New Entrants

Ministreamers

We offer a fantastic transition to school at Silverstream.  We have close relationships with all of the Early childhood centres on the Taieri.  We offer Ministreamers Gymskills every Friday with children and teachers from these centres coming along to develop their movement skills. This close relationship allows our junior teachers to meet your child in their own learning setting. We also offer our Ministreamers nearly 5 programme for children starting at Silverstream. 

Play based Learning

Our Transition class Ipurangi and our New Entrant classes have a play based philosophy. This allows children to ease into the school setting as well as continue to learn through play, which is an important part of all children's learning!

Small classes

Our BOT values our belief that relationships are key, and that low teacher and student ratio's make a positive difference. Therefore the BOT fund for this, with all of our junior classes having small numbers of students with a teacher and teacher aide to support learning.

Ipurangi

Children starting at Silverstream begin in Ipurangi - our foundation class.  Here children will continue the learning journey they started in Early Childhood and at home. Ipurangi means source of a stream. We have chosen this name as children starting at Silverstream are at the beginning or ‘the source’ of their school journey.

All children will start in Ipurangi - our foundation class.  After 4-6 weeks at school parents, teacher and the syndicate leader will meet to discuss their child’s ‘readiness for curriculum learning’.  As a child reaches most of the indicators below, they will then move into the New Entrants class.   

Some children may need more time in Ipurangi before they are ready to make the move to New Entrants.

The benefits for children include:

  • Hands on, play based, fun learning.

  • Gradual transition from early childhood to primary school.

  • Personalised programme reflecting the needs of the children.

  • Parents and Caregivers are an important part of the process and are included in decision making.

  • Establishing routines for learning at school.

Each child will start formal learning when they are ready for formal learning. Resourcing and support can be put in place for early interventions.

Readiness for School

In Ipurangi our focus will be preparing children for curriculum learning. We have developed these ideas from Barbara Brann’s Building Blocks for Learning and our own goals for children.  These indicators give us some guidance on what skills and initial understandings children need at school:

  • Socially

    • Be apart from their parents and left at school without anxiety.

    • Take turns

    • Listen and follow instructions

    • Manage own dressing and toileting

    • Making friends

 

  • Physically

    • Move around the classroom easily

    • Sit comfortably without too much wriggling

    • Developing early writing skills - pencil grip,casey caterpillar shapes,use scissors etc

    • Draw a recognisable picture

    • Take part in the PMP programme

 

  • Literacy/numeracy

    • Learn to handle books - look at books, talk about pictures, turn the pages

    • Listen to and recognise some sounds of spoken language

    • Recognise or write their name

    • Recognise some letters and sounds

    • Fun math’s learning about numbers, shapes and patterns in our world and the start of maths problem solving.

 

  • Talking

    • Speak clearly, be understood, have a growing vocabulary of words

    • Use appropriate language and behaviour to get their needs met

    • Use language to share experiences with others