flourishing at four and five For both child and parent, the transition to school is a monumental milestone. At St Cuthbert’s we work especially hard on making this transition a positive and happy experience as this helps to shape the girls attitude to school far beyond their first day. If our girls are excited to come to school and confident in their own abilities from the start, this flows on in the years ahead and makes a difference in their learning journey. From the very beginning we start to build a connection to our school and their new community. Girls start to learn about what it means to be a St Cuthbert’s girl, identifying with their uniform and about our school motto ‘By Love Serve’. We encourage our girls to have a go at all the new learning situations that they are faced with and to not worry about making mistakes, as these naturally become new learning opportunities. In these early years at school we want our girls to build a love and passion towards learning, build caring relationships and have loads of fun. And because the brain in these early years is still very ‘plastic’, we endeavour to support this natural process by providing lots of opportunities, experiences and provocations for girls to be curious, to discover and wonder and to ask questions about their world. Our transition programme builds on a platform of a ‘little and often’ approach where the girls will read, write and work with mathematical equipment everyday with their teacher. Each teaching session will build on from the last and you will see rapid development in this first year at school. With all this learning going on, your child is often very tired after a day at school and we
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recommend having no other activities other than swimming for the first few months until they have built up some school stamina. As their first teachers we want to develop trust in our girls that we are there to help them in all aspects of their learning whether it be organising themselves in the morning with all their morning jobs. These are aprons on, book bags away, diaries into boxes and drink bottles in the water station to helping them with their tricky lunch boxes, holding pencils correctly and sounding out new words in their writing. We believe that when you build positive connections with our learners, we show them we are invested in their education and, in turn, they become invested too. When your child starts school you also become part of our school community. This is a great time to get involved in school activities and start meeting other families whose children will move through school with your child. Our class co-ordinators will invite you to coffee catch ups, picnics and other social gatherings to help welcome you into your new community.
— Nikki Boyens, Deputy Head of Junior School
