Prep provides the foundation for your child’s success at school by developing:
- A positive approach to learning
- Independence and confidence
- Thinking and problem-solving skills
- Oral language skills
- Early literacy and numeracy
- Physical abilities, including gross and fine motor skills
Your child must be five by 30 June in the year they start prep (use Education Queensland’s ready reckoner). Prep is five days a week and children stay all day. Prep is integrated fully into the rest of the school activities, with classrooms and other facilities all located in school grounds. Our prep students wear a Norman Park State School Prep uniform.
We provide prep families with an additional handbook that outlines details specific to prep.
Prep teachers use the Australian Curriculum to plan appropriate lessons using investigations and play-based activities to support student learning. Prep, like the rest of our school, also includes learnings from English, Mathematics, Science, Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS), The Arts, Technologies (Digital and Design) and Health and Physical Education.
To develop the student’s gross motor skills, children engage in an outside obstacle course twice a week, with explicit teaching of movement and directional language. The positioning of equipment is designed to become developmentally more difficult as the year progresses. Students will also participate in a ‘Perceptual Motor Program’ (PMP), twice a week. These activities are positioned in a rotational system to develop the child’s gross motor skills and enhance core strength and hand/eye coordination.
Your child will also participate in lessons delivered by our specialist teachers:
- Health and physical education/sport (30 minutes)
- Music (30 minutes)
- Library lesson and borrowing (30 minutes)
- Digital technology including iPads, robots and computers (45 minutes)
Parents have an important and valued role in the education of their children and in our learning community. Therefore, we welcome your involvement in the classroom. We encourage you to be part of their learning in whatever way you can. Please let your child’s teacher know at the beginning of the year if you have any special talents you can share! For example: art, music, cooking, science etc. When attending your child’s classroom as a volunteer, please sign in and out of the visitor’s register.
Partnering with our Pre-Prep providers
Norman Park State School are excited about the partnerships we are building with our local Pre-Prep providers. We have an Early Years Transition Officer who liaises with a number of centres in the local and surrounding areas. The school has built close relationships with The Avenues, C&K Norman Park and Timber Tots.
The development of this Early Year’s network has enabled our Prep teachers to meet with and share information with educators in these Pre-Prep settings. During the year educators from these centres have taken part in sessions about school readiness and literacy and numeracy learning. Children from some Pre-Prep Centres have visited our school on an excursion, to engage with our current Preps and have their morning tea in the Prep playground.