This year is the start of the early stage of learning and provides the foundation for a child’s success at school. Our children will experience successful, guided and supported interactions with their peers and Pre-Kindy staff. By understanding the child’s interests and abilities, the teachers will provide relevant play and discovery-based learning experiences. These experiences help to uncover innate abilities as well as develop creativity and problem-solving skills, physical abilities, independence and confidence. Pre-Kindy takes place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Our kindergarten programme allows children to connect with nature; develop skills in Language and Literacy; Physical Development; Mathematics and Science. The educational program is developed to ensure that all children have many pathways to success and further investigative learning in their play. Children can derive tremendous benefit from taking part in regular nature play and active learning activities outside of the classroom. Our school garden will be one place where cooperative learning, initiative and resilience can be encouraged. Under the experienced guidance of our Kindy staff, children develop social and emotional maturity; problem solving skills; confidence in communication; resilience; independence skills and an inquisitive nature towards learning which provides a foundation for entry into Pre-Primary. Children attend Kindergarten from Monday to Friday. 

Assessment in Kindergarten takes place during everyday classroom experiences and provides a continuous record of the child’s progress. Everything that happens in the classroom is potential evidence of student learning. During a typical day, the Kindy teacher is continually watching, listening and interacting with the children to determine what they are doing and how they are doing it. Evidence of learning consists of observations of children at work, the products they create and how they communicate in their conversations. This evidence is collected and managed with various recording and tracking tools to suit the activity. Through these records the Kindy teacher is able to inform parents about their child’s achievements in relation to their individual development, strategies being engaged to assist the child’s learning in school and ways parents can support their child’s learning at home.

After a year of Kindergarten, your child goes on to Pre-primary. This is the first compulsory year of schooling in Western Australia. When children start Prep they move to a more structured learning environment, but they continue to learn through play. It is the initial stage of organised instruction, designed primarily to introduce very young children to a school-type environment. Children will engage with the content of Pre-primary English, Mathematics, Health and Physical Education, History, Humanities and Social Sciences, Languages, Science, Technologies, and The Arts. Priority in the Australian Curriculum is given to literacy and numeracy development because these are the foundations on which further learning is built. Children are immersed in activities that invite them to think critically and experiment with hands-on
learning. Pre-primary is a full-time programme from Monday to Friday.

In the Pre-primary year at Sunshine Academy reporting of Summative Assessment is as follows:
• student achievement is reported using achievement descriptors and without letter grades (A-E)
• student achievement is reported in English, Mathematics and Science
• the report includes information about the student’s attitude, behaviour, effort and progress in personal
and social learning as defined by the five Human Values
• includes an overall teacher comment

Please refer to our Assessment and Reporting Policy for further details on Formative and Summative
Assessment in the Primary school years.