Forward July 2016 | Page 32

PR E PA R ATORY S C HO OL Guildford Grammar School Early Learning Centre strives to provide a trusting, joyful and stimulating environment where children are encouraged, inspired and nurtured to reach their full potential. to become lifelong learners in the 21st Century. This approach will also ensure that the first years of school are positive and most importantly, foster a love of learning. Early learning at Guildford Grammar School Guildford Grammar School staff and students are blessed with the beautiful environment we have to inspire learning, connect to the outdoors and to use our natural spaces. We are committed to developing our outdoor environment to include and practice sustainability, exploration, risk taking and physical activity. The early childhood years are precious and all too brief. Therefore, it is so important for us to do the right thing by our students and ensure they get to make the most of the wonderful opportunity to learn through play, encouragement and purposeful scaffolding and make meaningful connections with the world around them. At the beginning of this year, the early learning staff put together the above statement as a reflection of what we want our centre to look and feel like for all stakeholders. We were unanimous in our desire to build a learning environment that would deliver our promise to be trusting, joyful and stimulating and that would truly 32 be an environment where children are encouraged, inspired and nurtured. We want our inclusive centre to be one where there is a strong sense of belonging, being and becoming (taken from the Early Years Learning Framework 2010). There is a buzz in the air and a skip in the step of children and staff as we work towards learning, creating, developing, refining, reflecting and exploring together. Taking the lead from current research and the extensive knowledge of our very experienced early childhood staff, we are celebrating and embracing the opportunity to incorporate outstanding developmental early childhood practices in combination with the various learning area curriculums. Understanding child development and the way young children learn, along with many years of practice, has been the key to enable us to create a learning environment of which we can be justifiably proud. We believe that our proven eclectic approach provides our students with the necessary skills they require Our focus is on developing language and communication skills, resilience, fine and gross motor skills as well as essential preliteracy and numeracy skills. We provide these experiences in a stimulating play based environment, which is child led, child initiated and teacher supported. We make use of inspired learning centres, both indoors and out believing that ‘education for young children should resemble play, with children delighting in acquiring knowledge and skills in ways that make them feel competent and capable’ (Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Berk and Singer, 2009). Communication and language development underpins all that we do in Early Childhood. Every activity, experience and action requires an understanding of language and the ability to express and communicate ideas and learning. We have prioritised language development in our Early Learning Centre and understand this to be a valuable precursor of learning success. We continue to immerse the children in a language rich environment where we model reading and writing, encourage the children to ‘have a go’, read fiction and non-fiction books, tell and listen to stories, teach children to question, provoke thinking, sing, engage in dramatic play and use technology where appropriate. We make use of the extended school environment and take advantage of the opportunity for incursions and excursions that enhance the children’s learning opportunities. Our experience and knowledge of best practice and developmental learning sequences enables us to plan daily literacy