Our Approach
Teaching at Highfields
Providing exceptional educational experiences for young children requires exceptional and highly qualified teachers. All Highfield’s educators are passionate about working with children and bring excellence and care to every aspect of their work. Each educator in the school comes to their role equipped with a range of skills, expertise and experience, ready to meet the needs and support the interests of the children in their class. The teachers promote the children’s learning and wellbeing by providing a safe, inspiring and joyful environment and by designing programs that work from children’s strengths, needs and interests. Teachers listen to children and find ways to let the children lead their own learning. Instead of positioning themselves as the ‘experts’ in the room, our educators see themselves as co-collaborators working alongside children in supportive ways to facilitate experiences that extend and build on children’s earlier learning. The teachers planning and practice at Highfields is characterised by deliberate, purposeful and thoughtful decision making.
Learning at Highfields
We believe learning is best supported in a collaborative environment where children feel valued and celebrated as significant members of the school community. As such, we see the relationships we build with children, and the way in which we support children’s relationships with their peers, as essential for ensuring each child gets the most out of our educational program.
Our approach is strongly influenced by the theoretical perspective that learning is constructed in the context of relationships. This social construction of knowledge forms the rationale for our commitment to children working together in small groups. Through working with others, the children are exposed to alternate points of view and are positioned to collaborate and build on each other’s ideas.
Learning is about much more than finding out facts. We design experiences for our students that lead them towards deep and meaningful understandings, not just to information and answers. As such, we are strongly committed to providing learning experiences for children that invite to question, experiment, wonder and to work with materials and ideas in playful ways.
Due to our small size we are able to offer a wide range of extra-curricular programs and enrichment programs to our students. These include music and sport lessons led by specialist teachers, a weekly Chess Club, Mandarin language classes, Code Camp, Martial Methods program and an opportunity to join a Choir for children in Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2.