A Little Help from my Friends
Sometimes when you’re little, having a friend who’s a little “less little” can be reassuring. Opportunities to play with children of different ages are provided every day at Highfields. It is normal to find a group of our Kindergarten and Year 2 students playing together in the sand pit, or playing a game of soccer in the Limezone. These naturally occurring connections, across age groups, help our school to feel like one big family that watches out for one another.
The Buddy Program
Targeted opportunities for the development of cross age group friendships are facilitated through our whole school buddy program. Every week the children share time together with another class. The program has been designed to help our older students establish strong and meaningful relationships with younger students, over the course of a year.
The Buddy Program has many benefits for our school community. It positions our older students with leadership and mentoring responsibility in the school. The Buddy Program gives them the chance to put the school values into practice and invites them to model, to their younger friends, what it means to be a Highfielder. It is hard to quantify the value our younger students place on this program. The best witnesses of its success are the huge smiles on their faces when they see their buddy approaching them in the playground.
Each week our younger students watch as their Year 2 friends lead Assembly and set the tone for the school. By the time these little ones are ready to step into their Year 2 shoes the work has been done. They step into the Year 2 leadership role with ease and a high expectation of success.