his week our Prep students marked their 100th day of school. This is celebrated with typical KDS cuteness – our students and teachers dressed up as 100 year olds, replete with grey hair, glasses and walking canes. 

Every time I visit our Preps, I need to remind myself to look past the inevitable cuteness and hilarity to the extraordinary learning that is taking place.  

For our students, Prep is a year of tremendous growth in capability, independence and confidence. I reflect back on the 100 school days to the start of the year when I welcomed a new cohort of students. They were somewhat timid and tentative, swimming in their oversized uniforms and carrying their own body weight and size in their school backpacks. Now, thanks to the wonderful creativity, patience and purposefulness of our brilliant educators and the meaningful partnering of their parents we can recognise the cohort’s emergence as literate, numerate and bilingual individuals.

We should not take this for granted. What a miracle it is to open up a whole world to our students by teaching them to read, write and to play with numbers. Of course, like all our learners this happens at different paces for these students but the feedback that I have received is that the current cohort’s overall progress has been phenomenal.

This is in no small part due to the exceptional learning programs that we have adopted in the Junior School. Our educators utilise a targeted evidence-based model that has proven to be highly successful at assisting in the acquisition of foundational literacy skills. SOLAR (Science of Learning and Reading) leverages findings from studies in reading attainment to enhance students’ development of reading fluency. Our teachers have been thoroughly trained in this model and the results are compelling. We continue to notice improvements in the capacities of our students in literacy. They are advancing far more rapidly than before we were using the model. 

Similar progress is being made in our students’ early development of Hebrew language. They benefit from an Ivrit b’Ivrit (Hebrew in Hebrew) model where our teachers are able to mimic mother tongue language development by delivering vocabulary and sentence patterns in context and allowing our students to develop an understanding of the language. 

Our students are also thriving in early numeracy. We have a strong focus on developing students’ automaticity and fluency in exploration of number. By providing confidence in number patterns our students obtain a strong base which they will utilise to enhance their mathematical understanding as the requirements become more complex over the coming years.

Of course our program is augmented with many other important areas of study which are designed to holistically develop our students’ capacities – they enjoy subjects such as Art, Jewish Studies, Music, Philosophy, Sport and Wellbeing. A weekly highlight is Kibbutz David Hamelech – our unique kitchen garden program that allows our students hands-on experience in planting, nurturing and harvesting vegetables which they then get to enjoy. I hope that many of you enjoyed our recent harvest of Jerusalem artichokes which were lovingly tended to and then dug up by our students.

It is often said that Prep is about learning how to be a school student. While this is true, particularly so in the early part of the school year, it is so much more. The rich program of learning and the expertise of our teachers means that this year is often the greatest year of development in a student’s schooling. It is a wonderful privilege to be able to give these students such a wonderful start on their lifelong journey of learning.

While we naturally revel in the cuteness of their initial steps and missteps, this does not detract from the significant surge in skill and knowledge acquisition that is occurring as these young people set the foundation for a lifelong learning journey.

Shabbat Shalom,
Marc