Preschool News
Term 4 has got off to a flying start with lots of different goings on at the ELC. It was lovely to welcome all our students back after the October holidays – they all seemed a little more grown up and definitely refreshed and ready for all that Term 4 holds.
The Koalas and Possums had a fabulous time visiting the Canberra Theatre to see ‘Imagine’. This was a gorgeous production with lots to learn about different animals, and some magical scenes to encourage imagination and make-believe play. We weren’t sure how everyone would enjoy the theatre, but the students were fantastic audience members who did a great job of listening throughout the performance and joined in with all the opportunities for audience participation. It was a lovely experience for everyone.
Unfortunately ‘Imagine’ was not showing at the Theatre on any of the days Bilbies come to Preschool, so Miss Aman kindly arranged a visit from the Reptile man for the Bilbies. I heard lots of laughter from their room throughout the visit. The students were given opportunities to see a crocodile, turtle, blue tongue lizard and python up close, even getting the chance to pet these creatures. They learnt all sorts of things about the needs of these animals; caring for their habitat and keeping safe around animals they encounter in the bush. I am sure the Bilbies will be excited for their visit to the zoo in Week 6, where they will get to encounter some more animals and build on their knowledge of living things.
We also enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with Grandparents and other family members on our Grand Friends Day events last week. The students had a lovely time welcoming their Grandparents into the ELC, enjoying some time to explore spaces around preschool together and some morning tea. Our Grand friends even got to meet our very cheeky neighbouring magpies, who are regular visitors to our Preschool at morning tea and lunch time!!! Our magpie visitors have begun bringing their very noisy baby on their daily visits, so we get to watch firsthand as they share the tasty morsels left behind after our lunch, with their baby.
Thank you everyone for supporting all these events at Preschool over the last few weeks. We have a couple of special things planned for the next few weeks as well:
- Week 5 – Tuesday 11th November and Friday 14th November we are hosting our annual Art Show. The “Gallery” will be open from 3.15pm until 5pm on these afternoons. Families and friends are welcome – please come and visit the ELC to enjoy some of the beautiful creations made by the children.
- Week 6 – All our classes are Visiting the National Zoo and Aquarium. Please keep an eye out the Permission form for this excursion. Koalas and Bilbies will be visiting the zoo on Tuesday 18th November and the Possums class on Thursday 20th. Have a chat or send an email to your class teacher, if you would be keen to join us as a helper for this excursion. Any helpers must have a Working With Vulnerable People card in order to attend. As a volunteer you can apply for these for free at Acces Canberra:
Ready to Read
As I am sure you are aware, this year we have been piloting the Ready to Read program at our ELC, to support students’ oral language development, phonemic awareness (sound awareness) and emerging literacy skills. This has been a big focus for our services Quality Improvement this year. As part of this we have had the privilege of being involved in some Professional Development days and have been visited by a coach each term who worked with individual staff members.
We had our final coaching session for 2025 on Wednesday last week. Our coach Yolanda spent time working with each of the Educators, supporting their story reading and questioning skills, and providing ideas for small group literacy focused games and play experiences. I wanted to take this opportunity to recognise the efforts of our ELC team, who have really done an amazing job embracing this new initiative. All of them have received such positive feedback from our coaches.
At the start of the year as we began Ready to Read, we used an oral language screening tool, to help us identify our student’s oral language skills. The screening assessment is an app set up on our centre iPads and is designed to be engaging for students, who work through a series of language-based activities with a teacher or educator. The screener also adapts activities to the age and ability of individual students.
This term over the next 3 weeks or so, we will be using this screener with students once again. It will be interesting to be able to see students’ growth and development with their language skills over the year and we hope this will give us an idea of the effectiveness of the ‘Ready to Read’ program in building students emerging literacy skills.
If you have any concerns about this oral language screening tool, please don’t hesitate to contact myself or your child’s class teacher. All data collected from this screener is kept confidentially and is only accessible to your child’s class teacher. We are very happy to share your child’s results from the screener with you. Please let us know if you would like to receive this information by completing the form below.