Best start program
The Best Start Assessment was first trialled in 2008 using Edensor Park Public School as a pilot school.
The purpose of the assessment is to provide information for the Kindergarten teachers based on the knowledge and understandings that each child brings to school as they enter Kindergarten.
How does Best Start help our teachers and students?
With the information provided from the assessment, the teachers are able to develop quality teaching and learning programs that support students in achieving early stage one outcomes.
This assessment is for all students in Kindergarten and is ongoing and monitored throughout the year.
Best start assessments
The best start Kindergarten assessment tasks will assess seven aspects of literacy:
- reading texts
- comprehension
- concepts about print
- phonics
- phonemic awareness
- aspects of speaking
- aspects of writing
The best start Kindergarten assessment tasks will assess three aspects of numeracy:
- counting sequences
- counting as a problem solving process
- pattern and the repeated unit
Community languages
Community language programs enable the learning of a language which is represented significantly in the school community.
Edensor Park Public School has two community language teachers. These teachers teach students for whom the home language is either Italian or Vietnamese.
The community language program also offers opportunities for other students to learn a second language.
Community languages structure
Each student at Edensor Park Public School attends community languages once per week, regardless of their background. Half of the year they will attend Italian classes, and the other half they will attend Vietnamese classes.
Native speaking children (those whose family speak Italian or Vietnamese at home) will also receive an extra focussed lesson per week for the whole year, delving further into their language and cultural background.
Home reading program
Edensor Park Public School has a long standing and robust home reading program which begins in Kindergarten and continues until the end of Year 6.
Our home reading program is designed to encourage students to read regularly at home. By participating in the program, students will reinforce reading strategies learnt at school.
Borrowing
Students have an opportunity to borrow books on a daily basis, or at the discretion of their teacher. The rules of borrowing are:
- All students must bring in a pouch-type folder before they can borrow. Plastic ones with flaps, press-studs or zippers are ideal. Names should be clearly written on the front of the folder.
- Levelled home reading boxes are distributed to each classroom and regularly changed. These boxes cover a range of reading levels for example - 1-5, 6-10 and so on to make it much easier for students to read books commensurate with their reading age.
- Students borrow during reading groups times from their class' borrowing box.
- Students will have a borrowing sheet that has the name of text, date borrowed, and a space for a parent/guarding signature when the book has been read.
- Parents are encouraged to watch and listen to their child read before signing the borrowing sheet.
- Teachers will initial and date the borrowing sheet when the book has been returned.
Teachers also have a master record of student borrowing to track books.
Home reading reward system
We have a great rewards system associated with our home reading program. The award system works as follows:
- Each time a student returns a book with a parent's signature, they will receive a home reading token. These tokens are laminated, and when four have been earnt, a student can exchange them for a home reading award.
- The home reading awards are presented to students by their teacher. Three of these certificates will earn a Principal's Award. The student gets to keep all of their home reading awards.
- Principals awards are presented at assembly. For a student to get a Principal's award for home reading they must read a total of 12 books from their ability level.
Home reading agreement and liability
At the beginning of each year, an agreement form is sent home as part of the permission package for the home reading program. Parents must sign this form for each student to participate in the home reading program for that year.
Signing the form commits the child (and parent/guardian) to be responsible for each text whilst on loan. If the text is lost, a fee of $10 will be charged to replace the text. Parents will be notified via a note sent home of any texts reported or found to be missing. The text must be promptly returned to the class teacher if found, otherwise the $10 fee should be paid to the front office.
Students with outstanding lost books will not be allowed to borrow further until the text is returned or the fee is paid. This penalty may continue into the following years of school.
Reading recovery program
The reading recovery program is a recognised worldwide program to improve the reading and writing skills of year 1 students who after 1 year of education are reading below the grade average.
Structure
The reading recovery teacher works with students for 30 minute blocks each day, 5 days per week in a 1-on-1 situation. Each lesson contains 10 minutes of reading familiar texts and letter identification, 10 minutes of writing, incorporating three problem solving strategies and 10 minutes of being introduced to a new text (punctuation, vocabulary and structure).
Each child is monitored and assessed every lesson and progresses through levelled texts at a rate tailored to their ability level.
Count me in too
At Edensor Park Public School, Count Me In Too (CMIT) is implemented as part of our approach to the teaching of numeracy.
Count Me In Too is a project designed to support the mathematics syllabus. It outlines the ways children learn mathematics by focusing on the strategies students use to solve arithmetic tasks.
Count me in too - assessment
The project starts with an assessment of each student. The assessment tasks are designed to elicit the most efficient strategies students are capable of demonstrating.
The assessments focus on:
- numeral identification
- counting forwards and backwards
- addition and subtraction
- multiplication and division
- place value
Following the assessment, students are grouped according to where they fit within the learning framework, which provides an explicit progression of problem-solving strategies, showing increasing levels of sophistication.
Count me in too - Levels
The learning experiences in "Count me in too" are carefully planned and designed to move the students to the next stage within the learning framework by teaching the explicit strategies needed at each step.
Class teachers may refer to a student's CMIT level when reporting on his or her numeracy development. Refer to the list below for a brief explanation of each CMIT level:
- Emergent - The student cannot count visible items. He or she needs to learn the number words and co-ordinate the number words with items.
- Perceptual - The student is able to count perceived items and build numbers by using materials or fingers as replacement markers to find the total count. At this level students need to see the objects or fingers and may also hear or feel the items when counting.
- Figurative - The student is able to count concealed items and can visualise the items that he or she cannot see. When finding the total for two numbers the student always starts counting from one.
- Counting On - The student counts-on rather than counting from 'one', to solve addition or missing addends tasks. The student may 'count down' from the larger number when determining how many items were removed. Alternatively he or she may 'count up' from the smaller number to find the difference.
- Facile - The student uses a range of strategies for solving arithmetic problems including known number facts such as doubles, combinations to ten and skip counting.