Overview

However, the results were disappointing. Overall achievement remained below expectations and there were significant disparities across different groups. For example, male students were much less likely than female students to achieve the National Standards for writing, and non-Pākehā students achieved at significantly lower rates than those who identified as Pākehā.

Nothing magical happens in children's brains or learning styles from when they leave early childhood centres and start school. However, the teaching style and content is abruptly changed. Meeting with the early childhood centres made us acutely aware of this….

A third of the school’s 223 students were on its special needs register. The teachers found that many of the younger students with learning needs also had trouble processing auditory information, or had problems with their visual memory and visual tracking, their balance and gross motor skills, and hand/eye coordination. This led the teachers to question whether they were doing enough to provide their youngest students with the foundation skills they needed to achieve academically. They wanted to ensure their new entrant students were ready for school and ready to learn.

The Darfield Primary School teachers worked with the local early childhood services to identify the children who would need additional support to develop foundational learning skills. The primary teachers then designed interventions to provide this support when these students transitioned to primary school. The interventions included programmes to develop children’s motor skills and oral language.

Significantly improved achievement results suggest that the new interventions did help equip the students with the necessary skills to learn. However, the teachers could not be confident about which of the programmes contributed to the improvement. They concluded that foundation skills are important for learning, and it doesn’t matter how they are taught, as long as all children have the opportunity to develop them.

Inquiry Team

• Kiri Conrad — Darfield Primary School
• Mark Robb — Darfield Primary School
• Aaron Richards — Darfield Primary School
• Meredith Devonald — Darfield Primary School
• Sharon Tuer — Anabell’s Education, Darfield

Letitia Hochstrasser Fickle from Canterbury University supported and advised the inquiry team.

The inquiry story

This three-year inquiry included teachers and children from Darfield Primary School and two local early childhood centres — Annabel’s Educare and Darfield Preschool and Nursery. It followed children from when they were four-years-old and attending an early childhood centre to when they transitioned to primary school and progressed through the junior school.

What was the focus?

The focus of the inquiry was to establish an effective transition from early childhood centre to primary school and build on the foundational learning skills children need to be ready for school, ready to learn, and able to achieve in literacy.

The teachers asked:

1. How do changes in teaching practice promote student engagement, a sense of belonging, and a confident transition between early childhood education and primary school?
2. Will targeted development of ‘foundation for learning skills’ enhance literacy learning in primary school?

What did the teachers try?

The early childhood teachers administered a pre-entry screening test based on Barbara Brann’s five learning domains: listening, talking, understanding print, looking, and moving. If a child needed to develop their skills in any of the domains – or ‘foundations’ – the primary teachers would provide suitable activities.

The teachers investigated how they could modify their teaching practices so they could implement the five foundations for learning into the current school programme without drastically altering the programmes they already taught. However, the school was refurbishing its junior block into a mobile learning environment and teachers were moving from teaching in single-cell classrooms towards collaborative teaching practice, and they took this as an opportunity to introduce new programmes and initiatives.

To make the school’s transition programme a more child-centred, informative, and engaging experience for children and their whānau, the junior school teachers introduced a reception class (or ‘nest’) for the five-year-olds that provided a more play-based approach to learning.

Specific initiatives included:

1. Professional development in implementing a perceptual motor programme (PMP) for the primary junior school and early childhood teachers.
2. Introducing Barbara Brann’s Casey the Caterpillar programme to teach letter formation.
3. Using Yolanda Soryl’s phonics programme to teach phonemic awareness.
4. Creating a reception class (nest) to assist some existing students who were having trouble adjusting to a more formalised approach to learning and for all new entrants starting at the school. Teachers introduced a discovery/play-based approach for these students, with an emphasis on developing their fine and gross motor skills. When the students were academically and socially ready and were developing in the five learning domains, they were integrated into the more formal aspects of learning with the other students.
5. Introducing and revising an inquiry-based discovery programme for students in the entire junior school so that aspects of the foundation for learning could be taught to older (Year 2) students to develop their fine and gross motor skills.
6. Making the junior school ‘teaching as inquiry’ project focus on the transition to school to ensure teachers reflected on their practice and made modifications to improve their craft.
7. Introducing the Gail Gillion phonological awareness programme.
8. Introducing the Sports Start Physical Literacy programme.

In their second year, the junior school’s inquiry focus shifted from transition to school to storytelling, an initiative for all the schools in the Malvern Kāhui Ako. Although the emphasis shifted from transition, the teachers continued to use Casey the Caterpillar, Yolanda Soryl phonics, inquiry-based discovery, and aspects of PMP.

The teachers also increased their engagement with parents and whānau through meetings jointly run by the primary school and Darfield Preschool and Nursery. They held focus groups with parents and created surveys to get their views and those of their children on how well the transition worked. They ran a teacher swap with the early childhood centres to increase each other’s understanding of their practices and programmes and establish relationships with children and teachers.

What happened?

Student engagement, sense of belonging, and confident transition

The inquiry-based discovery programme reinforced the primary school’s ‘High Fives’ values, which are based on the key competencies in the New Zealand Curriculum. At the end of each discovery session, students would reflect on how they had worked towards the High Fives. This reflection empowered the students with a sense of belonging, reinforcing the message that they belonged as students at Darfield Primary School. The early childhood centres took part in these sessions on school visits, as well as activities including aspects of Barbara Brann’s domains.

All the students, including the visiting four-year-olds from the early childhood centres, took part enthusiastically in the PMP sessions.

The students in the junior school understood the language of Casey the Caterpillar when forming letters and could identify letters from the descriptions.

The reception class proved popular with parents, in particular, and was successful in transitioning children from the early childhood education approach to the more formalised learning in primary school. This could take place over a few weeks, at which point the students were ready for learning at school. Engaging with parents and getting feedback on the transition and information provided allowed the school to refine and improve how it communicated with new entrants and their parents. Making connections between early childhood and primary teachers created effective collaborative working relationships that enhanced the transition programme.

Students’ literacy learning

Teachers used a range of information to make overall judgements about students’ progress in reading and writing. The collated data shows an impressive trajectory of improvement:

• In reading, the percentage of students achieving the National Standards rose from just 18 per cent in 2016 to about 55 per cent in 2017 and about 80 per cent in 2018.
• In writing, the percentage of students achieving National Standards rose from just over 40 per cent in 2016 to about 75 per cent in 2017 and about 85 per cent in 2018.
• The results for Māori students improved at a similar rate to non-Māori students.

The teachers were unable to identify any particular innovations that caused these increases, and believe they all played a part, including the storytelling programme introduced in 2018.

What did they learn?

The teachers believe the programmes promoted student engagement and a sense of belonging, but it didn’t ensure that all children had a confident transition to primary school. However, the reception class did create a warmer atmosphere for new entrants and children on school visits.

Shifting from single-cell classrooms to collaborative teaching did not inhibit the students’ sense of belonging or engagement. However, the teachers learned that, for collaborative teaching to be successful, children must have a home base or whānau group with a teacher they identify as their own and feel comfortable to turn to for assistance.

The team found that the most important aspect of collaborative teaching is the structure. It is counterproductive to have all the students together in one large space for group learning and then break off into designated learning areas. In some cases, it is necessary, but the teachers found that the children’s attention would often wander and some would become distracted. Throughout the project, the teachers have sought a working balance between learning in whānau groups (home bases), learning as a team, and learning in small groups.

The whole school enthusiastically embraced the storytelling programme introduced as part of a Kāhui Ako initiative. However, it pushed the Barbara Brann foundations for learning approach aside. This change contributed to the teachers being unsure which programmes had the most impact. It also highlighted the difficulty in determining the impact of running multiple programmes, and to the value of keeping things simple when inquiring into the impact of particular practices. For example, they simplified the Barbara Brann development checklist in collaboration with the early childhood centres to ensure a common understanding of language when they were completing them. This was pivotal in building a positive relationship between all three education providers. The trust they developed meant they could effectively share information to assist children and their whānau.

The teachers sometimes got discouraged by what they saw as minor progress in the development of fine and gross motor skills. They had to be reminded that for five-year-olds making the transition to school, all progress is good progress.

There is no magic formula for the transition to school and a student’s academic success. A critical aspect of a teacher’s practice is being able to notice when a child isn’t making progress, investigating why, and implementing strategies and approaches that will ensure success.

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For further information

If you would like to learn more about this project, please contact the project leader Kiri Conrad at kiri.conrad@darfieldprimary.school.nz.