Sheree Bell [Early Learning Advisor]

Hi and welcome to Beginning school strong and successfully part 1 – implementing the transition guidelines.

I would like to begin by acknowledging and paying my respects to the Bidjigal people. The traditional custodians of the land I'm on today. I would also like to pay respects to the traditional custodians of the land you are on today. I acknowledge the Bidjigal peoples continuing connection to land, water and community. I would also like to pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders viewing this presentation today.

So, my name is Sheree Bell and I'm one of the Early Learning advisors within the Curriculum Early Years and Primary Learners team, and today I'm joined by my colleague Kelly. Welcome Kelly Birket.

Kelly Birket [Early Learning Advisor]

Hi Sheree, thanks everybody for joining us today. My name is Kelly Birket and I'm also an Early Learning Advisor.

Sheree Bell

So today the course outcomes for this recording is learners will understand the evidence base of the importance of transition to school and transition policy guidance and reflect on how the strong and successful start to school transition guidelines and toolkit can be used to support transition planning, resulting in effective transition practices.

So, Kelly has set up for us a place just to kind of source and hold all the materials and resources from the Presentation. To access the course materials and resources will be through Microsoft Teams. To go to teams, you can open teams from the portal after selecting Microsoft Office 365 and then selecting the Teams icon as shown in the image at the top there. Once you are actually into Teams select the Early learning in schools team, and then the Statewide staffroom channel. If you then go to the files tab, you can open the folder beginning school, strong and successful PL. If you're not a member of the team already, you can either go into teams and join the team or email the Early Learning at det.nsw.edu.au that email address at the bottom of the screen and we can set you up to join the team.

So, this Beginning school strong and successfully part 1 is the first part of the course. There is an additional part 2, 3 and 4 that you can enrol separately on myPL to attend. This is just to cater for staff who may want to just overview and only choose to engage in part 1. So, part 1 is 1 hour registered learning at proficient and if you enrol in parts 2, 3 and 4 together, it's 3 hours at the proficient level. So, Kelly’s going to set the scene for us a little bit now.

Thanks, Kel.

Kelly Birket

Thanks Sheree. OK so have a look at the image here. We've sourced this from Charles Sturt University.

So, the image represents the different transition journeys children take. Each child's transition looks very, very different as you will have noticed, some will fly into Kindy without a care in the world, whereas others are going to need a supported, well-structured and planned bridge in.

This image reminds us that transition practices are going to look different at each school and that we need to think differently for some children and families.

So, what does it feel like? You'd know yourself from transitions you've had in your own life, that both challenging and exciting transition is a time of change, children and families and educators adjust to new roles, identity's, expectations, interactions, and relationships. So, some in the cloud there are some of the feelings, concerns, emotions of the families of the children who will be transitioning. Starting schools are major life transition for both children and their families. Some people say it's one of the most significant life events a child will face.

Keep in mind that each family is going to have very different hopes and aspirations for their child as they start their formal learning journey. Research tells us that children who have a positive start to school are likely to engage and experience ongoing academic and social success.

Sheree Bell

I have heard that Kelly to about it being a quite a significant change. You know, an exciting time but an anxious time for some as well though, so it's good to remember how significant it is for children and families.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely and so interactions that engagements with families may become more intense sometimes because their families are experiencing a huge range of emotions.

OK, so for this course part one as well as parts 2, 3 and 4 we will be using some terms that are sometimes used in different ways. Just so that we're all on the same page on the screen here a list of some of the key concepts and terms around transition. So, there are different definitions, but just for our purposes I just wanted to explain how we are using these terms throughout the 2 presentations to transition to school.

We believe it occurs overtime beginning well before children start school and extending to the point where children and families feel a sense of belonging at the school. For each child and family that's going to be at a different point. You can't predict it, but the key thing there to know is that transition to school is ongoing and occurs over a long period. It's an active process of continuity and change as children move into their first year of school.

So, transition practices. So, these are the embedded behaviours, plans, and strategies engaged by schools to support the children and families through the transition process. So, this includes things like professional collaborations, the building and maintenance of relationships with the families with other professionals involved in the child's life. The gathering and analysis of data, so finding out about the incoming children. Transition practices include responsive planning, and also orientation programs.

So, I then put orientation programs as a separate point there on the third bar. So, when we refer to orientation programs we are talking about activities such as school and classroom tours, information sessions, family, social events, involvement in whole school activities, sometimes supported playgroups, sessions, play sessions. Things like that that the purpose of them is to orientate the child and family to the school environment. Orientation programs provide familiarity with the school, the venue routines, and just the general feel of the school and the school culture. So, we view orientation programs as part of the bigger picture. It's one of the transition practices, but it's by no means the only things you do, so we look at transition little bit more. Holistically it involves the development of their relationships. You know the finding out about the children and things like that as well.

OK, and then on the fourth bar there we've got continuity of learning. So, this is all about schools acknowledging that children start school with funds of knowledge and have already begun their educational journey both at home and at an early childhood service. If they've attended One. Continuity of learning refers to the school, particularly kindergarten classroom, providing continuity in the experiences, pedagogy, and curriculum the child has experienced prior to commencing school.

Part 4 of this the course deals solely with continuity of learning, and that's an hour-long recording. So, if you want more information about continuity of learning, just hold tight. We will come back to it when a continuity of learning exists children are able to transfer and adapt, previously gained skills and knowledge to their learning environment.

OK, and then the last term there is school readiness. I'll move to the next slide and we will have a look at that there.

OK, so you might have heard the term school readiness previously. The traditional use of this term focuses on the child and their readiness for school in terms of academic knowledge. There's a lot of commercial programs out there. Tutoring places offer them school readiness programs. They aim to make the child ready for school. The starting strong five report on transition and OECD countries. It's a 2017 document. Notes that the focus of readiness should be on more than a child's age and academic knowledge. Holistically, school readiness refers to ready children and ready schools, as well as the family and community’s readiness to promote and support the child's transition. So, the starting strong document is looking at readiness as a holistic thing. It refers to a shared responsibility. School readiness should be viewed in a broad, holistic way incorporating not only a child's readiness for the learning environment and learning dispositions but also the learning environments readiness for the child. So that's a really key shift in thinking. It's not just about making the child ready for school, or asking. Is the child ready for school? We should also be asking is to school ready for this child. As we go on further, we will talk a lot about data and collecting data. To know about the child and what sort of adjustments need to be made to support the child's transition.

OK, 2 other terms that you hear bandied around a lot, often in the media, schoolification or push down curriculum. They're not referred to in our new transition guidelines, but they are definitely out there and being used. These terms are used to describe early childhood education services adopting practices that are more related to primary school For example, more teacher-directed pedagogies less opportunity for play, greater attention given to academic content. The belief is that this will support school readiness, but research is actually showing that that's counter intuitive. The more age and child appropriate pedagogical practices are, the greater the benefits for children's social and cognitive development. Again, in part 4 of this course, we look a little bit at age appropriate pedagogies, so research tells us that age-appropriate pedagogies, as opposed to academic driven content and less opportunities for learning through play are actually not supporting the child's transition. Essentially age appropriate pedagogies if you haven't heard the term before, essentially are teaching approaches which acknowledge how young children learn best. That is 2 things such as play based learning, project learning, and enquiry learning.

Sheree Bell

We will talk about that very, very briefly in this session as well as a little bit later, Kelly too.

Kelly Birket

Oh yes, we will. Yes, thanks Sheree. OK, so I'll hand over Sheree. Sheree is going to talk us through the policy directions.

Sheree Bell

Thank you, Kelly.

So, transition is a priority for the department. You can see here. We've got an image of the Department of Education Strategic Plan 2018 to 2022 and it highlights successful transition practices in goals 1, 2, and nine. So, all children make a strong start in life and learning and make a successful transition to school. Every student is known valued and cared for in our schools and community. Confidence in public education is high, so schools have an important responsibility to support a successful transition to school. For every child you can see their goal to every student is known, valued and cared for in our school really encapsulates transitions, best practices, schools need to know who's coming and find out about each of their children that are coming. Their culture, the background, who their siblings are there, prior education, additional needs, etc. and then use this information really to help the child settle into school.

At a school level transition is also a priority. The school excellence framework identifies transition and continuity of learning under the domain of learning culture. So, the school excellence framework outlines the receiving school's responsibility to support a successful transition to school for every child in that theme of transitions and continuity of learning.

So, the framework describes excelling practice as the school engages in strong collaboration with parents, students and the community that inform and support continuity of learning for all students at transition. So, schools use the school excellence framework descriptors for self-assessment and to develop the school's situational analysis.

Kelly Birket

Yes, it's really interesting, Shere. The 2 at the excelling level, the 2 key themes are I read that are the collaborations as being critical and then also the continuity of learning as being critical as well.

Sheree Bell

Yes, and you've spoken about that. You know before about the importance in the crucialness of those collaborations, those partnerships, and I think you're going to talk about that in a little bit more detail in a little bit as well and as you've mentioned, continuity of learning is really vital and we spend part 4 talking about continuity of learning digging a little deeper into that too. If people are interested in.

Kelly Birket

Yes, yes, for sure. I mean the contrast to the level of delivering is actively planning and then communicating your plans. But then at this excelling level, it's so much more than that it's all about the collaboration and the continuity of learning.

Sheree Bell

Absolutely, it's putting that Department strategic plan really in to action, isn't it?

Kelly Birket

Absolutely for sure.

Sheree Bell

So that's from a school, how transition is a priority within a school. If we're looking at prior to school services or early childhood education settings they are working with the national quality standing to develop a quality improvement plan. So, within that national quality standard, standard 6.2 really relates to those transitions and community engagement. So, these statements here are kind of actions that would be at a meeting level. So, for transitions where you've got a continuity of learning and transitions for each child, or supported by sharing information and clarifying responsibilities and with community engagement at a meeting level, the service builds relationships and engages with its community.

Just going to skip to the next slide here, which is still a continuation from the national quality standard and this now goes into examples of evidence at an exceeding level for that standard 6.2 that we just had a look at just now. So, these are the types of evidence that you'd be able to see if an early childhood education service was operating at that exceeding level in relation to transition. So, promoting continuity of learning and transitions for each child by sharing relevant information and clarifying responsibilities. Build collaborative strategies. Relevant stakeholders engaging in robust debate and discussion about the services approach to building community partnerships and supporting inclusion and transitions seeking out and building new community partnerships. In response to the perspectives, priorities, and strengths of the children and families at the service. Including the changing support and transition needs of children. So again, that seeking those partnerships and building those collaborative strategies with the relevant stake holders is an area where schools and early childhood that they're coming together to build those strong transition practices across both of those contexts.

So, if you're thinking about it as far as continuity of learning excellence has been set out in both of those different documents. The school excellence framework for the school sector and the national quality standard for the prior to school sector nationally. So, both have outlined what excellence looks likes in terms of transition to school and both of them as you said before Kelly, both of them are really calling out continuity of learning as important.

So, then we have a think about transition at individual teacher level and it's another priority. Excellence and equity and transition to school planning and programs support achievement against all of the seven standards identified in the Australian professional standards for teachers, but particularly with a strong focus on standards. One, know your students and how they learn, and seven that engage professionally with colleagues, parents, carers in the community.

So, at all levels there you can see that transition is highlighted. Transition and continuity of learning are really highlighted as very important. And Kelly would you like to just talk a little bit more around the transition toolkit, please.

Kelly Birket

Yes, for sure. So originally this professional learning has been developed to support schools to implement the newly released transition guidelines and the accompanying toolkit. And the tool kit is made up of resources and information sheets. On the left there, you can see the front cover of the transition guidelines and then on the right just an example of some of the resources in the toolkit.

[Slide left: 'Strong and successful start to school: Transition guidelines'. Slide right:

• 'Information sheets – Tailoring transition planning for identified equity groups.
• Professional learning – Beginning school strong and successfully registered professional learning and reflection scaffold.
• Resource sheets']

So, the information sheets tailoring transition planning for identified equity groups. So, there's an information sheet for each of the equity groups the department has identified, and these are the groups of children and families who may require a differentiated or tailored approach to transition.

So we’ve got Aboriginal children, children and families in low SES areas. Children with a disability, high potential and gifted students, refugee or newly arrived children, as well as those who are experiencing transition in a multicultural context.

The second in the middle bar there this actually the professional learning that you are engaging right now, has been developed to support the release of the transition guidelines. And the final, I guess resource available to you, there's a range of resource sheets to support the implementation of the guidelines.

So, these include a sheet with examples of successful transition practices. There's a transition planning checklist, there's Frequently Asked Questions sheet, there's examples of how you might address a SEF descriptor in the school plan there is also an example of a situation on a completed situational analysis in relation to transition.

So, the guidelines and these associated resources which we refer to as 'the toolkit' are available on the department's website. If you go into Early Learning— so you go into Curriculum and then Early Learning and then Transition and you'll be able to access these.

So, the guidelines themselves highlight the importance of whole school transition planning that engage that engages children and families, local early childhood service providers, other professionals, and the community. So that's the key message that I wanted to share about the guidelines at this point. So, the rest of this presentation, and then parts 2, 3 and 4 we'll be going through the different sections of the guidelines and just unpacking and exploring some of the content.

Sheree Bell

What a great resource for everyone to access Kelly. Thank you, that's great.

Kelly Birket

No problem at all. There's another little suite of resources, but we will refer to that in a little minute.

Okay, so, in this section we're just going to have a little look at the evidence base related to transition.

So, our focus on the importance of successful transitions has increased throughout many countries worldwide. There is a large body of national and international evidence that supports the critical importance of a positive start to school for all children. Research positions a positive start to school as an element of future social, educational and economic success that the benefits of a quality transition persisting over time. While the emphasis on a positive start to school holds for all children, it has been advocated as particularly important for children described as marginalised or disadvantaged.

If you haven't read the literature review shown there on the right, it's a great easy read, it summarises all of the related research around transition, so in a lot of the content for this presentation has come from that document, including these 3 points here on the screen.

[Resource: cese.nsw.gov.au//images/stories/PDF/Transition_to_School_FA_AA_V2.pdf]

OK, and from Charles Sturt University, 'The importance of a positive transition to school has been emphasised in research around the world. It is well established that a successful start to school is linked to later positive educational and social outcomes. Children who have a positive start to school are likely to regard school as an important place and to have positive expectations of the ability to learn and succeed at school.'

[Quote from Alexander & Entwisle, 1998; Dockett and Perry, 2007; Dunlop and Fabian, 2007; Margetts, 2007; Peters, 2010.]

Unfortunately, if the move to school does not go well and children don't manage the demands of the new environment then their engagement in school activities and even attendance can be compromised and then that will have long term negative consequences.

OK, so this information has come from the OECD report on transition. They note there's 3 primary reasons for ensuring that attention is given to well-managed transitions. One, to ensure that the benefits of early childhood education and care endure, to prepare children for school and for life, and to improve equity in education outcomes.

OK, so this information here is from the CESE literature review. Again, it talks about successful transition to school being influenced by many factors, including the academic, social, emotional, behavioural and cognitive competencies of the child. However, research shows that these factors, 3 factors that are shown on the screen here, 'home learning environment, high quality early childhood education, and links between early childhood services, schools and families' are the most critical for an effective transition.

When we talk about high-quality early childhood education, research tells us that children who participate in high quality, long day care.. Long day care, preschool, family day care before they attend school for at least 600 hours in the year before school are more likely to arrive at school equipped with the social, cognitive and emotional skills they need to engage in learning.

So, this is just going on a little bit of a tangent, this is why it's so critical that if your school is implementing orientation programs that they don't interfere with the child's ability to access high quality early childhood education, because before they attend school, the best place for a child to be is in a regulated, approved, high quality service. And the reason the third factor here is actually circled is because that's where departmental staff can have a huge impact and really make a difference to a child and the family's start to school.

There's an agreement across the literature about the importance of collaboration between schools, early childhood education and care services, and families during the transition process.

Okay, so looking at research collectively you can group the findings into these 3 crucial aspects for planning successful transition to school practices, and if you have a look in the transition guidelines, each of these are unpacked a little bit more so 'high expectations and teacher collaboration', 'holistic practices' and 'engagement in shared understandings'.

OK, so we just mentioned the importance of collaboration between stakeholders for creating continuity between settings and the sharing of information. So, on this slide here you'll see some of the stakeholders are noted. Traditionally there's been a sense that it's responsibility of the school to induct children into the ways of the school.

Perry and Dockett, who are transition researchers based at Charles Sturt Uni argue that it's actually a shared responsibility of the broader community. Optimally, schools will lead the process and initiate relationships and collaborations and seek out input from people and groups outside the school, but transition can't be done by the school alone. There needs to be a reaching out to the other stakeholders.

So, when we talk about the community we're talking about things like obviously friends, elders, the local AECG, community service workers, health workers, early intervention services counsellors, disability support workers. So, this is particularly critical if you've got a child transitioning into your school who has a particular need or disability, they'll already have a little group of people supporting them and the family, so, you need to be engaging with those people to collaborate on the best way to support that particular child to transition.

Just one more point about the stakeholders is that as well as sharing information about the child and contributing to planning decisions, they've also got a role to play in promoting and supporting the smooth transition.

Okay, so now we're going to do a little bit of an overview of the principles and practices of high-quality transition. Parts 2, 3 and 4 will unpack a little bit more and explore these principles and practices.

OK, so this is a quote we've got Perry and Dockett again here, as I mentioned before from Charles Sturt Uni. 'When a child feels that they belong in the new place, whatever it is, when the educator feels that they belong as part of this new group of children, when the family feels that they belong – I think then you can say they have all made an optimal transition'.

[Source Bob Perry and Sue Dockett cited in CESE.]

Sheree Bell

Yes, like you said before Kelly, it kind of transitions so different for, you know, for every individual, child and family and it doesn't just kind of stop day 1, Term 1 of Kindergarten, it can go on for a much longer period of time that you know, through Term 1, even into Term 2 and beyond.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely.

Sheree Bell

What to remember, I think you talked about that with all of the stakeholders to, you know, when everyone feels they belong, then that transition has been optimal.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely and then there's also the situation where sometimes children will settle initially, and feel they belong, but then after a couple of weeks realise that this is a permanent move.

[Knowing laughter]

And then they feel a little unsettled, definitely it usually takes about a fortnight, I have found in my experience.

Sheree Bell

Is that right?

Kelly Birket

Alright, so on this next slide.

OK, so this image is taken from the CESE what works best 2020 update. The document recognises that when a connectedness between the child and school is evidenced, a sense of belonging exists and relationships with peers and teachers are well fostered.

What works best in practice calls out a set of 8 themes that support effective teaching and learning. Many of these are crucial considerations for high quality transition. Okay, so these themes align very closely with the Early Years Learning Framework guiding principles. These are equally important when planning and implementing high quality transition practices.

In Part 2 of this course, we will unpack these principles a little bit better, so we've got high expectations and equity. Ongoing learning and reflective practice, secure, respectful and reciprocal relationships, respect for diversity, and partnerships.

So, what do high-quality transition practices look like?

Acknowledging that children start school with funds of knowledge and have already begun their educational journey both at home and at an early childhood service.

Supporting and promoting all children's access to early childhood education. Viewing transition is a two-way experience, both an opportunity to build relationships with children, families and community as well as an opportunity to orientate children to the school context.

Pardon me, I actually think that should have been 2 points there, but the point about promoting children's access to early childhood education, as I mentioned before, the best way to support a young child's learning is for them to participate in some sort of preschool program in the year prior to attending school. So it's really critical if children are coming to enrol in Kindergarten and it becomes apparent that they've not actually attended a prior to school service, to talk to the family and if there is a service available in the area and that they are able to access it, to really strongly suggest that it's worth enrolling their child, even if it's for 1 or 2 terms.

The final point there, finding out as much information about what children know and can do, their development and learning styles and dispositions to ensure children experiencing successful transition to school, including accessing transition to school statements from early childhood services. So, we'll have a look at transition to school statements in the little minute. Sorry about that. There's a couple of typos there.

OK, so continuing on, what do high quality transition practices look like? Understanding what and how children learn in early childhood settings and how it connects with school curriculum, so that's alluding to the continuity of learning.

Offering children and families multiple opportunities to feel a sense of belonging to the school community. This will be achieved over a period of time and draw on a range of transition practices, including an orientation program which includes school tours, classroom visits, invitations to whole school events and activity days, parents sessions and connecting with early childhood services and community groups.

And recognising that a strong start to school involves more than orientation to the school environment and routines.

So generally, orientation is viewed as a chance for the family and children to find out about the school, but what that last point is alluding to is that there also needs to be the school finding out about the child.

OK, so in Part 3 of this course, each of the practices shown on the screen is explored in detail. These are the particular practices that we've selected to unpack and to talk about implementation.

[On-screen content:

• school planning informed by data
• transition networks and/or communities of practice
• reciprocal visits for staff
• connecting with families
• orientation programs]

In part 3, we also include video links to interviews of department staff talking about the implementation of particular practices in their school, and that's really interesting because it's great to hear from people actually, you know, trying these things and implementing them really well and seeing the benefits.

So you can see the last box there, orientation programs, so within an orientation program schools select and implement different activities depending on their context and what's needed. Some of the things that schools do are supported, playgroups, school and classroom tours, classroom visits, play sessions, they produce social stories, have information for families and some schools also run buddy programs.

Sheree Bell

Yes, it's great those links are fantastic. Kelly, it's great to hear from our colleagues about, you know what's working well in their space and in their context, you know I always love hearing what's happening across different schools so they are a great resource.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely.

Sheree Bell

So, Kelly mentioned before we're going to just take a little moment just to have a look at the transition to school statements, so, we'll do that just now.

So, you may already be aware of the Transition to school statement so the transition to school statement is a practical tool for sharing information and supporting continuity between the early childhood services and schools. So, the Transition to school statement is completed by early childhood educators and then forwarded onto the relevant schools with parental permission.

The statement aims to give a snapshot of learning, development and the background of children moving from that early childhood service to Kindergarten. If you haven't seen it, there's links to the Early Years Learning Framework and Early Stage 1 outcomes. They're embedded throughout the document.

A school transition planning team can reflect on the information provided in the transition to school statements and consider how this information can be shared with teachers and how it can inform programming. The transition to school statement provides a baseline for teachers to begin planning forward for the start of the Kindergarten year and beyond.

So, the transition to school statement has been developed by what was known as the early childhood education directorate, now known as Quality Assurance and Regulatory Services Early Childhood. It's been a written statement however, there is an online version being released hopefully in Term 4 is that correct Kelly?

Kelly Birket

That's my understanding. I haven't actually, seen it, but I believe yes Term 4 2020, it will be released.

Sheree Bell

So, it's coming, so keep your eyes out for the online version. They're not mandatory for early childhood services to complete, but because they are considered such an effective tool for supporting transition, they're you know highly suggested that they be used as a tool.

So, you've got your best start kindergarten assessment information which provides that data on children's literacy and numeracy skills. But the transition to school statement provides kind of more holistic development, developmental data like social and emotional development, dispositions for learning. So, if your school doesn't receive these transition to school statements from your local early childhood services, that might be something to enquire about with them during your partnerships and collaborations during this transition to school process.

We will look, in Part 2 we will look at an example of a completed transition to school statement so you can have a look at it if you're interested in Part 2.

Kelly Birket

Yes, and Sheree we have a little look at data collection in Part 2 more generally and we talk about using the Transition to school statement in combination with the best start data, in combination with other methods of data collection such as conversations, observations, interviews to provide you with a holistic view of each child.

Sheree Bell

Perfect.

So, look we will just briefly look now at age-appropriate pedagogies in the Kindergarten classroom. Again, as Kelly mentioned, this is explored further in our other part, but just briefly.

We want to note I guess that the research shows that young children learn best through age-appropriate pedagogies as opposed to kind of formal, more formal, you know, pencil and paper type activities that are focused on narrow academic outcomes. So, in addition, learning from play, learning through play is what children have experienced both in the home and in the early childhood settings. So, exposure to this approach will really support that continuity of learning.

The Queensland Government states that age-appropriate pedagogies in the early years are learner-centred, involving a scaffolding of learning, and engage children actively in holistic learning. And that foundation paper, the image on the right there in that link will take you to the research conducted through the University through the Queensland government and Griffith University of educational research. So, if you'd like to read a bit more about that, you can and as I said, we also unpack it further in Part 2.

[on-screen link: earlychildhood.qld.gov.au/earlyYears/Documents/age-appropriate-pedagogies-foundation-paper-summary.pdf]

The Early Years Learning Framework also talks about play-based learning as an age appropriate pedagogy. Play provides a context for learning through which children organise and make sense of their social worlds as they engage actively with people, objects, and representations, and supports continuity of learning as children transition from early childhood education to the early years of school.

So, this slide just overviews 3 of the age-appropriate teaching pedagogies, all of which will support continuity of learning.

So, you've got your Inquiry learning there where which is active learning process is where children are kind of planning and carrying out investigation and really able to make some decisions and choices about their learning.

Play-based learning provides that holistic development it's supporting active and imaginative engagement and a broad range of literacy and numeracy skills.

And your project approach, which it's an in-depth exploration of a topic where its really a topic that interests the child and where they can work by themselves or with a group, or even with the whole class.

So, if you think about, I guess you know inquiry learning lends itself particularly well to science and technology. Project approach lends itself well to history, geography, PDHPE and play-based learning really lends itself to all learning areas really well.

Kelly Birket

Yes, it definitely does.

Sheree Bell

So, I'm just going to read a little quote here, just pop that up, by Bogard and Takanishi. 'Nothing magical or mysterious happens to children's brains or learning styles in the six-week holiday period between finishing early years education and starting school. There are no grounds, therefore, for abruptly changing the teaching style and content. Rather, there is a strong rationale for seeking greater alignment between early years services and school curricula, with a more gradual introduction to structured learning.'

[Source: Bogard and Takanishi, 2005.]

Kelly Birket

I've always loved that quote, Sheree, it really makes you think. Why do our systems you know, have the expectations on the children change so dramatically between preschool and kindergarten?

So, this next section we're going to look at deals with supporting transition while physically distancing. So, we've made this recording at the end of Term 3, 2020. The key thing is because things are changing, and the department's advice does change obviously with what's happening in the community and the advice from the health department. So, my best advice to you is to be aware of current advice around transition to school activities.

So the first web page there will have the most current information, so I don't want to give really, really explicit advice in case it does change between now and when you're accessing this recording.

When you're planning your transition and implementing transition, you're not able to run face to face sessions, you'll need obviously to still engage the families and children, but the second website there gives you some advice for doing that remotely, so if you are needing to connect with families and children remotely, we have got a few tips here for you.

[On-screen content:

• 'Current learning (including transition) guidelines for school staff - education.nsw.gov.au/inside-the-department/covid-19/school-staff'
• Advice to support schools to consider ways, other than face to face, to engage families and children in preparation for starting school - education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/learning-from-home/teaching-at-home/early-learning-resources/kindergarten-orientation-and-transition-2020-21?mc_cid=2a390fe5d3&mc_eid=afbe38d8a4#Some0']

The first thing is to identify which transitions you will be conducting, and then to determine which format or medium will be used so it might be electronic, so that might be through an existing app that your school uses. It might be your school Facebook, it might be through email, it might be a dedicated Facebook page for incoming children, it's really up to the local school.

My only advice would be if you've got an existing method of communicating with the school community is to try to tap into that rather than something completely new. Obviously of course you can still be, you know, sharing information through hard copies so, you would be using things like the mail or families coming in to pick up packs and then the third thing would be to develop your content so on the squares there the boxes are just some suggestions of things that you might look at doing if you're not able to have face to face sessions or you know, run your school tours. You know you might want to have recorded welcome messages. You might have recorded information, so this might be a video, or it might just be audio covering topics such as uniforms, arrival procedures, how to support learning at home. You might take advantage of your older school students who may end up being the kindies buddies. They may narrate a video tour of the school. I've seen some really nice examples made by schools of that.

To gather information about the children, incoming children, you might want to access, use Google or Microsoft forms surveys. There's been a suggestion that perhaps using a Zoom Live Q and A event so that the families would have an opportunity to actually speak directly with school staff and ask questions about things that are concerning them about orientation or transition, or things that they want to know. You might look at developing a school social story so you could present that, obviously, in video it might be a word document, it might be a PDF or a PowerPoint. And then another suggestion I've heard of schools developing PowerPoint slideshows with photos and then accompanying text too, then they share them via email with the family to support their knowledge and familiarity with the school environment.

OK, so the department's developed a particular resource package to support the current group of children who will be starting kindergarten in 2021. So, this package of resources is known as the 2021 kindergarten cohort. So, in this resource package, there's some school stories and I might get Sheree because she has been involved in that to just give us a little bit of a summary of what's involved with those.

Sheree Bell

Yes, we've got 5 different schools, as Kelly mentioned, who've just shared some of the strategies or practices that they are planning to use or have been using to engage with the community and children like that that are coming in in this 2021 cohort. It's not all of their strategies, but they've shared some of the, I guess some of the key strategies that have really been successfully engaging children and families in this kind of, unusual time when they're not really allowed on school sites at the moment, so yes, there again our colleagues sharing strategies I find is really helpful.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely, I agree. I did have a little sneak peek at one of them and yes it was great to read about some of the things that schools are doing, I guess to think outside of the box during this time because you know, children do still need to have the opportunity to find out about what they're going to and to be able to have contact with the school if this can't be done face to face. It does require a little bit of creative thought.

Sheree Bell

And I think that's what is so great about, well about this. You know that the schools sharing and what's great coming out of schools. I'm just constantly in awe of the innovative, creative approaches that schools are taking. As advice changes, you know fairly constantly this year it's so great to see how everyone is just jumped on board to really think outside the box and make sure that these children and families feel that kind of welcoming belonging. Even though they can't meet face to face and it's just very inspiring.

Kelly Birket

Yes, it is and at the end of the day, the, you know the bottom line is they're doing the best they can to ensure those children start school well, that it's a settled transition and yes, and that's great because that's what every child is known to be valued, and cared for. That's what you mentioned at the beginning about the strategic plan, and I very much see that in action with some of these practices.

So, the second dot point there the department has produced some social stories, so in the image, the one on the left is just a snip from a page in the starting school social story. The one on the right is a snip from the starting preschool social story. So, the idea is they've already got some images inserted. You can replace these with images from around your own school if you're not able to. You know you can leave some of the images in if you feel they fit your context and the idea is that you can leave the parts of the text that are applicable to your school, or if you'd like to personalise part of the text as is not actually accurate for your school or preschool, you can edit it. These social stories are available in word document, they are available in PowerPoint, in book creator and also the department's looking at producing some digital options but I don't have the details of that just yet.

The third part of this resource package for the 2021 cohort is 2 recorded pieces of professional learning, so the first focuses on collaborative partnerships supporting effective transition to school and the second supporting a play-based approach and finally some resources for families have been produced, so there's some podcasts as well as some animated videos. So, to access these resources, I'm not sure where they're going to end up sitting on the department's web page. Try searching for transition or 2021 kindergarten cohort or email our early learning email there and by the time you're looking for them when this professional learning has been published, we will know where they are sitting.

OK, so now we're just going to have a very brief look at school transition planning.

OK, so essentially transition is whole school business, so this video is an interview of Lisa Wicks from The Entrance public school and she's talking to Donna Deehan the Transition Advisor about how her new school team approach transition planning. So, she talks about some of the challenges and some of the activities they did. So, you can either access the file of this video in the Microsoft team that Sheree mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, or if you wanted to pause the recording now and view the video in a new window.

OK, so Lisa spoke about her transition team. It's definitely whole school business and you definitely need a transition team. It's too much of a burden for one person to take sole responsibility for organising and implementing all the activities. So, this slide just gives you an indicator of some of the types of actions that the transition team might look at taking over the course of a year. It very much aligns with the principles that we offer, effective transition that we talked about at the beginning of the presentation.

Sheree Bell

I think one thing to just think about as well is you know with as far as the actions and the practices is really about how to enable sustainability and embed those within, kind of, you know, the school operations from your policy and guidelines and timelines and how they're going to support it, because it's great if you've got a bit of a transition champion. But having that team, as you said Kelly it is really important to really sustain those actions that you've put into place.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely, and we recommend the transition team developing some sort of record or document of their activities so that does become embedded practice in the school if not already, I've seen some great examples of annual sort of calendars of when everything happened, so that includes things like you know when admin staff are processing the enrolment forms, when contact is made with the families, when messages go out in the newsletter. Just all those little things that need to be organised and done at a particular time there noted on the calendar, and that means that if there's a staff turnover, new staff know what needs to happen when other schools develop a procedure or policy on transition and that serves the same purpose, ensuring that the practices become embedded and a sustained no matter what happens. Everybody knows that this term, this week. This is the activity that takes place to support transition.

OK, so one of things I mentioned before was the toolkit to support the implementation of the transition guidelines. One of the resources in there. I've taken a snip of it on the left here and the idea of this is a little bit of a continuum and just unpacks what you might be seeing or doing at the delivering, sustaining and growing or the excelling level. The idea of this resource is that you can use those indicators to inform your situational analysis when you're referring to the transition.

OK, so also keep in mind that transition planning needs to take a tailored approach. Consideration needs to be given to children and families who require a tailored and or individualised approach. I would just like you differentiate in the classroom for some children and families that is going to be need to possibly be some specific transition activities planned particularly for children with disability. So, I mentioned before the resource sheets that each of them deals with one of these equity groups. We unpack in Part 2 particular actions that you can take to support each of these groups.

OK, and so I guess the next step is to access the transition guidelines by the Department's web page and consider the content, this has very much been an overview, in this recording, we've looked at the principles of an effective transition. We've talked about what a successful transition looks like, and some of the equity groups that need to be taken into consideration, and I guess then the key thing is to consider how the guidelines and all this information presented in this recording will impact on your school planning and then to determine the next Step. If you're going to stay with us and access parts 2, 3, and 4, we actually use a reflection scaffold. As we go through the 2 and 3 sections, we have tasks to complete sections of that and that will support your planning, but if you're not going to be accessing parts 2, 3, and 4, I suggest at this point you just think about how the guidelines will impact on your school planning.

Sheree Bell

So, just as we come to the end of this recording we will just conclude with a few key points in some resources. Could you just move the slide on Kell, please?

So, in thinking about a strong and successful transition with thinking about respectful, trusting and supportive relationships are maintained among all those working with children and their families. Information about the children is well understood, shared and valued. Children have the opportunities to have their say about what is important to them. Processes are adapted in response to the local communities and individual children and families. When children and families who require additional support are identified early and support is planned and delivered through a collaborative approach.

There is some recommended reading that we've popped up on the screen there. Kelly mentioned earlier the CESE document, the transition to school so you can access that. There's also the continuity, of learning and the transition to school position paper, which Perry and Dockett have written there so that you can access those through the links on the screen. There is also another image there on the right, the kids matter transition matters that's no longer available on the website, but we have popped a copy of all of these documents that you can take a look at in the team that we mentioned, that I mentioned earlier in this recording. So, take a look at those if you want to have a little bit more reading around transition to school.

Kelly Birket

Great, thanks Sheree. A great collection that gives you a really broad understanding of current research on transition and recommendations. The position paper that was the development that was led by Charles Sturt Uni, really inspirational and its sort of talking about best case scenario and it includes policy recommendations, but it's a great read and you can see that's where I have borrowed the image from.

Sheree Bell

Well it’s a good image. I think the continuity of learning one to what's good about that particular document is more stories are shared.

Kelly Birket

Yes definitely

Sheree Bell

It has links, which is really great about that one as well,

Kelly Birket

And from a range of different school contexts as well. So yes, helpful, no matter where your school is placed.

Sheree Bell

So, look that brings us to the end of this recording. We thank you for joining us. When you close this recording and return to my PL, you can launch the course evaluation. You may need to just refresh the page if it's showing that the recordings not yet completed, as a backup you will also be emailed the course evaluation by my PL, so if you can't get it to launch, that's OK. It's a short anonymous evaluation, it will really assist us to know if this professional learning is being affective and responsive to your needs. So, we encourage you to take the time to complete that and we thank you very much for joining us for this recording.

Kelly Birket

Yes, thanks Sheree. Looking forward to seeing you if you're able to join us for parts 2, 3 and 4.

[End of transcript]

Sheree Bell [Early Learning Advisor]

Hello and welcome to Beginning school strong and successfully part 2 exploring effective transition practices.

I would like to begin by acknowledging and paying respects to the Bidjigal people the traditional custodians of the land that I am on today I would like to also pay respect to the traditional custodians of the land you are joining us from today. I acknowledge the Bidjigal peoples continuing connection to land, water and community. I would also like to pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders viewing this presentation. My name is Sheree Bell and I'm one of the Early Learning Advisors within the Early Learning Team and today I'm joined by my colleague Kelly.

Kelly Birket [Early Learning Advisor]

Hi everyone, my name is Kelly Birkett. I'm one of the Early Learning Advisors as well. I work with Sheree and if you want to contact us or you've got any questions, you can see the email there on the screen where you can get in touch with us.

Sheree Bell

So, the course outcomes for today reflect upon and evaluate current transition practices. Consider principles of effective transition planning. Understand how community and individual child data can be used to inform transition planning and how a strengths-based tailored approach supports all children to experience a strong and successful transition to school. Develop knowledge of effective transition practices and the skill to identify and apply those which are appropriate to their own school context. Reflect upon how age-appropriate pedagogies in the Kindergarten classroom supports continuity of learning. So, for today's session, this part 2 of the course is particularly addressing those outcomes 1 to 3.

The course materials and transition resource from this course a freely available to you. You can access the course materials and resources in Microsoft Teams. To open teams, go into your portal and select Microsoft Office 365 and then select Teams. Once you're in Teams, go to the Early Learning and schools team and then select the Statewide staffroom channel. In the files tab you can open the folder Beginning school strong and successfully PL. You can see from the images there where to go to.

Kelly Birket

Just a little point there as well, Sheree if you find that Early learning and schools team isn't an option for you, you can't see it, just email Early learning. The email address is at the bottom on the right there and we will add you as a member.

[earlylearning@det.nsw.edu.au]

Sheree Bell

Fantastic, thank you Kelly. So, within the folder you'll find copies of the PowerPoint presentations that we are using with each of these recordings, and it is handy to follow hyperlinks to the documents that we have referred to as well.

So, just a bit of a course overview, so the Beginning school strong and successfully part 1. The focus for that was implementing the transition guidelines. This is part 2, as we said before, we're exploring effective transition practices. Part 3 looks at implementing effective transition practices and part 4 continuity of learning.

So, I think Kelly is going to take us through principles of high-quality transition.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely thanks Sheree. OK so in part 1, we overviewed the principles of high-quality transition and you would have seen this image. It shows the alignment of the 8 themes that support effective teaching and learning with the principles of the Early Years Learning Framework. If you haven't come across it before the Early Years Learning Framework uses mandatory curriculum for all early childhood education services. The principles reflect contemporary theories and research evidence concerning children's learning and early childhood pedagogy. So, the text on the salmon pink colour background are the principles of the Early Years Learning Framework. And just like we talked about in part 1, the circular image are the eight themes that CESE has identified as being significant and important for learning outcomes.

Sheree Bell

You can read more about those in the ‘What works best’ in practice document that CESE have put out as well. Can't they Kell?

Kelly Birket

Absolutely, so they've actually got quite a little bit of a resource toolkit. Now what works best has been updated just now in 2020, so if you haven't gone back to that document in 2020, it is definitely worth having another little look. So, what we'll do now in this section is we will just unpack each of those principles of the Early Years Learning Framework because they are also very relevant for high-quality transition practices.

OK, so the first of those are secure respectful reciprocal relationships, so we're talking about the relationships between children, parents, and educators. I've used the term educators there because we're referring to the staff, the teachers that are working in the early childhood education service as well as in the school. Many people are involved in a child's education and in their transition, so it's really important that the relationships between all those people are very strong and collaborative relationships. They are at the heart, successful transitions and improved learning outcomes. Investing in reciprocal relationships is a critical part of quality education. Relationships must be based on a foundation of respectful two-way communication is the focus on respecting stakeholders strengths, knowledge and existing connections within the community.

So, what that's referring to is school staff acknowledging and seeking out the information and the knowledge that the prior to school service has about the child and then using that information to support the child as they commence Kindergarten. Relationships that move from surface contact to meaningful discussions and practices support children in their transition wellbeing and academic engagement. So, a lot of schools have already established relationships with their local early childhood service and would know how important that relationship is and talking about transition.

OK, so firstly here's the CESE image, again showing the 8 themes or key practices. Research has shown improved learning outcomes, so one of these themes is collaboration. Effective collaboration explicitly aims to improve practices and learning outcomes. Just as we just mentioned professional collaboration around transition allows for the sharing of knowledge about children, and for best practice to be identified and shared.

OK, so this slide is talking about collaborations with other professionals. A range of professionals might be involved in a child's life and the family’s life. Indeed, their education and transition to school communication between these professionals and the school should be initiated to tap into the expertise and perspectives. So, for example, there might actually be a social worker who's been working with a family for a number of years, and they would definitely have some very useful information about the family and child that the school can use to support the transition into school. Their insights can support transition and continuity across services and settings. Schools should seek out collaborations with other professionals to ensure that a child's prior learning is valued, their current needs are met and support for ongoing learning is concerted and consistent.

So, this is getting into the area of continuity of learning and we address this in the fourth part of this course. It basically by collaborating with other professionals you can ensure that the child continues their learning that in Kindergarten they’re building on what they've already learned at home and in the early childhood service.

Sheree Bell

I think these collaborations, these professional collaborations are particularly important for those children transitioning who may be experiencing some kind of vulnerability or disability. It really just helps that communication for that little one, moving into Kindergarten.

Kelly Birket

Yes, absolutely and other professionals that you might know develop a relationship, or, you know, seek out. They could include speech, occupational therapists, perhaps an early intervention support paediatrician, Aboriginal medical services physiotherapists. It might be a refugee support leader who actually works within the department. Depending on the child and family there could be any number of professionals involved in their life.

Sheree Bell

And a lot of expertise to tap into.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely and you know if the child is attending an early childhood education service, I would probably say that would be your first stop because they would then be aware of the other, if there are other people working with the family and child and they will be able to help you with contact.

Like I said, the next principle of an effective transition is ‘partnerships with families’. So, just like it's in the school excellence framework, it's very much an important area. It's noted in there that how important family involvement is in a child's education. At the beginning of part 1, we had those images of the clouds. We noted that families are likely to be experiencing a range of emotions as their child transitions into school. A Victorian study in 2015, actually found that families who are comfortable with their child's transition value conversations with trusted teachers both prior to and soon after starting school as well as school transition programs. But on the other hand, families who were less happy with their transition expressed concern about the lack of communication, including unclear process, and lack of personalised attention to their child's needs.

So, just looking at the dot points on the screen now, so as I've just alluded to:

• Family involvement is an essential part of a successful transition.
• Successful transitions recognise the family as a child's first and most influential teachers.
• Orientation programs provide an ideal opportunity to connect with families and support them to become more active participants in their child's learning.
• Families who support their child during transition who have positive relationships with staff are less likely. Sorry likely to continue their and their child's positive engagement with school. Definitely, the transition period is the time to start developing those relationships. The older the child gets, the harder it is.
• Research tells us that there is an inextricable link between high family engagement and a child's academic success and wellbeing.
• Establishing connections with families, caregivers, and the community is especially important to support Aboriginal families. Actually, in the third part of this course, we will look a little bit more closely at how you can support Aboriginal children and families in their transition.

Sheree Bell

I think working as partners with the families is just really crucial to having effective transitions. As you said Kell by working together as a kind of a whole community of children, families, educators and professionals, everyone can feel valued and you know sharing the goals to achieve those goals.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely, absolutely. It's really good for the children to know that you and the family are on the same page and that you're working together with the common goal of supporting the child.

Sheree Bell

For sure, it's that genuine partnership.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely. OK, so the next one we're going to look at is high expectation, so again, this is one of the key practices known to improve learning outcomes and high expectations, and equity is one of the principles of the Early Years Learning Framework. Effective transition to school practices are based on recognising and acknowledging the strengths of children, their families in the community and all who are involved in supporting the transition. High expectations are evident, with schools that reflect a sense that children and their families belong are competent and will achieve well. Teachers’ beliefs about their students influence how they teach and interact with them. This can affect students’ confidence and motivation, which in turn impacts learning and achievement.

OK, so moving on to the next principle. Respect for diversity. Diversity can be about Aboriginality, race, ethnicity, culture, gender, language, background ability, or many other individual differences. Showing respect for the many ways local people express and live, their culture is an important part of transition planning. All children and families require extra support at different times and are influenced and affected by the environments that surround them. So, in part 2 we oh sorry, a little bit later in this presentation we're going to look at collecting data about the community, which is really important to know what the challenges for the families are and what might be impacting on their child's transition into school. Inclusive policies and professional practices that actively address any barriers and challenge specific challenges specific to the child and family context will support transition for all children, especially children with disabilities, or those experiencing vulnerability and disadvantage.

Sheree Bell

I think this part again, Kelly really reinforces the value in our preschool or private school educators and school educators having that partnership. That communication, that collaboration, because they can really, you know, support each other with, contextual information.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely yes, these principles are actually all very much linked. Yes, they're all very, yes, sort of, they all feed into one another.

Sheree Bell

They certainly do.

Kelly Birket

OK. So, the next principle of high-quality transition is ongoing learning and reflective practice. So, this links to another one of the key practices proven to contribute to outcomes. The use of data to inform practice. So, it's important schools collect and analyse rich and meaningful data to continually evaluate and modify transition practices. The use of data will result in effective tailored practices that support successful transitions in the school's unique context. In evaluating the practices feedback should be sought from children, families, school staff, early childhood education service staff, the community, and other stakeholders.

So, in relation to transition, you can look at the use of data in two ways. The first is the data you gather to know what to plan for transition, and the second is what's referred to on this slide. It's during or at the end of your transition program to evaluate the effectiveness of each of the transition practices.

Sheree Bell

That's an important point. Is looking at those practices and reflecting and evaluating, isn't it because you know there's no point implementing those practices if you're not seeing any benefit or they're only reaching a small number of children or families.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely you need to know if what the school [is] doing is actually working. Otherwise, it might be a lot of effort and time for you know minimal…

Sheree Bell

Impact.

Kelly Birket

Yeah, definitely so in the next section of this presentation actually, we go into a whole section on data because it is so critical to be able to reflect on what you're actually doing and is it meaningful and is it actually working? Otherwise, you know why are you continuing if a particular practice if it isn't meeting the needs of your school community? OK, so that is the fifth and the last principle of high-quality transition.

I just want to mention this reflections scaffold, so, before you launch this recording, you would have launched a Word document titled Beginning school strong and successfully reflection scaffold. So, I hope you saved it to your computer because we're going to be using that to work on throughout this recording and recording three if not, that's fine. You can actually find a copy in the resource folder that Sheree mentioned earlier. In the Early learning in schools Microsoft team then you go into the Statewide staff room, the files and then Beginning school strong and successful. If either of those methods fails you again, you can always email Early Learning and request a copy to be emailed to you.

So, the point of the scaffold is to support you through this course to apply what you're learning and to be able to then implement it in your own school setting, particularly the individual transition practices we're going to be talking about. So, the image on the screen, the 4 steps on the blue background, they’re the steps of the reflection scaffold. They’re over the top of an image from the Centre for Education, Statistics, and Evaluation. Again, the ‘What works best in practice’, the additional resource published in 2020. The image is just there to show you how the reflection scaffold actually aligns with the suggested action planning process suggested by what works best.

[Slide image – A circle with a heading in the centre ‘Steps to implement What works best’ and 3 coloured sections with the headings around the circumference. There are 3 light blue boxes around the outside of the circle containing the reflection scaffold steps.

• Top left blue background within circle ‘Identify need’.
  • Light blue box outside of circle: ‘Step one: Assess current transition practices’, ‘Step two: Gather and analyse data to identify needs’.
• Right, coloured grey ‘Set and act on strategies’.
  • Light blue box outside of circle: ‘Step three: Action planning’.
• Bottom left, coloured red ‘Reflect, evaluate, refine’.
  • Light blue box outside of circle: ‘Step four: Reflect evaluate, refine’.]

OK. So, hopefully you've got your copy of the reflection scaffold now saved on your computer. So, what we're going to do is pause the recording, and I'm asking you to reflect upon and evaluate your school's current transition practices.

Complete step one of the Beginning school strong and successfully reflection scaffold now. This asks you some questions. Take a row in the table to list each transition practice and then just think about is it effective. So, this is about what we were talking about before, you need to be reflecting to make sure your efforts are actually having an impact. Then how do you know if there is an impact? Then decide should the practice be continued, changed or stopped. Now that language continued changed or stopped actually comes from the ‘What works best’ resource kit.

If you're part of a school transition team, it might be more useful not to complete this task now, but to actually do it in cooperation with your other team members or stakeholders, because gaining more than one perspective of your current practices is very beneficial rather than one person doing it on their own. But if you are unfortunately working on your own on transition in your school, definitely have a look at this task now and then when you've completed the task, you can continue the recording.

OK, so that's that section. Sheree is now going to talk us through using data to inform transition planning.

Sheree Bell

Yes, so as Kelly mentioned this is one of the themes of the ‘What works best’ scaffold, the image that Kelly showed you before. So, we're just going to unpack that just a little bit more in relation to transition.

So, when we are thinking about using data to inform planning we're looking at I guess three main ideas looking at collecting the data, gathering information about children, their families and community analysing that data. So, reflecting on the data sources to identify the strengths, emerging needs and any potential challenges, and then using that data to plan so this data can be used to plan. Tailored transition practices which take advantage of the strengths and build on those, as well as being able to address any needs. So, just like you know, teachers in a classroom and collecting data to know what to teach them, what to teach their class and determine any differentiation required.

Transition practices must also be formed by information or data collected so that you can plan for your cohort that's coming to school. Schools need to collect data about the transitioning children so that they can tailor those practices to individual or group needs. We mentioned that before when there's particular children, we want to make sure that we are tailoring so that they feel, and their families feel supported when they come to school.

Kelly Birket

Yes, it's interesting Sheree, that the transition at an urban school where 95% of the children have attended preschool and perhaps 70% from a non-English speaking background will look very different to what's provided in a rural school in some of our rural community. Perhaps 100% of the children are English, have an English-speaking background, but maybe due to lack of accessibility, only 30% have had the opportunity to attend preschool. These children require really different things in their transition to school.

Sheree Bell

Oh absolutely. Like the variety of context, the vast, diverse context that we have across our state with our schools definitely requires a tailored approach based on what's going to work best for the community or the cohort. We know that what works for one school doesn't work, as the same for another school. So, I think this is where early childhood or private school educators, as well as our school educators, have the privilege I guess of knowing the community really well and being able to tap in and really target their support, and this data is only going to help that.

So, let's just have a look at a couple of different types of data that you might be looking to collect. So, this image shows some of the most common methods of collecting information at a community and in an individual level. I guess the purpose of assembling this evidence together is to inform discussions among stakeholders and to inform the planning of the transition practices. I guess during the evaluation process as well. So, we've got the qualitative data and the quantitative data listed up there and then there's some there that overlaps a little because they provide a little bit of each. So, we're looking at sources of data and information that's going to include information about the child, the family, from early childhood education services and of course other professionals as well. So, we'll go in and have a look at some more quantitative data. Which are assessments of school readiness.

So, we'll start firstly with the Australian early development census data. So, the AEDC data collects, collects from a community level, so it's a national census of early childhood development with the data collection taking place every three years. So, the most recent data collection took place from that May to August in 2018. So, we're looking for another collection. They'll be another collection next year then. So, you can see on the slide the data that's collected is across five domains, the physical health and wellbeing. Social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive skills and communication skills and general knowledge. Many of you as Kindergarten teachers may have previously been involved in collecting this information using the early development instrument, which is essentially a questionnaire about each child.

So, we will just explore this just a little bit more. So, schools and communities are able to access data on children's development in their local area and see the strengths and vulnerabilities of children in their communities in comparison to the state and Australia. So, this slide here shows the data for Gloucester you can see there's 13.7 percent of children have a vulnerability in the physical domain compared to 8.5 percent for New South Wales, whereas for the social domain, for example, there's 5.9 percent of children show vulnerability compared with 9.8 percent nationally. So, using this data school may be able to look at or placing a greater emphasis on physical education lessons or planning a targeted physical program for Kindergarten. This would then help support the children, get back on track developmentally, and to have greater success as they move through school. So, this next table that's just popped up now is multiple strengths indicator, so it shows that for this particular community, there's 64.7 percent of children have highly developed strengths, so these children are likely to be on track in all five of the AEDC domains and show strength across all AECD domains.

Kelly Birket

Thanks. Yes, so that's in comparison to only 57.5 percent nationally, so it does show that generally these kids in this community are on track, but there is that little bit of a weakness in the physical domain, which is something that could be targeted in early Kindergarten to support this cohort.

Sheree Bell

Yes, so it provides some I guess it captures that data for your community, so it really is a valuable source of information.

Kelly Birket

Yes, definitely yes, it's a really good tool. It's really interesting.

Sheree Bell

Yes, it is really interesting and there's lots of stuff on there actually and this is one we've put on the website up the top there. You can access some case studies so at aedc.gov.au/parents/school-stories these stories of actions that some schools have taken in response to their community data to support transition which could be really interesting to have a bit of a read of, see if there's anything that might be useful for you when you're planning your transition. So, for example.

Kelly Birket

Yeah

Sheree Bell

Sorry Kelly, you were going to say something?

Kelly Birket

Just going to say the case studies really address a wide range of contexts. But yes, there might be one there that resonates with your community.

Sheree Bell

Oh, that's good. If they've got a lot there covering a variety of context, it makes it more valuable for people to go on it. Yes, more likely to have something that resonates. Yes, so a few examples that there are in the case studies is, there's some people who put into place some professional learning provided by teachers to develop and deliver strategies to enhance children's mental health and wellbeing. Publishing and distributing in the community a book about starting school aimed at those key domains where local children were most vulnerable.

Kelly Birket

Yes, so sorry to interrupt.

Sheree Bell

Go for it.

Kelly Birket

That particular book included information for families on supporting learning at home and suggesting particular play activities in the areas that the children were showing generally a weakness.

Sheree Bell

Oh fantastic, I haven't read that one, so I'll have to go in and have a look at that. Sounds great. Some other examples are of schools engaging a speech therapist to address an identified vulnerability in the communication domain. A school partnering with the community group to run a supported play group on site to address the vulnerability in children's communication and general knowledge. I think supported playgroups are a really fantastic way to engage and communicate and build relationships and partnerships with families and children prior to school.

Kelly Birket

Yes, definitely. We're going to have a close look at supported playgroups in part three. Just how to set one up and what sorts of activities you might do and the benefits. So, if you're interested in that, just hold on. Yes, we'll get to that very soon.

Sheree Bell

Fantastic, so the AECD data can really guide schools as they plan for the needs of children transitioning to their school as they collaborate with local early childhood services, families and the community.

So, at this point we might just take a moment to pause and reflect on that first lot of data we talked about. The AECD data and we might ask you to open in a new tab or window and enter in the URL at the top there aecd.gov.au/data/data-explorer. So, once you've got that up, you can go into the search bar and locate your school community by typing that in, then you can go and browse the data to identify any significant information. For example, you might be looking at what are the strengths and vulnerabilities of the children in the community, you might be looking at how does your particular community compare across NSW or the Australian average? What factors may be contributing to the percentage of children who are developmentally vulnerable in the community and plenty more.

Then you can scroll down and open up the community profile, you can access a PDF document and in this you will find information for three collection periods related to data, such as how many children attended, play group or day-care, or preschool, what percentage of children have a non-English speaking background. So, there really is a lot of information you can unpack there to learn more about children coming into your school.

Kelly Birket

That was actually quite interesting having the three collect the three most recent collection periods shown because you can actually see if the community is changing. I know my own community, it was interesting to note that the 2012 collection picked up there were 25 percent of children from a non-English speaking background. Whereas the most recent one actually picked up 50 percent now. That's definitely information that a school can use on the changing demographic of the community.

Sheree Bell

Absolutely you can look for changes, but I guess also things that are staying the same as well where it is consistent. I think both lots of data are very interesting and really help show change overtime, or trend data which can be very helpful when planning for transition to school.

Kelly Birket

Definitely I know data to target community services and also early childhood education services use the data to inform their curriculum to know what areas their children are more vulnerable in and to provide additional support and focus in those areas.

Sheree Bell

So, again, it's that bringing forward that I guess the support that both the early childhood or provider, school services educators, and Kindergarten educators can really share to really support the children and families coming into school.

Kelly Birket

Yes, definitely.

Sheree Bell

So, we'll have a look at another data source, which is the best start Kindergarten assessment. So, while the transition to school statement collects data on the child before they commence, best start data collects information after they commence school. So, as you know, best start Kindergarten assessment is a mandatory one on one assessment designed to identify each child's literacy and numeracy skills at the beginning of Kindergarten. It provides an opportunity for Kindergarten teachers to spend a bit of time discovering what each child can do in both of those areas of literacy and numeracy and gives them that opportunity to plan for each child coming to school to be supported, building on their knowledge and skills, and challenging their learning. It's designed to provide teachers with that information about literacy and numeracy abilities. See what it is that they're already bringing with them to school so that they can plan effective teaching and learning programs that cater for the different needs right from those first days of Kindergarten.

Kelly Birket

Yes, and that then supports the continuity of learning of the child, which, again, like I said before, we will talk about in Part four quite a lot.

Sheree Bell

Absolutely, there's only about six weeks break in between coming from preschool or prior to school service into Kindergarten, or even the home into Kindergarten so not much changes in that time, being able to capture and understand that continuity of learning is a very important part of transition to school.

Kelly Birket

Yes.

Sheree Bell

So, with the best start Kindergarten assessment as we said, it really focuses on those literacy and numeracy skills, but some of the things that best start doesn't tell you, is how much the little one might miss dad and how sad and withdrawn this little one is on Mondays. What the favourite part of preschool was and was it playing with a friend, with their friends. But I'm very empathetic and like to help other children. I need extra help to get started with an activity. I love role playing, pretending to be someone different. I've worked with the speech therapist for the last two years. How much my social skills have improved in the last year, but I still have some way to go. I'm super curious and want to know how machines work. I have trouble retaining what you say, but if you have pictures to remind me, I'm OK. So, I think it's important to think about the holistic development because the best start does collect great data on literacy and numeracy, but it's quite a narrow scope.

Kelly Birket

Yes, definitely. So, the reason we've got these, this image here is to show and highlight that best start is not a holistic picture of the child. You're going to need to refer to other data sources. You're going to need to talk to the family, the child and collect information, other types of information to get the full picture of the child.

Sheree Bell

Absolutely, and I think this next one is that we're going to show which is the Transition to School statement, which I mentioned just before. But we're going to have a little bit more of a look at that and the Transition to School statement it is something that early childhood education services complete at the end of the preschool year and with the parents’ permission, they pass them onto the school that the child will be attending. So, you can see that image of the statement on the screen there if you haven't before, please check it out on the website at the bottom.

The statement was developed by the early childhood education directorate which is part of the Department of Education to assist early childhood educators, parents and carers and primary school teachers to better understand a child and how to best support their transition from that early childhood education space into the school space. The idea is that it provides the receiving teacher, the Kindergarten teacher and the school with holistic information about the child. It's based on the 5 learning outcomes of the Early Years Learning Framework and addresses things like the social and emotional development dispositions towards learning, communication skills and highlights where any additional learning support may be required.

Kelly Birket

In a way, it red flags. Perhaps the family might not have passed on some critical information about their child transition to school statement will red flag whether the school or teacher needs to inquire about a child's learning.

Sheree Bell

Yes absolutely, and I think kind of you know, the passing of this information is really crucial. You know with parents’ permission of course. Again, that communication between the early childhood service and the school is really important, particularly in addressing any of the information provided in these transition to school statements.

Kelly Birket

Yes, and what I really like about it is there's a little section on the second page where the educator asks the child about their perceptions of their new school. Have they visited, who they go with, what would they like to know about their school. This provides additional data for the school about things that they might include in their orientation programs. I think it's just nice to include the child's voice.

Sheree Bell

Absolutely Kell I think everything we do – the Early Years Learning Framework, our syllabus documents our department strategic plan – it's all about ensuring our children have a voice and that they feel known and valued and cared for and by providing that space for them to share their voice is really important.

Kelly Birket

Yes, definitely. The department is actually currently developing some online professional learning related to completing the statements as well as receiving them and interpreting the information. So, I can't give you the title of the professional learning, but if you go into myPL and browse learning and type in either transition to school or just transition or maybe even Transition to School statement any of the courses will come up. If they don't come up, just try back again in another week. It might be that they haven't been published yet, but they are definitely under development as we record this. So, yes, that's a great way if you want to find out more information. Also, on the department's website if you search for transition to school statement, you will come across quite a bit of information.

Sheree Bell

That'll be great PL for our early childhood educators to understand its purpose a little more and how to write and read and analyse that information. It would be very valuable. Great, thanks for that Kell.

Kelly Birket

So, sorry, just one more thing. If you are new at school and you haven't actually seen these statements before, or they have never made it through to you it's definitely worth following up with your local early childhood education services and just say to them, are you using this statement? They might already be passing on written information to you, but perhaps the statement format might be more useful, but definitely inquire about it.

Sheree Bell

Yeah, absolutely. So, the transition of school statement really facilitates the sharing of that information, so as Kell said, you know, check in with your early childhood or preschool service and vice versa. Check in with the school about that.

The benefits of using and reading the transition to school statement is that it:

• supports the schools that where the children are going by providing information about the current skills, knowledge and the dispositions for learning
• alerts the school to any individual circumstances they may need to know. As Kelly mentioned before, there may be some red flags there that you might be able to look into further.
• provides information to inform planning decision linked to children's interests and strengths
• provides information to inform perhaps the formation of classes and enables early identification of children who might require, who will require some extra support.

Now look, there are so many benefits there it's not the be all and end all and this is one data collection that is really helpful for the Kindergarten teacher. How to look into a little bit more little bit of a snapshot of the children that are coming to their class. So, again that relationship. If you've got that relationship with your early childhood service and between the early childhood service and the school, you could definitely then look into maybe suggest and influence the content that's going to be the most useful as you're trying to learn a little bit more about these children coming to your class.

Kelly Birket

Yes, that's right. Sheree, the transition to school statement with alongside the best start Kindergarten assessment together give you a really good picture of the child.

Sheree Bell

Yes, multiple task data sources there creating a great picture for sure Kelly, absolutely. So, CESE is a valuation of the transition to school statement. We just pulled out a couple of statistics here to share. 75 percent of teachers agreed that they felt better informed about the preferred ways of learning for children with the statement than those that came without a statement. Around 80 percent of schoolteachers reported feeling better able to respond to the learning needs of the children with a statement compared to those without. Just over 90 percent of schoolteachers agreed that they felt better informed about the strengths and interests of their children with a statement compared to the children without a statement.

So, you know, there's a lot of positive feedback there from teachers and how they felt that the transition to school statement supported them to respond to the learning needs of their class. So, if you haven't seen it, definitely check it out.

So, we'll just have a quick look at a bit of a sample from a completed transition to school statement. You can have a little bit of a look. This example on the screen here is in relation to learning outcome one of the Early Years Learning Framework, which is around a sense of identity. You'll note that you know some of the information in here won't be picked up in best start Kindergarten assessment, so you can gather that from the transition to school statement. Like Kelly said, using the two data sources together will really help create a clear picture. So, we've just put a little example there for this outcome one on the screen for you to have a bit of a look at just now, but in the resource folder in teams, Kelly has kindly loaded in an example of an entire statement, which you may like to go and have a little bit of a look at across all of the 5 outcomes. Plus, the section where children include their voice into the statement as well.

So, at this point I think we will take a pause and reflect upon and evaluate the information that we just heard about the AEDC data the best start Kindergarten assessment in the transition to school and how to think of and evaluate the information that your school collects about the transitioning of children families and then how that data is actually used. So, if you go to your beginning school, strong and successfully reflection scaffold, step two looks at the gathering and analysing of data to identify needs. Sorry Kell what were you going to say?

Kelly Birket

I was just going say in addition we just focused on a couple of sources of information but definitely when you do this step of the scaffold, include the other sources of data and information you collect the conversations, the visits you have to services where you know you have interviews, perhaps with the staff there, surveys, just all the different types of information that you do use.

Sheree Bell

Yes, it's I guess creating that nice big broad picture from all of the data sources.

Kelly Birket

Yes, that's right.

Sheree Bell

OK. So, we'll have a look now at strengths-based tailored support.

Kelly Birket

Thank Sheree. In this section of the presentation, we're going to outline some of the effective transition practices for children and families who might require a differentiated or a tailored approach. There are general practices which will support everyone, but there's also specific tailored things that you can be doing, and I think we've just got a quote coming up.

‘Evidence related to children from backgrounds described as disadvantaged or complex indicates that a positive start to school is instrumental in promoting positive life trajectories. It is also the case that these children may experience a more problematic transition to school than their advantaged peers.

High expectations for all children and families coupled with recognition of the strengths and funds of Knowledge, they bring a cornerstones of effective transition to school approaches regardless of their backgrounds of those involved.’ [Dockett, 2014, Perry, 2014].

So, this section is going to focus on the message that strong transitions are important for all children, but they’re particularly critical for those children who may be at risk of not transitioning smoothly. The quotes on the screen there actually they come from Dockett and Perry, who are the key leading researchers on transition to school in Australia. So, the department has identified key, what they call equity groups of children who may require a differentiated or a tailored approach.

So, this first group here is children with disability and support needs, so I'm going to read through the dot points which give some tips on supporting these children. So, obviously that as we've mentioned how handy the transition to school statement is, you need to identify as early as possible the children who may need additional support, and you know how long things take in the department to get funding in place to get adjustments organised. The earlier you can do that, the better. Get to know the child’s strengths and needs by gathering information and the documentation reports from the family and any services currently working with them. Obviously, you need to do this with parental consent. Again, another reason why it's really important to have a good strong relationship with the family because you want them to cooperate and support you to gather as much information as you can.

Visit the child in their early childhood education or intervention setting to observe their behaviours, engagement and learning styles, again, with prior approval from the family. It's really important for these kids with a disability to form a transition team that's going to support the child and the family. Obviously in this team you're going to need to include the schools learning support team, whether it's the class teacher or the counsellor, that would depend on your school’s staffing.

So, on the bottom of the screen there you can say this is a little snip from a great website. The reason I put it there is if you are working with a family of a child with a disability it is a good place. If they don't already know about it, the section on the raising children website for families about starting primary school is really useful with lots of good information for families.

[raisingchildren.net.au/disability/school-play-work/school/starting-primary-school-disability]

Kelly Birket

Ok, so continuing on supporting children with disability and support needs. The first suggestion or tip here is to collaboratively develop an individualised transition support plan. So, a child might need additional, maybe perhaps individual, guided school visits. Start developing their individual education plan for when they start trans[itioning to] school. It's really important that before the child starts, all staff have the necessary additional training they might need to support that child in the Kindergarten classroom. You've also got a role in ensuring that the family knows about and applies for any community support services and also any particular support that might be available to them through the department. That last dot point talks about supporting timely application for additional learning and support provisions, so this includes obviously the access request process and then just again just as agreed to by the family. Because, you know, you can't be pursuing any of these things without the families consent.

The images there are from what was previously early childhood intervention Australia. They are now known as Reimagine Australia on their website. They have a section for families related to transition for children with a disability as well. Again, it's a really great site and the image on the right is actually a little booklet that can be downloaded from their website and it's very useful it targeting parents and families. It’s definitely worth checking their families have access to that.

[https://reimagine.org.au/]

OK, so the next group of children who might require a little bit of a differentiated tailored approach. High potential and gifted children. It's really interesting to note that research has shown that for high potential and gifted children, the gaining of knowledge is a very high concern for them when starting school. Generally, for children, a concern is making friends and knowing what the rules are. But for these children it is the gaining of knowledge. Just like with your children with disability, it's important to refer the child to the learning, support teacher and or counsellor as soon as possible to make an assessment of their specific needs.

Be aware that the child might underachieve disengage, be unsettled, or disruptive if they're not challenged academically. In class, as for anyone requiring extension, provide open ended learning experiences as well as opportunities for the child to work independently on projects of interest which extend their learning. Again, ensure teachers have the necessary skills to support these children, so this is a very much a snapshot if you want to read further the department's policy has got advice and also the second document, pardon me, there noted if you follow that URL is listed effective support strategies for high potential and gifted children.

[Support strategies

Department policy – High potential and gifted education policy]

Sheree Bell

Well, that research information you provided Kelly is really interesting, isn't it? About the gaining of knowledge, being of high concern for these children, it's again so important to know and hear and understand the children's voices and listen to their concerns and thoughts about transitioning to school.

Kelly Birket

Yes, for sure. There's actually quite a few interesting stories I've heard of children actually reading before they commence school, but then when they commence school, because the teacher wasn't aware of that because obviously that information was not passed on, the children actually stop reading. They chose not to show their reading skills because they wanted to be like everyone else and learning their single letters and sounds so that the under achievement is definitely something to watch for and then those kids who aren't reading but when they get to school, and they want to, they expect to learn to read on the first day. That's the priority and then get very disillusioned when they don't. It’s interesting.

Sheree Bell

So, it's a very complex jobs of the Kindergarten teacher, isn't it? You know such a range of children coming into their classrooms.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely OK, so the next group of children and families who may require a tailored approach, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. So, as I mentioned before. These children definitely need consideration of their particular needs and what's going to help them to settle into school well. The department’s Aboriginal education policy states the department will improve lifelong learning pathways for Aboriginal learners. This will include transitions from home to school. This is the department's policy so it's really important that as department employees we support that statement, and we can do that by promoting cultural competence amongst staff.

So, if you haven't come across it before, cultural competence is much more than an awareness of cultural differences. It's the ability to understand, communicate with and effectively interact with people across cultures. Cultural competence encompasses being aware of one’s own worldview. Developing positive attitudes toward cultural differences, gaining knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews, and developing skills for communication and interaction across cultures.

OK, I'm back to the dot points on the slide. The second point says prioritising and supporting relationships with Aboriginal children, families and the community. I've used the language here. It says prioritising, but I've actually read something that say that this is one of the most crucial things to support the child to settle into school. Another strategy to support the education policy statement is employing and valuing Aboriginal staff, inviting family members to spend time in the new setting with their child. So, this is informal time. Yes, not having to have a lot of formal helping that you know 9 o'clock language rotations, but just informal. Involvement in the classroom activities ensuring transition practices are responsive, inflexible, and encourage children and their families to participate.

Ensuring the school environment says if you are Aboriginal, you belong here. So, this is all about the visual part of the school and so for families and children to actually see their culture reflected in the school environment. Also you need to keep in mind that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures is across curriculum priority and so should be addressed in each learning area in the Kindergarten curriculum.

Sheree Bell

Yes, cultural competence and supporting our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children is definitely, it's everyone's business. Like you said Kelly, it's in the department that Aboriginal education policy, it is part of everything we do.

Kelly Birket

Yes, if you're organising activities or events then you find that if you look at your data and you notice that generally your Aboriginal families aren't attending, it's not enough to say they did not come. What you need to do is to look at what you were providing and the communication around the event and perhaps they need to be changed to be more responsive to what you know the families want I'm not saying it very well. You might need to look at what you're doing because maybe their families don't feel able to come in. Maybe they're not comfortable, or they don't feel that that particular activity or event is inclusive of them, or that they are part of the school community. So, it's a hard mindset to get into but rather than saying they don't come, you need to look at well, what do we need to do to ensure they come.

Sheree Bell

And I think this is where the Aboriginal education teams at some of the regional offices and even the Parramatta office across New South Wales. The team are so amazing, and they are more than happy to support schools to support their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families to make sure that it is inclusive and feel like they are represented in the school.

Kelly Birket

Yes, absolutely.

Sheree Bell

Access them if you haven't already.

Kelly Birket

Yes, we want the Aboriginal children to feel strong and proud in their cultural identity because they need that for their wellbeing and then be able to thrive in the school setting. You might have come across a TV series, I can't remember if it's ABC or SBS. It's called ‘Little J and Big Cuz’ it was actually developed to provide Aboriginal children with a sneak peek into the world of school. Yes, definitely worth a little look and also it is something perhaps you could suggest families get their children to watch if not already, or perhaps in Kindergarten, or you might want to access some of those recordings and there's actually curriculum materials that go along with the series, so that's called ‘Little J and Big Cuz’.

OK, so actually Sheree just mentioned our Aboriginal support team in the department and at the top of the screen there, there's a link to an interview.

[Interview]

Tracy, who's an Aboriginal community liaison officer, and Stacy Parry an Early Years Advisor with the Aboriginal education team are discussing the Young, Black and Ready Transition Program. This is a program which operates on the Central Coast and targets Aboriginal, family and families and children to support children to support their transition into school. If this sounds of interest to you, pause the recording and you can follow that link and yes, it's a very interesting interview.

At the bottom there are 3 resources that will also support you with additional reading, strategies, a lot of background information, but all focused on supporting Aboriginal children to transition successfully into school.

[Resources:

• Supporting Transition to School for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children
• The Journey ‘to Big School’ – supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s transition to primary school
• Starting school – a strengths‐based approach towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.]

Sheree Bell

Yes, that SNAICC, the SNAICC website has some great resources absolutely.

Kelly Birket

They do, they do. OK, so another group, equity group that needs to be considered. Our children from diverse cultural backgrounds, including those from a refugee background, just like across the rest of your school, you're ensuring materials and information are in home languages. So, this is why you know your data collection is so important. You need to know what the majority, the predominant home language is.

You need to ensure rather than assume relevant information and materials provided are understood by families.

Ensure that any materials or activities reflect the cultural diversity of the school community. You've got a bit of a role in supporting families to understand and navigate the complex school system. We are a bureaucracy, and if you've grown up in the education system it's all fine, but if you, particularly, if you've not had any experience of the public school system, some of the forms and processes can be a little confusing.

And obviously, like as always, respect and value home language and culture.

The Resource book shown there is very good general information. It's not specifically related to transition, but it gives you some really good information and tips for working with children and families from diverse cultural backgrounds. It is appropriate for people working in early childhood services or schools. Really easy to read, but some great ideas in there.

[Resource: childaustralia.org.au

Sheree Bell

I think it's probably a good point also to mention Kelly, the multicultural education team who have, you know, experts in supporting newly arrived people newly arrived to Australia, EALD, refugee families. So, there are a wealth of knowledge, experience and expertise, so definitely tap into them as well if you haven't already.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely, absolutely. Actually on the next slide I've got the website and the details of the telephone interpreting service, so you can use that for free. It takes a little bit of admin to set it up, but then you can actually book and use that to communicate with families.

[Telephone interpreting service: https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/multicultural-education/interpreting-and-translations/telephone-interpreting]

So, continuing on strategies to support children from diverse cultural backgrounds. Obviously, I've seen it in action in some really great ways in schools utilising bilingual staff, parent volunteers and or as I said, the translation service. I mean obviously, just like with all your families you need to be flexible and offer parents the opportunity to bring a trusted friend or relative to orientation, visits or meetings.

Again, just like with the kids with disability find out about what resources and contacts are available to support families and also this is really important. Be aware that children from refugee background may have physical or health issues and be impacted by extreme stress and or trauma.

Sheree Bell

Again, this is really highlighting. How crucial it is to foster positive and inclusive relationships between the school, the families and the children transitioning into school.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely. OK, so we've got a bit of a reflection task now so just pause your recording and consider your school community. So, we have just discussed the identified equity groups which may require a differentiated or tailored transition practices to meet their needs. Do any of the incoming children or groups require differentiated or tailored transitions support? And if so what and how can this be provided?

Other groups that we haven't touched on here that you might like to consider are those living in low SES areas, children with anxiety, definitely a growing group. Your schools current transition practices might have actually already developed as a result of your school community, so as you reflect, just think about what you're doing and is this actually you know in a response already to the demographics and the needs of your community.

OK, so then when you finish that reflection, I'm just going to start the recording again.

So, for further information on these identified equity groups the department has produced some information sheets. Some of the information I've just covered is in these information sheets, but there's also a little bit more detail and you can see from the image there there's a lot more resources referred to and hyperlinks of additional documents. These are available in our Teams folder, but also you can go to the Early Learning web page on the department's website. You need to type in early learning. You don't want to go to the early childhood education directory, these are within Early Learning and then when you're there, go into the Transition page and you'll find these resources. Listed there are the 6 different information sheets.

Sheree Bell

How fantastic Kelly, all those links to resources to support thinking about and what to put in place the transition. That's wonderful.

Kelly Birket

Yes, and hopefully people and schools can find the sheets that relate to their demographic and what they need and read that information and take things further. So, that actually wraps up this part 2 of the course. Thanks for joining us again, there's our email address if you want to have any communication or you need help, you could email Sheree or myself via that email address and I just want to say thank you for joining us and I am looking forward to getting together again for part 3.

Sheree Bell

Thanks everyone.

Kelly Birket

Great thanks Sheree.

Sheree Bell

Thanks Kelly.

[End of transcript]

Kelly Birket [Early Learning Advisor]

Hi everybody, welcome back. This is part three of beginning school strong and successfully. The focus of this presentation is implementing effective transition practices. Before we start, I want to acknowledge country. I'd like to begin by acknowledging and paying my respects to the Ku Ring Gai people. The traditional custodians of the land I'm on today as I make this recording, I'd also like to pay respects to the traditional custodians of the land you're on today as you access this recording, I acknowledge the Ku Ring Gai peoples continuing connection to land, water and community. I'd also like to pay my respects to their Elders past present and Emerging and acknowledge any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people viewing this presentation.

Welcome everyone, it's great to have you with us. My name's Kelly Birkett. I'm one of the Early Learning Advisors in the early learning team, and I'm here with my colleague Sheree Bell.

Sheree Bell [Early Learning Advisor]

Hi, everyone, as Kelly said, my name is Sheree Bell, and I'm one of the Early Learning Advisors in the Early Learning team.

Kelly Birket

Great thanks, Sheree and just a reminder if you'd like to contact, Sheree or I there is email address on the screen.

OK, so, part 1 addressed outcomes 1 to 3 and today we are in part 3 and we're focusing primarily on outcome for learners will develop deep knowledge of effective transition practices and the skill to identify and apply those which are appropriate to their own school context. As mentioned in previous parts, you can access the materials and videos and resources referred to in this course in the Microsoft Team. Again, this is the overview of the course in its entirety. So, this is part 3.

Sheree Bell

This session is looking at taking a closer look at some effective transition practices. The first one we will take a look at is transition networks. Transition networks are important because they enhance the linkages between sectors and services and promote collaboration for the benefit of children and families. Networks foster community focus on transition and raise the profile of the importance of transition in the community. Network members share a common interest in improving school transition and outcomes for children and families generally.

Kelly Birket

Yes, sorry about that everybody. We just got one little bit of text come up on its own, there we go.

Sheree Bell

Oh great. Thanks Kelly. Your essay with transition networks, thinking about how they operate. Transition networks usually initiated by schools or other department staff as schools are the hub or the central contacts for the local early childhood education services. They comprise of educators from local early childhood services. Community agencies school staff, both government and private and other stakeholders, usually networks, they meet once a term to jointly plan transition practices and community events or participate in shared professional learning. Networks often also operate as a professional learning community of practice.

So, how do schools benefit? A wide repertoire of experience and knowledge can be tapped into ideas shared and issues jointly solved. So, the transition network can be particularly helpful for situations supporting some of the vulnerable about in the last session, So, tailoring transition to school support for children with a disability or children and families with the refugee status for Aboriginal children and families and children from disadvantaged backgrounds starting school.

Kelly Birket

Yes, great. Thanks Sheree. Also keep in mind that networks operate informally, as well as very formally and whatever is going to be manageable and work for your school is definitely the best way to go.

Sheree Bell

Yes, absolutely again it comes back to context and community and cohort and yet being able to have those collaborations and partnerships in a way that works for everyone in the group. Really because the purpose is what's going to support the children and their families most.

Kelly Birket

Yes.

Sheree Bell

So, we've actually got some recordings and some illustrations of practice. So, there's some videos of department staff discussing transition practices that they've implemented, you may want to take some time just now to go and take a look at the videos. Maybe see if there's any that are of particular interest to you and your school team. If needed, you can access downloaded copies of the videos in teams. Is that right Kelly?

Kelly Birket

Yes, there's MP4 files of each of the videos. We are conscious we haven't got the links here for two of them we are just updating those links So, you can go into the Microsoft team, and you'll be able to get a copy of the videos that you're interested in and have a listen.

Sheree Bell

Fantastic and I think again they're covering different contexts and different illustrations of practice. So, yes, definitely have a listen to those.

Kelly Birket

Yes, great thanks Sheree. OK, so, the next practice we're going to have a little look at is reciprocal visits, this is referring to staff from an early childhood education service visiting school staff and vice versa. So, visiting one another in their settings. OK, so, a reciprocal visit. They generally involve staff as I just said from early childhood education services and schools visiting one another in each other’s settings.

These visits provide an opportunity for school staff to meet and observe individual children in the early childhood education setting. In addition, during the visits and ongoing communication staff participate in informal conversations, playing collaborative transition activities and discuss any additional tailored transition support required for individual children. Many schools at early childhood services use the visits as an opportunity for teachers to meet and enhance their shared professional understanding of early childhood and school-based learning environments and practices.

Reciprocal visits can assist in developing and greater understanding of the continuity of learning between Early Learning and school settings. This is a reference from Hopps, he's done a lot of research in the area of the communication between the two settings. Communication between educators has been widely advocated as a practice which can enhance children's transition to school and this last point is referenced from Dockett and Perry. Reciprocal visits strengthening relationships between educators in the early childhood and school sector, can have a positive impact on children’s transition to school.

Sheree Bell

They've got some fantastic research and articles. Catherine Hopps and Dockett and Perry, So, they're definitely worth checking out and reading some more about.

Kelly Birket

Yes, they sure are. So, if you'd like to listen to how one particular school, Woy Woy Public School on the Central Coast how he's initiated and undertaken visits. This video here, I guess Matt outlines some of the activities and then he overviews the logistics and details of how his school connects with local early childhood education services.

[Reciprocal visits – Matthew Wolski]

It is an interesting video Matt brings up some of the challenges he's had to address, but definitely a great illustration of practice. So, if you want to listen to that now, I suggest you pause the recording and follow that link and open up in another window.

Sheree Bell

Thanks Kelly, what will take a bit of a look at now is connecting with families, which is quite broad. So, let's go in and unpack that just a little more and look at some of the ways to connect with families.

This is an overview of some of the practices that will support some, not necessarily all, but families to be ready for transition. So, connecting with families, planning connections with families that focus on their strengths and respect their knowledge. He could provide opportunities for families to join school and classroom tours. I know that's a little more difficult in the current context. Attend information sessions, ask questions and raise concerns. Share information about their child, meet and socialise with other families and meet a range of the school staff. He could be providing outreach programs for rural and remote families, or providing volunteer opportunities after the child has commenced school.

Now there's a link there to a document from the Victorian Department of Education transition or positives start to school, which is great, So, you can check out the link to that PDF using the link on the screen. Is that one also in the teams files Kelly?

Kelly Birket

Yes.

Sheree Bell

Perfect. So, a couple of different ways you can do this.

Kelly Birket

If you like that information sheet you go to the website because there's a lot probably a dozen of different topics. You might find something else that you're interested in.

Sheree Bell

That’s fantastic, sorry, I'm just trying to move the screen. Now I've gone a bit too far, sorry. There we go. Another way that schools can connect with families is through the provision of information packs. Some schools choose to provide children and families with an information pack as a way of supporting their families to learn a little bit more about the school.

So, some things that you might include in an information pack. There might be a school information booklet covering the operations of the school like including:

• bell times
• who the staff leadership team are
• school absences protocols for communicating with the school
• traveling to and from school
• how to access translation services
• how to download the school app or webpage
• the canteen menu
• uniform details
• or homework.

Just kind of all the ins and outs of the running of the school. It could contain some information about the Early Stage 1 curriculum, so, what is it that's taught in Kindergarten in each of the learning areas. You could have some information on how families can support their child's transition, So, looking at skills like being able to take their jumper on and off, or taking turns, or opening up their lunch box or having experienced coping with disappointments, following instructions for example, even a social story about commencing Kindergarten. You can see some images there that Bellambi Public School have kindly shared with us from their information pack. You might include in your information packs might be our countdown calendar featuring events or activities leading up to the commencement of Kindergarten. Contact details for before and after school care or the P&C. There could be a parent guide for handwriting in the early years for instance, and there is a link there for that if you'd like to look a little bit more in to providing that.

Kelly Birket

There's actually two versions on the department's website both are good. Yes, you don't have to make your own you can download from the department's website.

Sheree Bell

Fantastic. Definitely worth checking out to see if that's suitable for your context for sure. What else could you provide? Maybe some web links or other information about supporting learning at home. Maybe some reading or some simple number games. You can see the image there on the right is for the learning potential website, which is a good link to provide to families, and I think in the last part Kelly provided a link to, was it raising children network? That's also another great link, isn't it?

Kelly Birket

Yes, it's good. It has activities as well. I love this learning potential. It is a federal government initiative. Just really, really easy to follow and just sets out the types of things families can do at home to support their child's learning. Really good resource.

Sheree Bell

Fantastic, and the image on the left there you can see is a calendar of events. Thanks again to Bellambi public school for sharing what would they include in their information pack.

So, another way to connect with families and children could be through social stories and we kind of mentioned that providing this as part of the information pack to provide these social stories, So, social stories can be general for all children or targeted to support an individual child. Often, they are in the format of a printed booklet and include photos taken from around the school or some key staff members. Each family is provided a copy and asked to read and discuss it multiple times with their child before they start school. Some schools have made narrated videos and share a link or a copy on a USB with families.

Social stories detail the visual aspects of Kindergarten and school routine. So, it could be visiting the library for example, arriving at the school or the school playground. The school stories really help children know what to expect at school when they come and can kind of relieve some of the anxiety that some children may be experiencing about that, not knowing. They tell children what's expected of them during certain parts of the day as well, because coming to school looks a little bit different obviously than it does being at home or being in a preschool setting, for example. So, there are some social story templates available in the Teams resource folder, is that right Kelly?

Kelly Birket

Yes, yes, there are. So, those ones actually shown in the image there and also early learning has developed two social story templates. One for starting school and one for starting preschool, and these have actually got sample text already in the main sample photos and the idea is that they've been written in a way that staff can keep the text as is if it does fit their school or tweak it slightly to personalise and then again with the images they can stay as they are, or they can be replaced with photos from around your own school. The idea is that they're very easy to use and they are available on the department's webpage within Early Learning and then transition.

Sheree Bell

Fantastic that sounds good that you can use them ready to go. Or you can actually personalise and modify them for your context. That's great.

Kelly Birket

Yes. So, we might just skip this slide. Sorry I've got these slides in the wrong order, so, this is the next one.

Sheree Bell

Oh OK, no problem. In thinking about connecting with families. We've also got a video from Tarro public school with the Principal Kelly O'Shea discussing why and how her schools developed a transition video for incoming children and families. So, you may like to take some time now to pause the recording and go and take a listen to what Kelly has to say about the transition video for incoming children and families. Use the link there or it is available in teams as well.

Kelly Birket

Yes, So, the Tarro one that Kelly is talking about is made very much in the social story format or general social story.

Sheree Bell

Fantastic. So, many great illustrations of practice and videos from lots of different schools.

Kelly Birket

Yes. So, on the right there is a list of other examples including the Tarro one, of social stories that schools have made in the video format. So, they are all available in the Teams folder as well. If you just want to see what sort of things other people are doing. The social story video or the virtual tour is becoming more and more popular, you have a little look and you might be interested in pursuing that.

Sheree Bell

Yes, I think in the current context, video is a popular way to connect with the community families and children. So, it's great to see some illustrations of practice there from all that variety of Schools.

Kelly Birket

Yes, we'll just go back to the previous slide.

Sheree Bell

OK, so, the other thing to have a think about, have a bit of a look through is the department's web page because it contains information for families as well, So, you can see on the left-hand side there, the parent and carer's section of the department website. The link is provided there on the screen. Some parents will also find transition information useful around starting Kindergarten, such as best start Kindergarten assessment. You can see there on the right. There's lots of different aspects that are covered on that particular part of the website as well, So, the links provided there. So, go check that out. That might be something that you might like to provide to your families.

Kelly Birket

Yes, there's also a couple of very short little videos there like one minute videos of a child getting ready for school and a day in Kindergarten that you might find interesting too.

Sheree Bell

Great. So, there really is a lot of resources that hopefully will be helpful in planning for transition.

Kelly Birket

Great, thanks Sheree, So, I'll just go up to the next section. OK So, this is the last section of this recording. We're going to focus on orientation program. Orientation programs are a part of your overall transition. They are one of the transition practices in Part one we noted that the purpose of orientation programs is to orientate the child and family to the school environment.

So, now we will look more closely at the types of activities that can be part of an orientation program and the first thing we're going to look at to spend the most time on is the supported play group we mentioned when we were talking about supporting children from refugee or newly arrived background, or from a diverse, cultural background that play groups are particularly helpful. They provide a soft entry into the school environment, allowing children and families to develop trust and familiarity with the school and begin to develop a sense of belonging to the school community.

What the supported playgroups looks like depends on the school. Often, they might be staffed by a teacher who's been released from class or a non-class based teacher. There might be a mentor. There might be a local community service worker who is also part of the program, or there might be a facilitator, so, often play groups might be running the school site, but sometimes they're actually run as a bit of an outreach program in a park or a Community Centre, and generally it's sort of 2 or 3 hours a week and the children attend with a carer or their family.

When the supported playgroup is on the school site it provides an opportunity for the development of relationships between families and school staff, and opportunities for ongoing informal communication. Sometimes schools will self-fund to release the staff member to run the play group or they might partner with a community organisation who provides the staff or have a community use agreement in place for a community group to use school facilities. This is where the development of the relationships and the collaborations really come into their own, because if you do have a community group running the play group, you're going to need to have a lot of communication about the purpose and the protocols, and even just the logistics, but you know, very, very worthwhile.

Generally, play groups provide a range of play-based activities which are familiar inviting and open ended. Sometimes supported playgroups or usually run concurrent parents, So, there might be a time for the children and the parents to play together. Then maybe the parents might do an information session and then continue playing with the children.

Sheree Bell

Yes, from people who do have support or have implemented supported playgroups I always just hear about how effective it has been in their context and how the families have that great building of relationship and connections from the supported playgroups.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely so, for refugee children or children, newly arrived in Australia because supporter play group provides an opportunity to make sense of their world and explore a new environment. It can be a restorative and healing experience to support children affected by trauma to recover. The opportunity to engage in play in close proximity to their parents, supporting the development of resilience.

The play group provides the opportunity to develop and practice social and emotional skills. So, those skills that we know [are] so important, that are critical for Kindergarten – waiting your turn, self-regulation following the rules, negotiating, and sharing – all these things can be addressed in the play group through a play-based activity program. Play groups provide opportunities for the development of skills and understandings needed to interact positively with others. An opportunity to gain confidence through positive interactions with peers. That's very similar. I wonder if that should be one point together and the opportunity of a time for the child and parent to play together enhancing their attachment.

So, if you haven't had any experience with a supported play group, you might find this interview very interesting. In it, Abby, who's a teacher at Banksia Road Public School, talks about the play group she established as part of the beginning school well program and her play group was targeting culturally diverse families. It's a great lesson, So, if you want to pause and listen now, that's great, or you might want to have a little listen later.

OK, so, if you are organising and running a supported play group it is a little bit of a checklist to ensure that it's a high-quality play environment. You absolutely want to have a focus on play. You don't want to focus on stencils or teaching skills, academic type skills. You want to focus on play So, that the child will develop in all their domains. You want a respectful, welcoming and inviting environment. You want your play group to reflect the culture of the school as well as participating families. You want to encourage participation. You want the environment to be inclusive, and as mentioned, promote learning through play So, the resources should reflect that and support play based learning by having open ended resources you'll be able to challenge the older children whilst keeping the younger children safe and you want your play group, whatever you provide you need to provide choice for the children So, they can choose which play experience they engage with.

Sheree Bell

I know I spoke to some schools who had implemented supported play group as well Kelly and they particularly had a lot of success with doing some gardening and some work with putting some plants and doing a veggie garden together. That was a really great way for that particular community in their play group to connect.

Kelly Birket

Yes, so, it sounds like probably that was a strength or an area of experience. The children and families might already have had and so, that, yes, it's built upon that. Yes, sounds good.

Sheree Bell

They like that bit of balance between the indoor environment and outdoor environment. They were very fortunate they had that bit of space outside.

Kelly Birket

Yeah, OK, so, I might get you to move that on Sheree. Alright, thank you. OK So, generally in early childhood Setting, educators will create a series of little areas or nooks. They might use furniture mats or rugs to define the areas. If you're doing this, it is a good idea to provide opportunities which address all of the domains of development. So, here again the same domains at the Australian Early Development Census looks at Children's development in. I've taken their little image so, you want to make sure that you're addressing physical health and wellbeing, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive skills and communication skills. So, for instance I guess what I'm referring to is providing a broad range of play activities which address each of those domains.

So, you want to also provide for a range of types of play, quiet play, boisterous physical play, a book area, sensory or messy play role play, a construction area, creative art, craft or music area, writing, drawing area, numeracy, games and activities. If you have access to an outdoor area that's unreal, So, then if you did, you could include activities such as painting with water, throwing beanbags into a bucket, as Sheree mentioned, planting seeds, an obstacle course, chalk drawing on cement, some sort of water activity, mud, slime, sand, bubble blown, there's lots of options there If you don't have experience with this sort of program. The key thing is to provide a large range of options that are open ended and then allow the children to select all to choose the activity which they are interested in.

OK, so, with your equipment and materials it is important to select items that we mentioned are engaging and invite children to play. We want to encourage the children to explore, discover and experiment. As I mentioned before, you want open ended materials which cater for a range of ages and abilities. I want materials which can be used flexibly with multiple uses, reflect the diversity of the school community and a safe clean and angle condition. If you can use a combination of commercial, natural and recycled materials and just keep in mind trying to include activities or experiences that families can replicate at home because you want them to support their child's learning at home. If there's some things that they can do at home, you might be able to afford some really great resources, but by using recycled materials or reusing things that you've got around you'll definitely enable them to be able to replicate at home.

As I mentioned before, definitely avoid using any sort of worksheet or everyone has to sit down and do the same thing at the same time. This is a routine of what an example of a supported play group. It's up to you depends on your time. It depends on the families. It's really, really up to you how you do it, so, I'll just have a read through those eight points. It's really important that your routine, each session is the same and that helps the children and their families with predictability. Just like in Kindy you are going to need to teach everyone. You'll play group routines and expectations. I don't want to say the word behaviour, but you know everyone needs to know what the expectations are with regard to keeping their hands to themselves and helping pack away.

Sometimes play groups provide free fruit to all, they ask the children to bring their own fruit just so that they can have that experience of everyone sitting together and sharing something to eat often. Generally, playgroups also then have some sort of signal to let everybody know that play times over, it might be a song, and then when the song finishes, everybody packs away.

Sheree Bell

It's lovely when new people can come together and share, share a meal or break bread as such. It kind of goes across cultures, doesn't it? It's a really nice way too sit together and build those relationships.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely and so good for the children because that's what they'll be doing. They'll be sitting with their friends when they start Kindergarten, so, it's a great experience.

Sheree Bell

Absolutely.

Kelly Birket

OK, thanks Sheree. So, just some resources if you are looking at initiating a play group or working with someone else to establish a play group in our Teams folder, there's a document. The first document there, a word document. I just list some appropriate play experiences, and then there's quite a lot of these in the middle there. These sheets there, one or two pages long and they are just from the WA Play Group Association. They just talk about it isn't what you need and what the children are learning and how you might go about setting it up and then the final document there is how to start a play group. There's some information that might not be specific to you in a school setting, but definitely worth a read.

OK So, I'm going to call these play sessions now. Each school called some different things. Some call them ‘Orientation sessions’ or ‘Transition sessions’. Basically, it's an extension on the play group idea. It's a series of play sessions. Children attend, but the key difference is they don't have a carer or parent with them. Generally, they are a little more regular, their regular over a longer period of time, so, it might be that they attend for 2 hours a week throughout Term 3 and 4. Some schools run these, some do not, some run them for 3 sessions. Some run them for 6. It's again a local decision.

As mentioned in part 1, the purpose is not to teach your provider preschool and at that the sessions should not be aimed at addressing skill deficits. The key thing for a child in the year before school is to be enrolled in a regulated, approved early childhood education centre. So, your play sessions shouldn't be trying to replicate that. If the child hasn't or isn't attending preschool, I'd definitely encourage the family to enrol them in either preschool or some sort of long day care service. Some sort of service that implements the Early Years Learning Framework. Yes, it's important that your play session don't become, or they are not seen as a mini Kindergarten, the best place for a child prior to school is in a regulated approved early childhood service.

OK, just back to the slide, the second dot point. The children engage in meaningful play-based classroom experiences and group activities. So, things like stories, singing, and games. Often information sessions for families are run concurrently with the content determined by local need and culture. For example, there might be an optional session for families. Do they bring their child, leave them at the play session and go off and listen to an information session about effective parenting? The benefits of play, road safety, helping their child with literacy or numeracy, or healthy eating at school and home. The great benefit of these sessions is that they provide an opportunity for school staff to observe the children as they engage with the school environment, identifying strengths and any emerging needs. Children and families meet and engage with teachers, key staff and other children and families. Thanks Sheree.

OK, so, often run in, at the same time, in tandem with the play sessions, buddy program. So, sometimes the buddies actually get involved at the play sessions. Sometimes though, they don't get involved until the start of Kindergarten. The benefits of buddy program. So, the promotion of social support networks transitioning children develop a sense of community and belonging in the school and an enhance their sense of the schools as a friendly and supportive place. So, as you know the programs pair children commencing school with older children at the school, and I've heard of many variations I've heard of the pairing with the new kindies with their children who will be in Year 1 who just left kindy. The children who will be Year 6, Year 3. It's very much a local decision. Generally, the older buddy is provided with some sort of training about communicating and engaging with the little buddy. The buddy pairs might participate in structured activities together, or they might choose the activities they engage in, and often their buddy programs, you know, run for the whole year and develop into reading sessions were the buddy and the little buddy read together. There's lots of variations.

OK, so, that's the end of the information for this presentation.

So, the idea now is to complete step 3 of the reflection scaffold. So, this requires you to pause the recording and just think about everything we've covered in these sessions. So, sessions 1, 2 and 3. Think about strengths and needs of your community and their transition practices examined thus far in this course. Also, it's not written here, but think about, refer to your self-assessment. The first step of the scaffold, identify practices you would like to trial or modifier to support the children transitioning into your school and then complete step 3 of the Beginning school strong and successfully action plan template.

In point 2 there it's got the word modify that's to acknowledge you may have some practices in place already that are going pretty well, but you'd like to tweak them after what you've heard today or after listening to one of the videos or one of the readings. That's great. We're not saying to throw everything out and start completely from scratch. If you've got stuff that you think is going well, you might just want to tweak it a little bit to improve its effectiveness. It's up to you to decide how many practices you think you should either trial or modify. It's going to be manageable. So, maybe for now, for this year it might just be 2 or 3.

Keep in mind though you can't just keep piling up your workload if there's already a couple of practices that your school uses that are going well. Don't overload yourself. You might want to let something go or like I said, just modify something. If there's more than a couple that you want to try just wait until the following year. Select the practices discussed in parts 2 or 3 that caught your attention, interest or curiosity. There'll be some that will work well in your school, but not in another school, and it's only you how would know that.

Finally, it's advisable that the implementation of this plan not just be the responsibility of one staff member. I hope you've got a transition team and then you can get other people on board with you because it's very hard to make change on your own. It's better if you've got a little team.

So, also to support yourself doing this task, you might want to refer to the Microsoft Team resources folder. Have a look through the videos and some of the readings there. One of the resources that's been developed by the department is part of the transition to school toolkit is a list of effective practices, you might want to go back to that, have a look at that.

Just one more final thing. If your school plan includes transition as a strategic direction or a strategy addressing a strategic direction, probably I wouldn't work on this particular scaffold here for the action plan, I would go and work on that, whatever it is, documentation you've got to address that in your school plan. OK.

Sheree Bell

No point of kind doing it in two places, you know make it work with what’s currently happening in your school for sure.

Kelly Birket

Absolutely, you just make it work for yourself. For this PL you don't have to actually submit this reflection scaffold after you finished it, so, there's no pressure on how you use it or what you do. The key thing is that you are able to take away what you've heard and use it to improve your transition practices.

OK, thanks everybody, I hope you enjoyed this session and you're going to join us again for part four.

Sheree Bell

Yes, thanks Kelly, that was great, all those, some illustrations of practice that were highlighted great.

Kelly Birket

Thanks Sheree, OK thanks everyone.

Sheree Bell

Thanks.

[End of transcript]

Sheree Bell

Hi and welcome everyone to Beginning school strong and successfully part 4, with the focus on continuity of learning. I'd like to begin by acknowledging and paying my respects to the Biddegal people, the traditional custodians of the land which I'm on today. I'd also like to pay my respects to the traditional custodians of all the lands that you're on today as well. I acknowledge the Biddegals Peoples continuing connection to land water and community. I would also like to pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders viewing this presentation. So, to get us started, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Sheree Bell and I'm one of the Early Learning Advisors within the Early Learning team. Today joining me is my colleague Kelly Birkett. Hi Kelly.

Kelly Birkett

Hi Sheree. Hi everyone and welcome back.

Sheree Bell

So, here are the course outcomes today. In particular, this recording we are addressing in outcome five reflecting on how age-appropriate pedagogies in kindergarten classroom support continuity of learning. So, as far as the course materials and transition resources, as we've mentioned before, you can access these through Microsoft Teams in the files tab there. There's a folder specifically set up for all the resources. So, the course overview we're now up to part four continuity of learning.

We're going to start just by setting the scene a little we will just show this as a bit of a reminder for what was looked at in part one around the school excellence framework. You can see there at those two levels, continuity of learning is noted in the sustaining and growing. The school seeks to collaborate with parents and students whose continuity of learning is at risk and in excelling the school engages in strong collaborations between parents, students and the community that inform and support continuity of learning for all students at transition points, including highly mobile students and students with a typical enrolment.

When we talk about continuity of learning we're making reference to that continuity of learning from an early childhood education service into kindergarten. Continuity in learning in terms of transition is all about a seamless transition from the home and those early childhood education services into school, which then builds upon that learning that they're bringing with them. The continuity of learning, support successful transitions and is crucial for optimising improved outcomes for children. This involves knowing what and how children are learning in each of those spaces, that private and school space. A discontinuity can hinder a successful transition. The greater the discontinuity, the more kind of culture shock or alienated a child may feel.

To support the continuity in the area of curriculum, schools can find out about respect and acknowledge prior learning. Build upon the wealth of experiences and knowledge each child brings with them and to support continuity in the area of pedagogy. Schools can use age-appropriate pedagogies, which we will go into in a little bit more detail later on. So, in this recording we will look at first the curriculum of the early childhood education services. You've got some knowledge about the context of the setting that children are coming from and then how pedagogy and kindergarten can support that continuity of learning. We will start here, with what does early childhood curriculum look like. Thanks OK.

Kelly Birkett

Thanks Sheree. You might recognise the image there, the document belonging being incoming, that's the Early Years Learning Framework, the mandatory national curriculum for the prior to school services. The reason we're looking at this in the presentation is so that you have an understanding, if not already, of the curriculum children have experienced prior to school. It's a broad holistic framework developed to guide early childhood educators to develop quality early childhood education programs and to ensure all children receive a quality early childhood education.

The Early Years Learning Framework(EYLF) is built on the concepts or themes of belonging, being and becoming. The vision of the document is for all children to experience play-based learning that is engaging and build success for life, and the aim is to extend and enrich children's learning from birth to five years. Through the transition to school the Early Years Learning Framework takes a sociocultural approach to learning, that is, children learn through relationships and interactions. Here is very much a snapshot.

The EYLF is structured around three interrelated elements, we've got the principals at the beginning there in the middle the practices and then on the right the learning outcomes. You'll notice in red there, one of the practices 'continuity of learning and transitions'. The document highlights the importance of smooth transition between preschool and school. You'll be familiar already with those principles in the first box because we talked about them being applicable to a high quality transition were we particularly unpacked them in part two.

The EYLF sets out what content should be taught, but not as explicitly as the K to 6 syllabus. It has more of a focus on how content should be taught so the pedagogical practices, the five learning outcomes encompass lifelong goals and include dispositions towards learning that underpin engagement, and the knowledge, skills, and understandings that are essential foundations. Unlike the K to 6 syllabus documents, the EYLF does not prescribe what children should know or be able to do at certain Stages, nor does it state explicitly what educators must teach. The document includes points of evidence that are the shorter term objectives and often discrete skills or content. The early years learning framework also is written in a way that local context can interpret it to suit their children and their community.

So, at the start of each of the K to 6 syllabus documents is this same statement noting that the movement into Early Stage one should be seen as a continuum of learning from the home setting and the Early Years Learning Framework into Early Stage one. The New South Wales documents recognise that the EYLF establishes the foundations for effective learning in school and throughout life and aims to build on those foundations. The documents are complementary and provide articulated pathways of learning from early childhood education into school and beyond.

Sheree Bell

It's really quality teaching and remains the cornerstone of both of those documents. Kelly, doesn't it?

Kelly Birkett

Absolutely.

Sheree Bell

Because it's including reflection and evaluation and those holistic approaches with the concepts of wellbeing linked closely with Learning, responsiveness to children and differentiation using age-appropriate pedagogies and integrated learning programs and, of course, that learning through play inquiry, learning, problem solving, and project based learning or future focused learning.

Kelly Birkett

Yes, that's right. Thanks, Sheree. There's actually a document shown on the right of the screen here. It was written by ACARA and the Early Childhood Association of Australia. It includes these tables to show the links between the Early Years Learning Framework and the Kindergarten curriculum. Just have a little look at that table now. So, that is just one of them. It refers to outcome 5 from the Early Years Learning Framework. That outcome is children are effective communicators. Then the second column you can see the Melbourne declaration goals that particular outcome relates to. The Australian curriculum learning areas and the general capabilities.

The tables in the document include broad brush connections that are philosophical and conceptual as well as a few specific links at the level of learning area content. The reason we've included this in the presentation is just to show you that there is a continuum of learning from the Early Years Learning Framework into the Australian curriculum, which has influenced obviously the New South Wales syllabus documents.

Sheree Bell

Yes, that's really helpful to look at them and think about them like that to really think about that continuity of learning. That's a great resource Kelly, thank you.

So, earlier in the presentation we mentioned that to support continuity in the area of pedagogy, schools could use age-appropriate pedagogies. So, we're going to take a little bit of a look at that now, and we're going to start with a video from the age-appropriate pedagogies website through the Department of Education in QLD.

Age-appropriate pedagogies are shaping teaching and learning in the early years of school now and into the future. The research shows children learn best when they are actively engaged in purposeful learning experiences. The Australian curriculum outlines the knowledge, understanding and skills all young Australians should be taught. Grounded in contemporary research literature, age-appropriate pedagogies support teachers to identify the most effective way to teach curriculum content by providing a conceptual framework to support pedagogical decision making and reflection. Positioned at the centre of the age-appropriate pedagogies conceptual framework, is the child, their interests and capabilities. The teacher is also represented with recognition of their interests, skills, capabilities, and philosophies. The three vital and connected components of curriculum, context and evidence of learning, situate teacher decision-making within the teaching and learning process.

The conceptual framework then outlines the various approaches of age-appropriate pedagogies, inquiry, learning event-based learning, project approach, explicit instruction, play-based learning, direct teaching and instruction, and a blended approach, and the inherent characteristics of age-appropriate pedagogies. Active agentic collaborative, creative, explicit. Language rich and dialogic learner focused narrative. Playful, responsive and scaffolded arrange and balance of approaches and characteristics are required. Overtime the research literature is very clear that age-appropriate pedagogies are necessary in the early years of school to engage young learners achieve learning outcomes and set children up for long term success. Age-appropriate pedagogies shaping teaching and learning in the early years of school.

Fantastic, so that just provides a little bit of an overview of the age-appropriate pedagogies and the characteristics and approaches that are part of that that age-appropriate pedagogies thinking. It was very much just an overview, so if you'd like to do some more reading around age-appropriate pedagogies, there is a website that you can go to, these are just some of the things that you can find on that website. There's the foundation paper summary, there's some explanation of terms, the third link there actually provides a link to a video it's about 10 minutes long and it provides I guess the characteristics in action, which is fantastic as well. So, definitely check that out as you reflect on age-appropriate pedagogies and continuity of learning as part of your transition to school. I think actually Kelly is there some of these resources found in the folder in teams as well.

Kelly Birkett

Yes, I've got the first two, the blue documents there I've downloaded and then uploaded them into there and I will also have a look at uploading the video.

Sheree Bell

Oh fantastic thanks. Kelly that would be great. Just nice, easy access, but that website is fantastic. There's a lot of great case studies and resources that you can access there to learn more about age-appropriate pedagogies.

Kelly Birkett

Sounds good, and this work that the Queensland Government did on age-appropriate pedagogies was in conjunction with in partnership with a University. Was that Curtin University, Sheree?

Sheree Bell

I know Professor Bev Fluckiger is from Griffith University and The Institute of Educational Research.

Kelly Birkett

Oh great, sorry to put you on the spot there.

Sheree Bell

No that’s okay.

Kelly Birkett

Definitely some great research and really interesting to look at. These resources on the website or through our teams folder.

Sheree Bell

Yes, they've got some good information about data collected from the research too that shows the impact as well, which is really interesting to have a bit of a read of. Now I'm just struggling to move to the next slide.

Kelly Birkett

No worries.

Sheree Bell

Just move it across. Perfect thank you. So, look, I hope you enjoyed that Video and that quick overview of age-appropriate pedagogies. In this slide here, it kind of just shows three of the age-appropriate teaching approaches mentioned in the video, and a bit of a brief summary of the main points from each of these three approaches. So, we've got inquiry learning, which lends itself particularly well to science and technology, while the project approach lends itself really well to history, geography, PDHPE. Then we look at play-based learning, which lends itself to every area. So, if you're looking to utilise these approaches, you can really support that continuity of learning.

Kelly Birkett

The early years learning framework is very much based on play-based learning, so the children in your kindergarten who've attended a service before school will be very familiar with that as an approach to learning, and that will support them, they'll be comfortable, they'll be familiar, and they'll thrive.

Sheree Bell

Absolutely, absolutely. I might need you to move across one more. So, we have just got a quote here for you to reflect on nothing magical or mysterious happens to children's brains or learning styles in the six week holiday period between finishing early years education and starting school. There are no grounds, therefore, for abruptly changing the teaching style and content. Rather, there is a strong rationale for seeking greater alignment between early years services in school curricula with a more gradual introduction to structured learning. So, something to think about as the little ones, as our kindergarten cohort come into school.

Kelly Birkett

Yes, yes thanks Sheree such a powerful quote all of a sudden they are wearing a uniform, but the child's learning style hasn't changed.

Sheree Bell

Yes, yes, absolutely.

Kelly Birkett

OK, so in this next section we're going to focus on play is a context for learning. Learning through play or play-based learning strongly supports the continuity of learning, so in the early years of formal schooling, it's really important to provide familiar play-based learning opportunities. Play based approaches and pedagogies provide continuity and help children adjust to their new setting with a strong sense of familiarity and competency. As we've said before the children entering kinder have come from a setting or home where play-based learning was prioritised and viewed as the most effective way for children to learn

Sheree Bell

and that's what we heard in the video, wasn't it we heard that play-based and active learning approaches are age-appropriate and promote learning.

Kelly Birkett

yes, absolutely. OK, so we will look now at the benefits of play. I'm sure a lot of this won't be news to you, but I just wanted to document it. Play provides a context for learning through which children organise and makes sense of their social worlds as they engage actively with people, objects and representations play stimulates various parts of the brain, reinforcing networks and strengthening brain development. Play allows for the practise and application of learning inauthentic situation. So, that's the approach event-based learning referred to in the video, play enables children to make connection between prior experiences and new learning, plays open ended enabling children to participate at their own level without the fear of being right or wrong, and finally play promotes increased feelings of success and optimism as children act as their own ages and make their own choices.

Sheree Bell

It's no surprise there's considerable research of the benefits of play for children's learning across all those areas of development, creative, social, emotional, wellbeing, and physical.

Kelly Birkett

Absolutely, and on the screen now you can see just a few of the capabilities and skills that children develop or learn as they play. OK, you could add some more points to this slide, but the particular thing I really love about players that when they play the children can take risks and they transfer what they've learned in other situations into their play, and because it's fun comfortable there confident they do take risks and they'll push themselves further than what they would in a more formal learning situation. OK. We are going to watch another video. This video is being made by department staff member Kelly Van Stable. She's a school counsellor. She's a registered psychologist and also a project officer with the refugee student counselling support team. So, in this video, Kelly discusses the stage of play, the importance of pretend play and implications to child development when certain stages of play are missed. So, I'll start the video now.

The interesting thing about play is it actually develops in stages and it's real.

Kelly Birkett

I'll just try that again. Sorry, I'll just try one more time.

It is important for teachers to be aware of this, because you can actually assess or really track child's progress and development based on how they play. So, solitary play, usually occurs from birth up to the first 2 years of life and this is when the child plays alone, so they're not really interested in playing with other children quite yet. This is where their priority is developing bonds with caregivers.

Spectator or onlooker play actually develops closer to the 2 year mark, and this is where children begin to watch each other, but they don't necessarily play together. Parallel play emerges around 2 years when a child plays alongside or near others, but doesn't play with them so that they're playing side by side and had no interest in interacting.

Associative play starts to happen around 3 years of age, and this is when a child starts to interact with others during play. But there's not a large amount of interaction at this stage, so a child might be doing an activity related to the children around them, but not actually interacting. So, for example, they might all be playing on the same piece of playground equipment, but all doing different things like climbing and swinging.

Pretend play has many other names like imaginative play, creative play or make-believe play and examples of display include playing superheroes, playing Mummies and Daddies, dressing up and having a meal with a teddy bear for example. So, this actually begins to emerge around 18 months for most children and by 4 years old children can quite often play out quite complex scenes together over several days.

Unoccupied play is not quite represented accurately in this picture. Usually unoccupied play occurs in children between birth and 3 months, and it's really where the child doesn't look like they're playing at all. There may be randomly moving with no particular objective, but despite appearances, this is definitely play and sets the stage for further play exploration. So, we know from the research that's coming out of Deacon University at the moment that the play therapy masters there, that children who do not reach the stage of pretend play share particular difficulties. So, this can be social behaviour and academic.

So, if we look at as social, for example, children who have not reached pretend play stage may find it really hard to be independent in their play. Only want to deal with play with structured games like puzzles for example. They may really struggle to take the perspective of others. Behaviourally children have not reached pretend play stage may seem like they are quite disruptive. They may destroy the others games and scenes. If they do play out a story it may end very quickly so their narrative is not sustained, so the character always dies, for example, very quickly in the story, and they could be quite unorganised.

So, for example, let's just say you have a Year 4 teacher and she's made available a lot of pretend play toys for her students, because in terms of developmental play, they should all have reached pretend play stage by Year 4. Some students will actually play successfully, but some will actually really struggle, so they may get rough, they may fight, they may bicker over the equipment and not actually play with it and the difficulty there is that those children, although they may come across as disruptive and seen disruptive, are actually maybe not at pretend play stage yet. They actually don't know how to create narratives without equipment, and so they may do other things instead.

They might try and imitate what they've seen on TV, so they might try and be a power ranger and go around kicking people or annoying other children by knocking things off their desks or prodding them as they walk past. Because really, this is actually all they know how to do in that situation. They are unable to take the perspective of other children in that situation because they're not at the same stage of development.

So, if you could imagine two children building a magical castle with blocks together and they are really co-creating and focusing on their blocks and their castle, and then another child comes along and crashes through that castle and knocks it all over and then laughs and thinks it's really funny. What's happening there is that the child that's destroyed the castle may not actually understand the specialness of what his peers have created together, simply because he's not yet at the same stage of play.

So, if you consider what the typical reaction to this event would be, people get annoyed, they start to think that the student is disruptive and has social skills issues. He may be diagnosed with ADHD or ASD when really what's going on there is that child has not reached the same play stage as his peers and so is finding it really difficult to connect in and relate.

So, this can make the playground a really difficult place for some students because we're misunderstanding their behaviour as disruptive rather than developmental. It means they often get referred for the social and behavioural issues when actually what they need is support to play more at their level of development and naturally work their way up through those play stages, from solitary to all the way up to pretend play. Most children, with the exception of those, perhaps with a developmental disability, will naturally work their way up through those stages without much support.

They just need the time and the space and help with safety. This is essentially the progress of childhood, so it's not something we have to get in there and change in a rush. We simply need to provide the right environment so that they can catch up to their peers and it makes sense also academically if you think of two little children playing together, and maybe one has a dolly in her arms and she says to the playmate next to her own. My dolly has a sore arm and her playmates says I'll be the doctor and I'll put a band aid on it and maybe she sticks a band aid on dolly's arm. This is an example of where narrative is born, so it's understandable then that overtime as their play becomes more and more complicated and complex maybe they decide to go to the hospital together. Maybe there's an operation. Maybe other children then join in so the narrative becomes more complex and evolves overtime.

So, it’s understandable then, that children who have not reached that stage would have difficulty writing stories, difficulty predicting what comes next in the story, difficulty with providing questions when asked about a text or comprehending what they're reading, thinking that they can also get quite stuck in concrete thinking.

So, let's quickly look at the different types of play. So, child centred play is really important. It's when the child leads and makes their own decisions about what that place is going to look like and how they will go about it there in complete control of the play. This type of play is so important for children, because they will instinctively develop social skills like sharing, taking turns, tolerance of others through this post process, and they can often do all this learning without the assistance of the adults. The adult really just needs to provide some supervision and safety in that situation. In this play, there's no right, no wrong. It's really about children just using their imaginations to develop games and interact without being in an adult led environment.

So, it is really important children are given lots of time and space to play in this way and really that you know that play can involve equipment or not. It can be inside or outside. It can have an end product or it may not. So, really this play is all about playing for play sake. Adult led play and guided play can kind of be considered under the banner of educational play. So, guided play is where maybe the adult leads, then the child leads the adult leads and the child leads, so it's kind of a weaving of the two leading and following and this is really where adult and child can go on a journey together. Adult lead play is where the adult decides what the activity will be and what the rules are. The Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework.

Kelly Birkett

Not quite sure what's happening with the sound there. This is nearly the last slide. I think it actually is. Kelly was going to talk about play is a dance and that generally a good quality program will have a combination of adult lead learning, child directed play and learning and guided play and learning. OK, I'll just see if I just, oh yes, we did actually come to the end there, Kelly noted play can be adult or child directed, so this is important to keep in mind because often there's a misconception that play is just completely free with no adult playing is just basically a free for all there's no intervention or direction, but this is not actually the case when we're talking about play-based learning. Often that it's a balanced approach and we're going to have a look now at a few examples of adult led and guided play, which addresses early learning outcomes. In early childhood education settings, educators are very deliberate about the play they direct or the learning areas they create for children, and then often the children will go in there and direct their own play but there is intentionality about that the setup of that environment.

OK, so this quote just basically reviews and confirms this little section. Child directed play is a teaching and learning approach familiar to all children. They use it at home with siblings or friends on their own at early childhood settings, for example, during transition to School, opportunities continue with this style of learning can help children adjust to other guided play or adult led teaching and learning approaches. Play based approaches and pedagogies provide continuity and help children adjust to their new setting with a strong sense, familiarity and competency.

OK. Pardon me, if you haven't had much contact with an early childhood education service, it is handy to know what the key differences are between the service and a school setting and how the children experience that setting. It will make you possibly a little more understanding and empathetic of what the child's come from and how it does contrast with the school setting. It's also helpful to know because the expectations of a new child in kindergarten can be quite different from what they are use to.

OK, so in an early childhood education service there's a ratio of one adult to ten children or less. So, straight away you've got less responsiveness from adults because you just don't have as many around. In the other childhood service, the routine is flexible and can be adapted to meet the needs of the children. There's a timetable, but it’s fully flexible and depending on what's going on and how people are feeling, if someone is completely engaged in something, a play period can be extended. You don't have the bells obviously breaking your day up. Children's agency is promoted and they are supported to make decisions about things that affect them. The indoors and outdoors are viewed as equally important learning environments, so the planning of the outdoor environment is planned equally as well for as the indoor environment. Families are viewed as equal partners in decision making around curriculum and as we've talked about learning through play, providing open ended experiences and active learning are prioritised. The curriculum is child centred with children's interests and strengths used as a vehicle for learning.

OK, so in this next section we are just going to a have a little look at what it might look like to use a play-based approach to address the early Stage one syllabus outcomes.

OK, so on this slide there's some examples of play-based learning experiences which are teacher initiated and directed to address maths outcomes. As you know, in maths early Stage one the syllabus has a strong focus on using concrete materials and their hands on manipulation of objects. Resources such as play dough, collections of objects and board games are familiar to the children who attended preschool or maybe at home and will support continuity of learning. So, in the darker text there I've just got the outcomes from the math syllabus and then in blue the lighter blue some activities that can be used to address those outcomes. So, have a read there.

OK, here's a video. It's a role play cafe that's been set up. I'm not sure what year level it is, but in the video as you are watching it, think about the maths outcomes that are addressed. Pretend play is the vehicle here for learning as talked about in the video. Are the children engaged and on task? What I just said, the outcomes are addressed, which outcomes are addressed and how could the area be modified to address additional outcomes?

OK, so before we move on Sheree Is there anything in particular that you noticed there?

Sheree Bell

Oh well, there was obviously a lot of dealings with money being a cafe there. What was interesting about the children's engagement was everyone kind of knew how it all kind of operated together. They were having a turn at being a customer and some children behind the scenes doing the cooking and some were delivering so they all kind of knew their role but they did actually swap over. They kind of seamlessly swapped over at some points there too.

Kelly Birkett

They did. I loved how engaged they were. Everybody was on task and yes, obviously really concentrating and focusing to make sure they did their role, carried out their role as they should.

Sheree Bell

They did absolutely and I think that the teacher there she really didn't have to be. They were kind of inviting her into the play and she was able to scaffold a little something along the way there through her language. Oh, you know I've only got $1 here. I need to get three. Hang on I'll get a little bit more and so she did scaffold through a language, but in a play-based way.

Kelly Birkett

Yes for sure I wondered also one of the little signs on the wall gave me the idea that maybe adding a unequal arm balance or a set of scales that the children could use to weight fruit or to somehow make a decision about what something costs based on weight might be a way of extending the learning there.

Sheree Bell

Absolutely, I was also thinking I couldn't quite see exactly what was going on in the actual kitchen behind the counter there, but thinking about, you know, cooking and looking at measurement, and even fractions and weights and things like that. As far as cooking because to extend the maths of it. What was interesting though is there was some literacy already included in there, from the signs on the back of the wall there which is kind of labelling some of the things like whisking and beating and things like that as far as cooking. But they also had the pad and paper to take the order for the cafe.

Kelly Birkett

Yes, and the conversation between the children it was nice to hear the communication. That was great. Alright, thanks for that.

OK, so we'll move on now and have a little look at English just like we did with the maths. Here's some examples of play-based learning addressing English outcomes through play. So, for instance, an outcome related to communication could be addressed by small groups using puppets or making story characters to retell a familiar story. An outcome demonstrates developing skills and using letters, simple sound lens and some sight words represent known words when spelling. There's a few different ways. One thing you could do is there could be a word family dice game, so students would take turns rolling a dice showing word families, and then they could after each roll, each student writes as many words as they can from the word family on a small white board. It's teacher directed as the teacher initiated but it is still play. A variation might be that the students decide which word families should be shown on the dice or another variation might be single letters as shown, and that the students list words starting with each particular for name, just different ways to vary it to differentiate.

Sheree Bell

What's good about that is the first variation you mentioned there Kelly is having the students decide a little bit of something towards their learning. A little bit of that kind of agentic age-appropriate approach there as well.

Kelly Birkett

Absolutely, absolutely, and I mean just to have two or three different activities which addressed the same outcome, but giving the students the option of choosing which one they engage with is really important. Yes, keeps them motivated and definitely helps the levels of engagement.

Sheree Bell

For sure.

Kelly Birkett

So, we'll look at another video, but this is very similar to the one we just saw about the cafe. This is another role play situation set up in a classroom. This is KK’s restaurant, the recording, the sounds good. The picture is not quite as smooth. I guess you'd say it's a little bit jumpy, but we decided it is only two minutes and it's a very valuable video. So, in this video the children are practicing their reading, writing skills. OK, we might just have a listen as you viewing the video think about the English learning outcomes that you think are being addressed and again, just like last time how the play experience and or environment could be modified to promote greater learning, also how could they experience, lend itself to learning in other learning areas of Cross curriculum priorities and general capabilities.

Energy, food, carbohydrate. Are you making that healthy meal for anyone in particular? Are you making that healthy meal For anyone in particular. For the baby. That one’s made for our age. Chicken and avocado. Some are berries with yogurt. Rice with mango sauce. Open and shut. And so do you come to the restaurant everyday? Yes. What do you like doing there at the restaurant? Making lunch, pictures and prices.

Kelly Birkett

OK, anything particular catch your interest Sheree?

Sheree Bell

That was just great. I was thinking about they were highly engaged again. They were really into their job, what they were doing in this restaurant and creating it and setting up the boards and they were really thinking about how it worked operationally. These little open and closed signs that he popped up there. This is when it's open. This is for when it's closed, so there was a lot going on. I'm thinking maybe modifications may have been several different examples of other restaurants, say menus or things like that. Maybe some with pictures, perhaps moved into a bit of creative arts with some drawing as well.

Kelly Birkett

Absolutely and it's hard, I mean, it's obviously a project that had been ongoing for a while. We just saw a little tiny snippet. I'd be intrigued as to what sort of modelling took place. It seems to me that very much the children had transferred skills that they've already learned. So, for instance, that little fellow who was writing the times I just wonder if there was an explicit lesson on writing the digital time and then he's transferred that skill here in this situation. Not sure.

Sheree Bell

Yes, I guess like you say, look it is such a short snippet so I would be interested to know even how far into this project it is and where it started and how it developed overtime and whether really the children took it on board and shaped the direction that the project went in. Like you say, what explicit teaching the teacher came in and out of that play?

Kelly Birkett

Yes, would be very interesting to know, so we'll move on. But hopefully now you've just got a little idea of what it might look like in a kindergarten classroom and obviously there's been a million variations on that.

OK, so another way that teachers would address learning through play is to have a bit more of a holistic view. So, for instance setting up a construction area in the classroom and then using that one learning area to address outcomes from a number of learning areas. At the top of each of the columns there you can see the particular experience, so they are teacher guided. So, for instance, to address English outcome ENE 6B experience might be children are provided with a wide range of 3D objects to build with and then asked to orally describe to a peer, older buddy or teacher how they built their construction using past tense and time connectives.

To address a maths outcome related to manipulating, sorting and representing 3D objects and describing them as experience might be that children provided again with a range of 3D objects and then they are encouraged to talk about what they're doing as they build and stack.

OK, and then there's a science and technology outcome related to exploring the characteristics, needs and uses of living things, and perhaps a guided experience in that corner or area of the classroom it might be that the teacher modifies the area by adding some nonfiction texts about animals, animal figurines, and measuring instruments and then ask the children and scaffolds them to design and construct appropriately sized in quiet zoo enclosures for a number of animals that meet their needs.

Finally PDHPE using interpersonal skills to effectively interact with others. This could be addressed by small group work, where groups of two or three children are given challenges that they need to solve as a group in the construction area. For instance, build a tower one meter tall using exactly nine blocks so that challenge and challenge of working in a small group would facilitate and develop those interpersonal skills, obviously the teachers able to model and prompt and scaffold the children.

OK, so we'll just move on to the next slide. So, here's some general tips for adapting everyday activities to incorporate age-appropriate pedagogies. You might have some other ideas as well. This was just a little bit of a brainstorm and ways to adapt everyday activities to incorporate age-appropriate pedagogies.

One thing you might try is providing the children with more choice and options of what they engage with, as well as how they demonstrate their learning. So, that will support their agency. I can't remember what it is. Yes, agentic characteristic of learning. Make sure as much as possible you use resources and materials that children can touch and manipulate. Include activities that involve the children in moving and doing. Incorporate activities which can be done with a friend or in a small group requiring collaboration and communication. Find out about the children's interests and use these as the vehicle for learning. What I meant by that is perhaps the restaurant was actually initiated by an interest from a child or a group of children.

Strive to provide a balance of teacher and child led experiences as children engage in play experiences scaffold their learning by modelling, encouraging, questioning, adding challenges and giving feedback. So, that second last point there that refers to the role of the teacher in the children's play. Modify teacher expectations to accommodate different learning styles.

OK, so that's the end of that section.

Sheree Bell

And I think as we just kind of wrap up and conclude this recording and all of the recordings. We might just go back and recap some of the key messages or key points from each of each of the recordings. I might need to get you to move it across.

Kelly Birkett

Sorry, yes,

Sheree Bell

That's OK. So, Part one really looked at the transition to school guidelines supporting the school to plan, implement and evaluate high quality transition practices. Evidence has shown the importance of a successful transition to school.

In Part 2, we looked at the principles of effective transition, including partnerships, relationships, high expectations, respect for diversity. We unpacked a little bit more about the how data should inform planning, as well as evaluating the effectiveness of transition practices and looking at how some children and families might require a more tailored transition support.

Part 3 focused on effective transition practices, including participation in, for example, transition networks, reciprocal visits, communication with families and orientation programs, and this recording Part 4 we've focused on continuity of learning and how it supports successful transitions. Age-appropriate pedagogies such as play-based learning and how they support a continuity in the pedagogy children experience.

Kelly Birkett

Thanks Sheree. There's so much content there. Some very brief key messages that try to encapsulate all of the content we've covered.

Sheree Bell

So, this next slide here. I guess again highlights what effective transition looks like, what underpins an effective transition. So, an effective transition is collaborative. It includes orientation to the school as part of a broader transition. It draws on dedicated funding and resources. It's well planned and effectively evaluated. Effective transition is flexible and responsive. It takes into account contextual aspects of the community and individual families and children. It seeks out and involves a range of stakeholders and establishes positive relationships with children, parents and educators.

That's really been woven through everything hasn't it that collaboration, that connection, that relationship that partnership. So, where to next Kelly, after this? What actions are we going to take?

Kelly Birkett

Yes, definitely. If you haven't already at your school got a transition team, or if you're a small school, even with one other buddy to work with it's worth getting that going. Then I guess work towards those goals you documented in the step three of your reflection scaffold. The practices you'd like to try or modify. Definitely try to embed and make sustainable the good things that you are doing. Some schools develop a little policy procedure or even an annual timeline of the activities in the program so that things do continue year after year and they become embedded school practice so that everyone knows in term three every year, this is what happens in regard to transition.

Sheree Bell

That's important too for that continuity, isn't it Kelly when you have got staffing changes or people you know who are more involved this year than they were last year depending on what classes they're teaching. So, that's really important to establish that kind of sustainable practice.

Kelly Birkett

Absolutely and often it is a good idea not to put people’s names next to the tasks, but put a role so that if someone leaves, it's not kind of like, well, that was so and so's job, no one does it now it's that position. The person who takes over in that position picks up that role.

Sheree Bell

OK, great.

Kelly Birkett

And finally if you are still working, depending on when you're accessing this professional learning, you might want to include transition in the 21 to 24 school improvement plan. Obviously if you're a teacher accessing this, you'd need to then go to your school leadership team and talk about what might be an appropriate goal related to transition to see if it could be included in the next school planning cycle.

If you are part of the school executive and you haven't finalised yet your strategic directions, there might be a transition strategic direction or strategy that will help support another strategic direction. Sorry, a strategy related to transition. So, for instance, if you've got a direction related to relationship with families, that could be a strategy, particularly related to the relationship with the incoming families.

Sheree Bell

We've got a final task for you to reflect, evaluate and refine. So, I guess this is kind of a future task, isn't it Kelly?

Kelly Birkett

Absolutely yes.

Sheree Bell

After you've implemented your actions that you've noted from step three from the reflection scaffold, that action plan so you'd be going into step four of the scaffold that has been provided and seeking a range of feedback from a range of stakeholders, kind of both formally and informally to inform your evaluation, remembering to consider and include the children's perspectives on transition practices, their thoughts, feelings, emotions and expectations. Then using that feedback to modify and shape practices for implementation in the following years transition program.

Kelly Birkett

Yes, that sounds great. Yes, just put some things into action and then just step back and talk to people and just make a decision about if what you're doing is effective or if it needs to be tweaked a little bit.

OK, well this is our final slide, there's an evaluation, so after you close this presentation or recording you'll be able to launch the evaluation. Sometimes myself in MyPL I find if I launch something and I complete it, but MyPL doesn't say it's completed, you might need to do the evaluation, submit it, and then refresh the screen, but also depending again when you're accessing this as a double check, MyPL is going to also email you the evaluation. You only need to complete it once, it's just a backup. It's a short anonymous evaluation and it assists us to know if this professional learning has been effective, to inform our future planning, just like informing your future transition program.

So, I just want to say thank you for sticking with us all the way through these 4 recordings. I hope your transition goes well. Don't hesitate to reach out to us via our email or in the Early Learning and schools Statewide staff room. You can post, put a post in. Keep an eye out in the Statewide staffroom for the posts related to transition. Yes, Thank you.

Sheree Bell

Yes, we'd absolutely love to hear from you. Thanks for joining us everyone. Thanks

Kelly Birkett

Sheree, thanks for your help.

Sheree Bell

Thanks Kelly.

Kelly Birkett

Bye see you later.

[End of transcript]