Pathways to School policy

Rationale: 
To successfuly support children getting ready for school through working collaboratively with children, Whānau and local schools, with special consideration given to individual and cultural needs.

Te Whāriki:
Belonging- Goal -1.Children and their families experience an environment where connecting links with the family and the wider world are affirmed and extended.

Procedures:
• At AppleSeed we will provide a rich curriculum ensuring a smooth and successful transition to school for both our AppleSeed children and whanau.

• School readiness is focused on preparation of skills for a lifelong learning journey, this process is not limited to ‘four-year olds’ but also for children in all age groups.

• Our daily centre curriculum and quality resources, provides a range of opportunities for individual children to meet their unique dispositions and capabilities enabling our children to be empowered for their journey towards future learning.

• We believe our children are confident and competent as they are leaderful of their own learning; they are reflective thinkers, explorers and with our support and guidance capable decision makers for their own learning.

• AppleSeeds’ recent beautifully renovated and refurbished physical environment stimulates and challenges children’s thinking and capabilities, enabling our children to be leaderful in their own learning.

• Provide opportunities to develop children’s literacy, mathematics, social language, self-help /independence and fine and large motor skills, while focusing on a holistic approach to their learning, and embed this into the curriculum throughout the day.

• Our project based learning programme focuses on children’s interests; considers each child’s individual needs; language barriers, cultural needs, special needs etc. These projects can be long term or short term depending on children’s interest. Sometimes there may be a few projects going on at the same time according to children’s interests.

• Parents and Whanau will be informed about what is school readiness and academic performance; the importance of functional learning, how they can support teachers to implement the learning programme focused on children’s executive functionality, and also the links between Te Whāriki and the School curriculum.

• Parents and whanau will be supported by being provided with information about local schools, ensuring their child is involved in pre-school visits. Teachers will provide extra support and advice to whanau regarding children with special needs, ensuring the specific needs of the child are met in the Pathways to School process.

• We will develop our relationships with our local primary schools to strengthen our Pathways to School programme. Through regular discussions with new entrance teachers in the local schools we will find out what skills and attributes that they would like us to develop as part of our Pathways to School programme and focus on these expectations and the values of specific schools. We will strive to make visits to our local schools for children to have a physical experience in school environment.