Our School

From little things big things grow

Southern Cross Early Childhood School provides high quality services and programs to meet individual children's needs. Wherever possible, services will be seamless and inclusive of families, educators, staff and organisations who will contribute their expertise to ensure the wellbeing and development of all children.

Secure, respectful and reciprocal relationships

At our Early Childhood School, the educators:

• Ensure that the interests, abilities and culture of every child and their family are understood, valued and respected;
• Encourage children as active participants for sustainability, influencing the quality of life now, and for future generations;
• Respect the views and feelings of each child;
• Initiate warm, trusting and reciprocal relationships with children;
• Provide safe and stimulating environments for all children; and
• Build on children's prior learning and experiences to build continuity for their learning and ongoing development.

Partnerships

At Southern Cross Early Childhood School we live the belief that "When we enrol a child we enrol the family".  As educators we:

• Warmly encourage active participation and involvement by families ;
• Provide programs to support families and connect them with external agencies as the need arises;
• Work with families to support children's learning and development at home and in the community;
• Use families' understanding of their children to support shared decision making about each child's learning and development;
• Create a welcoming and culturally inclusive environment where all families are encouraged to participate in and contribute to children's learning and development experiences;
• Are transparent and objective, and provide families with information about their children's learning and development, and about what they can do to further support their children;
• Work collaboratively to share information and plan to ensure holistic approaches to children's learning and development;
• Actively engage families and children in planning children's learning and development; and
• Acknowledge the significance of transitions within and across services and schools, and ensure that children understand the process and have an active role in preparing for these transitions.

High Expectations and Equity

At our Early Childhood School, the educators:

• Establish high expectations for each child's learning and development;
• Support children's learning and development through a combination of child-led and adult-led play based learning, as well as active teacher-led learning/intentional teaching;
• Ensure that every child experiences success in their learning and development;
• Recognise that all children are capable learners, but some children require quite different opportunities and supports to do this (extra accommodation);
• Maximise opportunities for every child ;
• Provide physical environments that support a range of opportunities for learning and physical activity, through the indoor and outdoor learning environments;
• Encourage children to explore, solve problems, communicate, think, create and construct; and
• Use child-centred approaches to explicitly teach particular knowledge and skills.

Respect for Diversity

At our Early Childhood School, the educators:

• Recognise bi and multilingualism as an asset and support these children to maintain their first language and learn English as a second language;
• Promotes cultural awareness in all children, including greater understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing and being;
• Support children to develop a sense of place, identity and a connection to the land;
• Build on children's interests, abilities, cultures and previous learning experiences to extend their thinking, learning and development; and
• Recognise the connections between aspects of children's learning and development.

Ongoing Learning and Reflective Practice

At our Early Childhood School, the educators:

• Gather information that supports, informs, assesses and enriches decision-making about appropriate professional practices;
• Continually develop their professional knowledge and skills to enable them to provide the best possible learning and development opportunities for all children;
• Promote practices that have been shown to be successful in supporting children's learning and development;
• Assess children's learning in ways that inform the educator's practice;
• Use evidence to inform planning for early childhood experiences and practice.