REDDAM EARLY LEARNING SCHOOL
LINDFIELD NEWSLETTER 10th February 2023
Principal’s Message
By Christine Irwin
Dear Parents, We are off to a flying start to term 1! The team have been busy observing the children throughout the first few weeks of January and building ongoing relationships and connections with the children and families. This has been a critical time of reflection for the education team to do that real looking and that real listening through observations of children’s interests, development and emerging skills. The interests that have been observed have now been used as the springboard of the projects and provocation boards in each room. Interests include: Stage 1– Both 1 R and 1E are looking at Transport. Stage 2 – 2R All about me 2E This is me Stage 3 – 3R All about my interests 3E My senses Stage 4 – 4R Around the world 4E What lives in the garden?. These interests are investigated and researched by the children with the educators alongside guiding and scaffolding by providing resources and learning areas to assist children in their explorations. We refer to these experiences as a project approach. “A project approach is an in-depth exploration of a topic that is child initiated and involve an individual, a group of children, or the whole class. A project may be short-term or longterm depending on the level of children’s interests. The project approach provides opportunities for children to take agency of their own learning and represent this learning through the construction of personally meaningful artefacts. The benefits of a project approach are that young learners are directly involved in making decisions about the topic focus and research questions, the processes of investigation and in the selection of the culminating activities. When young learners take an active role in decision-making agency and engagement is promoted.” - QLD Government – Department of Education