A Highlands preschool is at the forefront of early childhood education.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Gumnut Bowral Memorial Preschool has been involved in several research projects, for past two years, which have been conducted through Early Start at the University of Wollongong.
The Fostering Effective Early Learning (FEEL) Study, evaluated how to better target professional development and to enhance teaching practices. The FEEL study was conducted by renowned researchers from Australia and overseas. More than 1800 children aged between four and five in 90 preschools and long day care centres throughout NSW were involved in the study.
Read Further: ‘Tis the season for caroling
Recently, celebrating her 30 year anniversary of teaching children at Gumnut Preschool, educational leader, Meredith Wakeman said herself and fellow early childhood teacher, Rachel Feary passed on the knowledge they learnt from Department of Education funded seminars.
“Rachel and myself were involved in a year-long series of high quality lectures and tutorials,” Ms Wakeman said. “We then shared our education with our colleagues at Gumnut Preschool.
“The studies looked at how high quality early childhood teaching practices can have a measurable impact on both short and long-term cognitive and socio-behavioural out comes for children.”
The FEEL program’s curriculum focused on areas such as, literacy, numeracy, science and diversity. Development of emotional, behavioural and cognitive self-regulation was also covered.
Children in the study showed twice the growth in verbal comprehension, a 28 per cent gain in numeracy and a 23 per cent gain in number concepts. The program was found to provide motivation, inspiration and an encouragement to continued excellence for educators.
“We would like to thank families for allowing their children to participate and be part of ongoing data collection in future years,” Ms Wakeman said.
“Also, to our teachers and educators who have been enthusiastic participants in reflecting, assessing and improving practices across a wide range of areas.”
There are a few vacancies remaining for the 2019 Gumnut Preschool two day groups.
Children must be eligible to enrol at school in 2020.
