By The Park Pre School - Shelford

“By-the-Park’s focus is to provide many happy and meaningful preschool memories for our children, teachers and families. Through the years, this has directed our efforts and it is a foundation in our practice. Building such experiences require lower teacher-children ratio and the support of parents and community partners. The lower ratio translates to teachers being able to fulfill their purpose in working with their charges and growing alongside them. Parental and community participation is an important part of our preschool journey, and we want these experiences to create a memorable preschool experience for the entire family. With these beliefs and our curriculum, our children enjoy a hands-on, joyful and enriching preschool journey that will help build their life long values.

Our programme is strongly anchored on the children. As active learners, they seek new experiences and gain new knowledge through planned and incidental learning opportunities.

As such, observations of the children’s behaviour, interests and intentions are closely recorded by the teachers. Each class is divided into smaller focus groups where the group will observed for 2 weeks and lessons are built on these observations of the children in the group vis-à-vis curriculum goals. Evaluation of lessons is specific to the lesson plans & observations noted.

This has allowed us to translate observations into meaningful lesson plans and activities for large and small groups respectively, allowing for differentiated learning. Through the process of observation, documentation, and interpretation of children’s behaviours and needs, teachers gain insights into children’s thinking.

As a result of this process, teachers are better able to engage children in conversations and investigations that have the potential to extend their learning in both depth and breadth.

Our lower than recommended teacher-child ratio allows our team of dedicated teachers to engage with children through quality interactions.

Teachers are empowered to plan activities that are thoughtfully integrated and provide opportunities for children to be constructors of knowledge. We are recognized for our very low staff turnover rate as substantial efforts have been invested in nurturing their professional development and increasing their job satisfaction.

Teachers grow with the children literally as they generally progress to the next age group with the children over the years. The continuity has benefitted children, teahcers and families alike.

Our schools are beautifully built within houses that provide a safe and nurturing space for inquisitive little minds. Classrooms are spacious and well-lit and there is ample space outdoors for learning beyond the classrooms. Our schools are homes away from homes.

General guidelines are shared with teachers on setting up the learning centres and its materials. Open-ended materials — materials that can be used in a variety of ways, such as blocks in all sizes, art materials, and fabric pieces and recycled materials, such as shells, rocks, used containers, egg cartons etc are just some of the “raw materials” for play.

This is aligned to our green initiatives and teachers are encouraged and given time to plan these centres using recycleable and common household items. Such knowledge is also shared with families as these ideas could be similalry practised at home.

Our spiral curriculum is specifically designed to weave through the six learning domains, in line with the various age groups that we cater to in the preschool setting.

As such, the curriculum focuses on ensuring a continuity in the holistic development of the children from toddlers to kindergarten. This would ascertain all children who experience our curriculum, are given the opportunity to advance in all aspects of the their development, be it academically, socially or emotionally. The curriculum for each preceding year, provides a solid foundation for the following year throughout the different domains.

With the aim of inculcating the motivation to learn in all children, children are encouraged to progress at their own pace in line with the curriculum, while teachers provide for differentiated learning activities to suit each individual child.