Mangere Bridge Kindergarten Community Blog: Mentor buddies

Friday, August 14, 2009

Mentor buddies

Buddies visit Kindergarten

Since September last year we have had a project involving Mangere Bridge School and some of their year 5 children. These children become buddies for our children transitioning to that school and visit once a week to spend time with an individual child and build a relationship that will carry over into the school. Once the kindergarten child goes to school this person becomes their "read - to" buddy at school each day. We have had 22 over the time since September and currently have 7 buddies visiting on Wednesday.

The buddies have portfolios too and spend time with their kindergarten child revisiting learning and events in their lives.
This has been just such a great support to children transitioning to school. One little girl added her school buddy to her birthday party list before anyone else, another changed her mind completely about going to school when she had initially decided she really didn't need to go to school and it has also created unexpected links between the junior and senior schools.

We have now begun a similar buddy programme with Waterlea School and have 7 buddies visiting on Friday. It makes for a busy week but it has been an extremely positive addition to our transition project and to supporting learning for both kindergarten and school children.

5 comments:

AnonymousAugust 20, 2009 at 9:02 PM
Wow, what an amazing idea, so great that you can all work together to make starting school so successful. I imagine your year 5 buddies especially enjoy coming to Kindergarten and learn so much as they join in your work and play. I would love to start this idea up with our local school, something to work towards. Thanks for sharing.
Tania - Manaia Kindergarten
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AnnAugust 25, 2009 at 5:05 PM
this sounds like something we could try- what a great addition to the camera and portfolio initiative. Ann Pukerua Bay Kindergarten
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UnknownAugust 28, 2009 at 3:11 PM
The year 5 children at our school really enjoy being buddies. They enjoy it so much that the word has spread and I now have a constant stream of children asking when they can have a turn at being a 'Kindy Mentor' Emma- Mangere Bridge School
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JanineSeptember 12, 2009 at 6:17 PM
Kia Ora Team,

Well done, fantastic to hear our friendships are being fostered within transition. I will share this with the centres in my ECE ICT PL cluster in the Hawkes Bay who are looking at Transition. Can the buddies Skype each other in the two settings and when the buddy is at your service-how does this work with enrolment policies? Does a Teacher accompany them?
Janine Durno
CORE Education
http://akomai.blogspot.com/
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AnonymousOctober 20, 2009 at 11:18 PM
This Buddy idea is great. Thanks for sharing at the Transition Conference. We are taking this idea to our Transition Cluster meeting tomorrow.
nice to put faces to names at Conference.
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Crossing the Border

We are so excited - our Book "Crossing the Border" is in print and is available from NZCER Press. We celebrated with a launch on August 2nd with our kindergarten families and community as well as the wider educational community who have been so supportive through this long research process.

We would like to acknowledge the following people for their support for our book:

The Centre of Innovation project outlined in this book took place over three years and the resultant research ethos and testing of innovative ideas has become part of the culture of Mangere Bridge Kindergarten. Initially the inspiration was to create an environment for successful transitions for our children and families and the more we learnt the more possibilities we could see. We built our research on earlier learning from work with the Strengthening Education In Mangere and Otara Project (SEMO) and with Educational Leadership Project (Ltd) and are indebted to Wendy Lee for her dedication to research in early childhood education. We are also grateful to Sue Dockett and Bob Perry for their inspiring work around transition to school in Australia.

The teaching team Carol, Pat and Jemma would like to say a huge thank you to the Centre of Innovation (COI) programme which gave us the opportunity to research in depth our innovations around transition to school and to work so closely with Margaret and Sally, co-authors of this book. We have grown enormously as researchers and academics nurtured by their outstanding support. We also appreciate the friendship and collegial support of the centres of Round Three COI; Botany Downs kindergarten (especially Bronwyn, conference buddy and critical friend), Greerton Early Childhood centres, Wadestown Kindergarten and Bush Street Kindergarten, Rangiora who became our Hui buddies; and in particular Anne Meade for her dedication to children’s learning. Roskill South Kindergarten (Round one, COI) led the way for us and we are extremely grateful to Karen for supporting us in our application and on our journey.

Transition in all its forms continues to have a life of its own at Mangere Bridge kindergarten. The research has continued well beyond the initial COI project and the teaching team has recently initiated a relationship with another school, across the bridge, extending our transition relationships outside of our own community.

The school buddies have a special place in our acknowledgements as without their friendships with the kindergarten children one whole chapter would not have been possible.

Our long journey has sometimes taken our attention away from home and we would like to thank all of our families for being so supportive over this time.

Also the teaching team would like to thank the Auckland Kindergarten Association for their support; past teaching team members Kathy, Frances and Sarah; Alexandra and then Avis who so ably replaced us whenever we needed a reliever; Ann Hatherly from CORE Education; Nola Harvey from the University of Auckland for support in dissemination and the Faculty of Education Research Committee at the University of Waikato for overseeing ethical approvals. Our original administrator, Stephanie, was so enthusiastic about the idea of this journey, and our current administrator, Ingrid, continues this tradition; thank you both.

All the authors believe the strategies, philosophies, and pedagogies contained within this book are not only limited or relevant to a single transition from early childhood to primary but rather can be applied to transitions throughout education. Within the research we identified the importance and interconnectedness of relationships: relationships with the children and families, with the schools, with the local community and into the wider education community.

This book is the result of those relationships. We are all indebted to the children and families of the Mangere Bridge community who trusted us and have unstintingly contributed their enthusiasm and commitment to the project. We wish to acknowledge all those who have contributed time, energy, enthusiasm and feedback to the research, especially the teachers and community of the local schools, Mangere Bridge School and Waterlea Primary School. Warm thanks go, too, to Aline-Wendy for her contribution in writing the foreword.

The transition research continues

Several of our projects are still in action and form an integral part of our transition partnership with teachers, children and families. We have continued the buddy project and it is now three years old. We have had fabulously positive feedback from parents and the new entrant teachers.

We are still active reporting on transition experiences and research at workshops and dissemination opportunities Our book is now in print. It is the culmination of a very long transition journey and a huge workload.

Our four research articles have been published in:

Early Childhood Folio number 13: 2009.

The second article Google "International Journal of Transitions in Childhood Vol 3 2009" and you will find it there.

The third article has been published in "Dispersing Waves: Innovation in early childhood education" 2010. A. Meade Editor. This is the final COI publication.

Another article recently published in Early Childhood Folio:

Transition portfolios: Another tool in the transition kete. Vol18 (2).

To contact us for further information you can email us at mangerebridge@aka.org.nz

The importance of reading

A. Some interesting facts from a recent conference
Boys will speak 7000 words a day, girls will speak 20,000
If a child knows 8 Nursery rhymes by the time they are 4 - they are the best readers
It takes 1000 stories read aloud before a child learns to read a book alone
Series books are the "trainer wheels" of reading - supported practice that is not too hard but are fun to read.
Students who have the biggest vocab are the best readers
Fantastically fun book list
Don't open this book
Down the back of the chair
Harry and the Dinosaurs
Kiss Kiss Yuck Yuck
George and the dragon
My Friend Bear
The Pirate's Feast
The Tale of the little Mole who knew it was none of his business
Watch out Big Bros' coming
Where's my Teddy

Friday, August 14, 2009

Mentor buddies

5 comments:

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Crossing the Border

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The transition research continues

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