What does the day in the life of an Australian Kindergarten student look like?

It’s probably been a while since you stepped foot inside a Kindy classroom. What do you remember of your time in Kindergarten? Nap time, finger painting, milk deliveries? Well times have certainly changed.

HOW MANY CHILDREN ARE IN A KINDERGARTEN CLASS?

‘Twenty is plenty’ is the main goal for most Kindergarten classes, but this will vary from school to school and state to state. In NSW, the current Kindergarten classes have a state wide average of 18.8 students. Victoria has 21.2 students.

Class sizes increase as the grade levels do. For example, some schools may have around 30 children in a year 5 or 6 class.

WHAT DOES A TYPICAL DAY IN KINDERGARTEN LOOK LIKE?

Most school timetables are divided into three sessions: a morning, middle and afternoon session. These sessions are broken up by recess and lunch.

Once the morning bell sounds, the first thing a teacher needs to do is mark the roll for attendance so they can ensure all children are accounted for. This is why it is important to have your child arrive on time. This is also when the teacher talks about their schedule for the day and gives any important announcements.

The morning session is when many Kindergarten classes will do predominately literacy based activities. This may include modelled reading, phonics activities and reading/literacy rotational groups.

The middle and end sessions commonly encompass a range of key learning areas including mathematics, history, geography, science and creative arts. Some schools may also have language lessons, scripture and kitchen garden lessons.

Each day will be different depending on the scheduling of class library time and additional class activities.

Teachers are required to have a certain amount of hours per week (known as ‘Relief from Face to Face’) for planning and administration purposes. During this time a different teacher will teach your child’s class. Each school will run this time differently. Some may have library or music lessons during this time or have them participate in PE lessons with specialist sport teachers, whilst others may have other teachers just continue the teacher’s normal program.

WHAT WILL MY CHILD LEARN AT SCHOOL?

Australian schools use their relevant state’s curriculum to program learning experiences. In their first year of school, students learn through teaching, interactions with others, experimentation, practice and play in the classroom and school community.

Priority is given to literacy and numeracy development, as these are the foundations upon which further learning is built. Opportunities to develop literacy and numeracy are found in all subjects but particularly in English and mathematics. Learning in a classroom and belonging to a school community are both key to the first year at school.

ENGLISH

In the first year of school, students view, listen to and enjoy texts that entertain and inform, such as picture books or rhymes. They begin learning to read and create texts. Typically, students will:

· Communicate with others in familiar situations

· Read stories with one or more sentences, pictures and familiar vocabulary

· Recognise rhyming words, syllables and sounds

· Recognise letters and the most common sounds the letters make

· Listen to, read and view picture books, stories, poetry, information books, films and performances

· Write some words

· Recognise some words and develop skills in ‘sounding out’ words Create their own texts such as giving information orally or in writing

· Present a narrative, which may include pictures

Listening and speaking

Your child will participate in class, group and pair discussions. They will listen to others, and retell events and experiences with their classmates and known adults. They will also identify and use rhymes, letter patterns and sounds in words.

Reading

Through storybooks and films, your child learns that stories are about ideas and feelings, and that they have characters and events. The teacher may ask your child to talk about what happens in a story and what the characters are like. Listening for rhyme, letter patterns and sounds in words is important to develop skills in early reading, so classroom activities focus on this. Your child is also taught to identify the letters of the English alphabet and connect them to the most common sounds they represent. Your child reads a variety of short, predictable texts with familiar words and supportive pictures. They may read a combination of fiction, informative and decodable texts. Decodable texts are books that are sequenced to progressively incorporate words that are consistent with the letters and corresponding phonemes that have been taught to your child. They may take home ‘readers’ that are appropriate to their level of learning to read with you at home.

Writing

Your child continues to experiment with letters of the alphabet, and learn the difference between upper and lower case letters. They will also start to write using letter formations. In their writing, they will use known words and familiar phrases. Attempts at new words will show a developing sound-letter knowledge. Your child will begin to use high frequency sight words (e.g. the, is, and, was), and learn the basics of punctuation, grammar, spelling and handwriting.

MATHEMATICS

In the first year of school, students develop a sense of number, order, sequence, pattern and position in relation to familiar settings. Typically, students will:

· Connect numbers, their names and quantities up to 20

· Count numbers in sequences up to 20

· Continue patterns

· Compare lengths of objects

· Use materials to model problems, sort objects and discuss answers

· Group and sort shapes and objects

· Connect events with days of the week

· Develop an understanding of position words (e.g. above, outside, next to).

Each day of the school week can be different and exciting. Some schools organise excursions for the children to experience a deeper look at a topic area. At times schools will offer incursions (a specialist learning activity that comes to the school).

We hope this has given you a little taste of what a day in the life of a Kindy Kid is like. For more information grab a copy of our ebook.