Solomontown Kindergarten

2020 annual report to the communitySolomontown Kindergarten Number: 6666Partnership: Pirie

Preschool director: Ms Bridie Hickey

Governing council chair: Caitlin Dunstan

Date of endorsement: 4 February 2021

Signature

Context and highlightsSolomontown Kindergarten is a stand alone preschool, across the road from Solomontown Primary School, our main feeder school.

Solomontown is a suburb on the outskirts of Port Pirie which is located 220 kms north of Adelaide on the Spencer Gulf.The population of Port Pirie is about 15,000 and includes many cultures including, Aboriginal, Italian, Greek and Filipino communities. In 2020 we had an indigenous enrolment of 30% and a high percentage of families from low socio economic backgrounds. Port Pirie has high lead levels in the environment due to the lead smelter operating in Port Pirie for over 150 years. High levels of lead is known to cause brain damage in children under 5, so we work with the Environmental Health Centre and TLAP (Lead Abatement Program) to promote hand washing and healthy eating.

There are 5 educators at Solomontown Kindergarten including director, teacher and Early Childhood Worker (ECW) in the mainstream program and a teacher and ECW in the Inclusive Preschool Program for children with identified additional needs.

The children attend 5 full days a fortnight with Universal Preschool funding (30 hours/fortnight).The children at Solomontown Kindergarten are grouped as follows:Preschool Program: Children in their eligible year of preschool attend 5 days a fortnight (Wednesdays, Thursdays and Tuesdays of every second week). ATSI and In Care children (3 year old children)attend 4 days a fortnight (Wednesdays and Thursdays).

Our outdoor environment has been designed for nature play. Educators believe that playing in nature greatly benefits children's resilience, confidence, curiosity and creativity. This is the basis of our philosophy.

During 2020 the COVID-19 restrictions made it a challenging year for educators, families and the children. At times there was Learning From Home and educators sent home packs to families with resources including such items as; story books, drawing books, pencils, chalk and crayons.We had to cancel most of our family and community events, visits and excursions. Highlights are listed by our Governing Council Chairperson, Caitlin Dunstan, in her report. We had a small, but effective Governing Council faced with challenges to fundraise. The planned raffles were quite successful. One main highlight was the obsacle-athon fundraiser. This was in the height of our restrictions and parents weren't allowed on site. The children planned the course , discussing what they wanted and the educators helped them to map out their ideas. It was so wonderful to see parents come and watch from the footpath and support this event. It was heart warming to have this support from our families.

2020 Annual Report to the Community1 | Solomontown Kindergarten

Governing council reportSolomontown Kindergarten Governing Council Chairperson’s Report 2020During 2020 the Solomontown Kindergarten Governing council consisted of members made up of parents, caregivers and staff. Governing Council members included myself, Bridie Hickey, Angela Jameson, Amanda Smith, Marie Dob and Kirsty Anderson.This year was like no other and everyone was impacted in some way by COVID-19! This year taught our kindergarten students to become independent quickly as parents/caregivers were restricted from coming on site and the students did a wonderful job stepping up to the challenge. It also impacted the events that could take place on site as well as fundraising. Therefore, our governing council team needed to be creative!Highlights for 2020: • Father’s Day raffle• Family night• Visit’s from Environmental Health• Obstacle-a-thon• Children learnt about emergency evacuations• Parent teacher chats• Reconciliation Week activities• Animals Anonymous visit• Bowman’s Park excursion• Port Germein excursion• Christmas raffle• Building students oral language by using more sophisticated language with students within play situations with the ‘Strive for 5’ conversation strategy.• Yard was improved by covering all exposed dirt areas with bark chips and gravel.• Various floor book inquiries, e.g. ‘communication-more than words’, ‘nature’ and ‘designing and constructing’.• New storage shed and blinds for the caf? area.• Christmas window display – ‘A Grateful Christmas’• Graduation • Many new resources that were chosen by the students and were paid for by Governing Council fundraising.I would like to take this opportunity to farewell staff that finished at the end of 2020 Deanne Clayton and Bridie Hickey. Bridie stepped into the role of acting director at short notice and has been a huge support for Solomontown Kindy over the 7 terms she was with us. A massive thank you to both ladies and we wish them all the best for the future endeavours.I have had a wonderful two years being a part of the Solomontown Kindy Governing Council. Being a working parent, it meant I rarely had opportunities to come into kindy. Being on the council meant I had regular opportunities outside of my work hours to come into the kindy to be able to find out what is happening and to contribute to the decisions being made.I wish the new Committee all the best for 2021

Caitlin DunstanChairperson 2020

2020 Annual Report to the Community2 | Solomontown Kindergarten

Improvement planning - review and evaluateThe Quality Improvement Plan for 2020 had a focus on oral literacy.Our goal: Children will engage in the use of more complex vocabulary in conversations on a daily basis. We discussed our challenge of practice as educators and it was decided that if educators use more complex vocabulary through daily interactions with children then the children will increase their language skills. Educators researched the use of tier 2 vocabulary and celebrated with the children when they used more complex words in their conversations. Educators modeled the use of tier 2 words and planned to teach and discuss the more complex words in stories and rhymes.Written vocabulary were displayed and talked about with the children.We provided more opportunities for children to sing nursery rhymes and songs. Nursery rhyme books were sent home with every child and put on the Kindergarten's Face book page to encourage singing and talking at home. We started the year with a song/rhyme group time before lunch. This group time was a change to our normal routine, rather than songs at the end of the day to say goodbye. Educators wanted to focus on singing and provide more opportunity to talk and practice new vocabulary with others. Other teaching strategies included having a regular story table focused on a fairy tale or a familiar story to the children. These story tables always engaged the children with props and books to act out the story with peers.Educators also revisited the concept of "Strive for 5 Conversations.' and conducted an audit over a few occasions on who we were having those longer conversation exchanges with. This allowed educators to reflect on who they needed to engage in conversation to develop their conversational skills.

Educators participated in professional development about oral language in play called 'Playful Literacies" by Lisa Burman. We reflected on what we were doing and how we were programming to encourage conversations. We displayed more words around the play environment to promote the use of these words with educators and children. This provided opportunity to practice new words throughout the day.

We gathered data on the children's oral language through Yakka Trakker , an oral language audit tool to monitor children's language development.We conducted this in term 1 and again at the end of term 3 to compare progress. At the end of term 3, most of the children showed growth in their oral language skills. Developing communicators decreased from 45% in term 1 to 28% by the end of term 3. Proficient communicators increased from 14% in term 1 to 32% by the end of term 3. Reluctant communicators decreased from 24% to 11% and educators believed that these children were reluctant but proficient communicators.

It was decided in term 4, after our review that in 2021 educators would continue to focus on oral literacy development, in particular more focus on phonemic awareness. Towards the end of 2020 we introduced some syllable games, clapping names and some words . The children responded well to these games and in 2021, smaller groups with a focus on oral literacy will be planned. Educators will require further professional development and will engage with this through the Department for Education's speech pathologist. We committed to improving the way educators gather data on children's learning and the analyse of this data. We will be looking into ways to improved programming and reflection in particular documenting and planning for children's interests/PLODS (Possible Lines of Development). We have joined with Pirie Partnership preschools and have agreed to use TROL (Teacher Recording of Oral Language) as an oral language tracking tool in 2021.

2020 Annual Report to the Community3 | Solomontown Kindergarten

Enrolment

NOTE: The data is based on person counts in the two week reference period each term. Excludes pre-entry. Data Source: Preschool Data Collection, Data Reporting and Analytics directorate. Term 2 2020 data may not be available for all preschools.

Enrolment commentWe started the year with lower enrolment numbers than previous years. In term 1 there was only 25 children enrolled , but the numbers increased to 32 by term 4. Term 4 enrolments included 1 Early Entry child who was enrolled for English as a second language.The Inclusive Preschool Program (IPP) also had lower numbers than expected. The IPP program can cater for 6 children. However, in 2020 there was only 2 children enrolled for the year. After discussions with the special educators for the Pirie Partnership, no other eligible children were identified. This was a significant decline from term 4 enrolment of 44 children in 2019 and 40 children in 2018. In 2021 it will be necessary to promote the preschool more to increase enrolment numbers.

Enrolment by TermYear Term 1 Term 2 Term 3 Term 42017 27 28 33 38

2018 36 34 36 40

2019 39 42 42 44

2020 25 29 28 32

Term 1 Term 2 Term 3 Term 42017 centre 81.7% 86.8% 74.8% 72.5%

2018 centre 88.4% 83.2% 84.9% 70.5%

2019 centre 91.5% 81.8% 77.8% 86.7%

2020 centre 90.1% 79.3% 86.0% 85.6%

2017 state 90.5% 88.2% 85.9% 87.2%

2018 state 90.7% 88.3% 87.0% 87.2%

2019 state 90.3% 87.4% 85.8% 86.4%

2020 state 89.3% 82.0% 84.8% 85.9%

Attendance

Based on attendances recorded in the two week reference period each term. Data for eligible enrolments as described in the department's Enrolment policy.Attendance rates may differ to previous reporting with the transfer from calculations based on deemed attendance to actual attendance using booked hours divided by attended hours.*Note: Term 2 2020 data may not be available for all preschools.

Attendance commentAttendance at Solomontown Kindergarten was above the state average in terms 1 and 3.The kindergarten's attendance was 90.1% in term 1 compared to the state average of 89.4%.In term 3 the kindergarten's attendance was 86% compared to the state average of 84.7%.Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, attendance was lower in term 2, 79.3%. This was the lowest in the past 4 years.Many of our families chose to keep their children home and notified us that their child was learning from home or sick.

In general attendance wasn't too bad, in fact term 1 was 8.4% higher than 2017 and term 3 was 11.2% higher than 2017.

2020 Annual Report to the Community4 | Solomontown Kindergarten

Destination schoolsFeeder Schools (Site number - Name) 2017 2018 2019 2020

980 - Airdale Primary School 3.0% 7.0% 14.6% 8.7%9039 - Mid North Christian College 11.0% 2.0% 0.0% 13.0%363 - Port Pirie West Primary School 3.0% 0.0% 0.0% 4.4%685 - Risdon Park Primary School 7.0% 12.0% 12.2% 8.7%406 - Solomontown Primary School 57.0% 73.0% 70.7% 60.9%8021 - St Mark's College:Benedict Campus 11.0% 2.0% 2.4% 4.4%

NOTE: The data is collected in Term 3. It does not reflect actual schools enrolled in by exiting preschool children. Only schools that are a destination for 3% or more of students are shown.Data Source: Site Performance Reporting System (SPER), Term 3 2020 collection.

The majority of children enrol at our local feeder school, Solomontown Primary School. Solomontown Primary School is across the road and walking distance from the kindergarten. We had 24 of the 32 children start school in 2021. 60.9% of children enrolled to start at Solomontown Primary School in 2021. This was a nearly 10% decrease from 2019 and 12.1% less than in 2018. There was an increase in children enrolling at Port Pirie West Primary School and Mid North Christian College.The 13% that were supposed to go to MNCC was incorrect as in the end only 2 children enrolled. The final figure was 8% going to MNCC, still an increase from 2019 and 2018.

Destination schools comment

Client opinion summaryWe had some common comments from our Preschool Opinion Survey responses. Some of these included comments about communication and parent involvement. Parents would have liked to have been more involved in the kindy and had more opportunities to have their opinion and ideas included. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 restrictions most of our family events, including parent chats were cancelled or postponed throughout the year. This was challenging and more opportunities to survey parents would have been a valuable tool to ensure parent's voice was included in programming and planning.Below is a brief outline of the 4 areas in the Preschool Parent Opinion Survey.1.Quality of Teaching and Learning:Parent Comments:- When I had queries about my child they are quick to address it and work out with me to help my child. Caring and loving teachers and environment.- An excellent program that is communicated and linked back to learning outcomes that we can usually see.- Solly Kindy is a warm and welcoming kindy and I have seen how much my child has grown and now is confident.2.Support for Learning:Parent comments: - The teachers are devoted to what they need and have the patience for all the children. I love the nature play set up at this site.3.Relationships and Communication:Q.35. I'm encouraged to be involved in the preschool in all sorts of ways. 10% neutral, 30% agree, 60% strongly agree.Parent Comments:- It's an all round amazing kindy. When I had to choose kindy for my child, Solly Kindy made me feel welcome to come to Playgroup.- COVID-19 has presented challenges in communication and parental involvement this year. The preschool is managed well , given the circumstances of the year.4.Leadership and Decision Making:Q.41. The preschool seeks parental opinions about educational programs. 10%neutral, 30%agree, 60%strongly agreeQ.42. I am given opportunity to be involved in the preschool's educational activities. 10% disagree, 30% agree, 60% strongly agreeParent Comments:- Once again, COVID placed restrictions around communication & family participation.

All educators have maintained their current DSCI Child Related Employment Screenings. Educators over the year have been updating to Working With Children Checks (WWCC) as their DSCI clearances expire .Records are kept on the system via the Eduportal. Hard copies are kept in individual employee files. Private service providers and contractors WWCC clearances are sighted and copies kept on sight prior to their commencement.

Relevant history screening

2020 Annual Report to the Community5 | Solomontown Kindergarten

Funding Source AmountGrants: State $445,675Grants: Commonwealth $0Parent Contributions $8,206Other $59,007

Financial statement

2020 Annual Report to the Community6 | Solomontown Kindergarten

2020 Preschool annual report: Improved outcomes funding

Improved outcomes category (where applicable to the site)

Briefly describe how the 2020 funding was used to improve the relevant department's standard of educational achievement outcomes (where applicable):*

Outcomes achieved or progress towards these outcomes:

Improved outcomes for numeracy and literacy

Preschool Support worker support time was topped up and provided additional support. This allowed educators to plan for numeracy and literacy experiences and document the children's learning outcomes and reflect on learning in the Floor Book. Playful Literacy online learning for educators to reflect on oral literacy.

In general the children were confident learners who were engaged and their oral literacy improved greatly.

Improved ECD and parenting outcomes (children's centres only)

We continue to fund a playgroup once a week for the local community. Playgroup continued to be supported and was an ongoing positive way to connect with local parents and develop relationships.

Inclusive Education Support Program

Funding was used to provide 1: 1 support for children identified with additional needs. Targeted intervention was planned for children and goals set with special educator, speech pathologists and NDIS service providers.

Continue developing One Plans in 2021 and apply for extra funding if necessary.

Improved outcomes for non-English speaking children who received bilingual support

Bilingual Support was not received in 2020. We had one child enrolled early for ESL. He was supported with a preschool support staff person in term 4, using early intervention support to assist modelling play based learning and some small group story groups.

N/A

* The department's standard of educational achievement is defined as children and young people progressing and achieving at or above their appropriate year level.