Early start for Best Start

Pretty Beach Public School has been one of the first schools in the state to participate in the new Best Start Assessment Program for kindergarten students.

The local school was one of 400 schools across NSW to take up the two week program.

School principal Ms Vicki Redrup said the program was introduced to assess early literacy and numeracy skills.

"The literacy assessments are designed to identify whether students can recognise a familiar print, recall details about a picture story book that has been read to them, write their name, understand how books work and recognise and use sounds and letters," Ms Redrup said.

"The numeracy assessment helps identify how well students can count, which numbers they can recognise, whether they can add and subtract small numbers of objects and whether they can recognise simple repeating patterns.

"Best Start is a great teaching tool to help find out each child's skills as they enter our school and to tailor teaching to support individual literacy and numeracy learning needs."

Newsletter, 6 March 2008 Vicki Redrup, Pretty Beach Public School