the What? So What? and Now What? approach to guide their critical reflections. As reflective practitioners, we strive to continually learn together as a team and promote a culture of inquiry. “Reflective practice can help educators to think more deeply about their work and motivate them to explore new ideas and approaches” (Anning & Edwards, 2006). We see planning, documenting and evaluating as a sequence that is not lockstep. Rather we engage in all three processes concurrently to notice, assess and comprehensively document children’s progress. We do this in order to appropriately respond to, celebrate, facilitate and extend our actions as they apply to the EYLF. The EYLF p. 13 identifies ‘ongoing learning and reflective practice’ as one of the five principles that underpin effective childhood pedagogy. We follow this same philosophy when we review preschool programs and through reflective practice we ensure the preschool adapts to the changing needs of students, families and the community. This outlines the complexity and holistic vision of reflective practice for continual improvement and ensures our reflection is consistent with our beliefs, philosophy and vision.
As mentioned previously, our preschool families are active participants in the Parent as Teacher Classroom Helpers (PaTCH) Program. The focus of the PaTCH program has been to support our families in exploring the vital progression involved in how children learn to read, write, speak and listen and develop numeracy skills in the early years of formal schooling. We understand that sustaining excellence requires us to consistently look for ways to improve our existing practice. As a result our future PaTCH program will be tailored to the early childhood setting with new learning modules that directly relate to preschool. This will be created by a professional learning committee composed of preschool educators from three settings and a P-2 initiative officer from the Department of Education. Modules will focus directly on the shared aim of supporting children’s learning, aligned with the outcomes of the Early Years Learning Framework. We do not underestimate the knowledge and expertise of parents, rather our goal is to work in conjunction with them to enhance our children’s confidence and growth. Through the continued implementation and modification of PaTCH we will have robust community partnerships and provide opportunities for parents to be empowered in their child’s learning experiences.
Preschool PaTCH ProgramPDFThis initiative is expected to be an ongoing project for the next three years involving parents, children, staff and connecting with the local and wider community. This will entail mentoring opportunities for staff and creating a joint project to showcase at the Opera House. The preschool will be a significant leader of this whole school creativity project due to the action research work being undertaken. Our hunch is that the preschool children exhibit greater creativity than primary school students and in fact have the potential to lead them. Ongoing teacher professional development and working in partnerships with the Opera House further will enable the teachers to sustain excellence and continuously improve by mentoring other educators in implementing and integrating creativity into their classrooms as well as integrating aspects of the creativity framework into the preschool learning environment. As a lighthouse school within the Creative Leadership in Learning Project in cooperation with the Sydney Opera House, we will be investigating how to measure creativity and its connections to learning dispositions.
We will continue to explore creativity with The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). The MCA has generously invited our preschoolers to explore creativity through their Early Childhood art program in 2017 and again in 2018. We look forward to exploring the creativity journey with our young artists and sharing our learning and experience with others. We will continue our partnership with the MCA by attending their teacher professional development programs. Educators will participate in the Creative Connections workshop late in 2017 where they will be working with MCA Artist Educators to develop a tool-kit of new strategies for co-constructing creative learning experiences with young children.
We are active participants in ‘Curiosity For Powerful Learning’ that is linked with the University of Manchester and Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL). It entails directly improving quality teaching. This project enables us as educators to share our skills, knowledge and expertise with others who come to observe and reflect on teaching practice. As there are several teaching hubs, each participant has the opportunity to observe others and further support implementation and discussion of their learning experience. This is an ongoing journey, that will examine the best possible strategies and teaching practices. Lansvale Preschool educators will continue to play an expert role in promoting curiosity as a driver of student learning. Our youngest learners will continue to challenge us to build a rich and elegant learning environment focused on individual needs, strengths, interests and passions.
We will continue to work with the Literacy and Numeracy instructional leaders to provide ongoing commitment to the overall improvement of pedagogy through the collection of observations, feedback and reflection. Professional learning activities to be explored focus on building our understanding of effective teaching strategies in implementing play-based literacy and numeracy learning experiences. We would be able to share current research and data around early childhood teaching and learning practice. This will maximise and sustain excellence in delivering a culture that promotes learning driven by the needs of the child. This in turn will complement and be supported by a positive, safe and secure learning environment.
Lansvale Preschool believes they have an ethical obligation to advocate for the implementation of laws, policies and practices so that all children have universal access to high quality early childhood programs. Research Projects and pilots such as the current new Best Start Trial are examples of how Lansvale continually strive for continuous improvement and are targeted as partners in National initiatives.
Lansvale Preschool have participated in the AECEDE project that the Australian Government Department of Education and Training is undertaking in collaboration with the New South Wales Department of Education. The purpose of this research project is to gain a better understanding of the impact of early learning experiences of young children, both at home and in their early childhood settings, on their development and transition to school. This research will involve collecting data about children’s early learning experiences. We are proud and excited that the data we collected through this project, will be very useful for a wide variety of policy and research purposes. Analysed and reported at a community level, the data will help to create a snapshot of early childhood development in our community.
Lansvale preschool have participated in the revised Best Start Kindergarten preschool trial. We support this trial as it has given Lansvale Preschool the unique opportunity to contribute to the NSW DoE strategies designed to strengthen the foundations of early literacy and numeracy. The trial involved conducting the revised Best Start Assessment with children currently enrolled at preschool. We will continue to contribute beyond our immediate learning community and review our practices to ensure they are effective in our diverse school setting.
Revised Best Start Kindergarten Assessment Preschool TrialPDFIdentified as an exceptional Early Childhood service, Lansvale Preschool has been invited to be part of the Exemplary Educators Study from Charles Sturt University. This is Australia's first, large scale study that aims to identify the work, skills and knowledge of exemplary educators across qualification levels. It will investigate and document the organisational, professional and relational dimensions evident in high quality childcare centres and preschools with educators whose work is considered exemplary. We are keen to be part of this unique study and hope to shed some light on the varied and complex work that early childhood educators do. This will lead to greater recognition of the distinct nature of Early Childhood Education and the skills and knowledge one requires to be exemplary.
Exemplary Educators StudyPDFWorking with specialist teachers and technology consultants will further facilitate the implementation of technology in the learning environment. In consultation with Dr Joanne Orlando, the preschool are participating in an action research project based around effective technology use in early childhood settings. In our quest to sustaining excellence, the preschool have also applied to take part in the ELSA (Early Learning Stem Australia) play based digital learning program. This initiative will further enable our educators to develop partnerships with external agencies and opportunities for networking with other participating services.
As part of maintaining our journey of excellence, we have been inspired to support, share and guide pedagogical practice with others. This commitment saw us create a Twitter account to continue our learning and share our practice with our collegial network of educators. This has enabled us to create an active learning community that allows us to communicate, liaise with, learn from and share our excellent practice with others. As a result, we have had Cabramatta Public School visit our preschool in order to guide them in creating a quality transition to school program.
Lansvale educators use their Performance and Development Plans as well as the Quality Improvement Plan to engage in comprehensive strategic planning. Visits to the Early Stage 1 classrooms have been scheduled to allow educators to meet their personal goal in understanding L3 (Language, Learning and Literacy) pedagogy and practice. Preschool educators have also commenced meeting with Early Stage 1 teachers to discuss implementing a smooth and positive transition to school. This team goal will build a stronger connection between the preschool and Kindergarten, ensuring that the children’s individual needs and interests are met. Our engagement with our QIP has resulted in the creation of our Curiosity Centre and implementation of SeeSaw. Lansvale is committed to sustaining excellence through our dedication to continuously improve outcomes for our service, children, families and community. This allows us to continue enhancing and embedding best practice within the Preschool. Consistent, ongoing review ensures that our QIP is a responsive document that informs our school community around what we do well, the improvements that we are undertaking and how we are going about our daily work.
