Families collaborate on planning for children’s learning at Norman Park Kindergarten

Kara is a dedicated educator at Norman Park Kindy in Brisbane, has been a Storypark user for three years, and has written before about the impact Storypark has on her work as a teacher and on the lives of the children she works with.

Before the new planning tool was released, the teachers at Norman Park Kindy planned using a range of methods. This involved a lot of paper trails, with some information online and some not.

Trying to keep track of all of the processes they used and all of the places they kept the planning cycle information took so much time and was a challenge to communicate to families, staff members and assessors.

Storypark planning helps to keep all of the kindergarten’s planning in one place

Kara says that Storypark’s planning tool has allowed for easy communication with staff, and easy collaboration with both families and staff around how they plan for children’s learning. Families voices are included in NPK’s planning more than ever, and they are able to see the thought that goes into the staff’s teaching.

“We have found the saved time we were taking in ensuring the planning cycle was communicated to everyone is now being used on more meaningful experiences.”

The impact of this new way of planning for children and staff is it really shows a very clear overview of the child and the growth they have achieved in their year. Teachers are supported to work collaboratively on plans and are all involved. Children are even able to explain and reflect on their planning, and see evidence of their learning and development

The families are a lot more involved in planning and their children’s learning.

“We now get families that afternoon upload a story or play they have done at home that we have introduced at kindy. Eg, We went on an excursion to Meals on Wheels (an organisation that delivers meals to the elderly that can’t cook anymore) and that night I had so many parents add stories about the information their children had told them about their excursion. One child said she was going to make a Meals on Wheels dinner, so their family cooked a meal together and added it to their Storypark profile.”

The Templates are so flexible, that Kara has adapted the Transition Statements to fit Norman Park Kindergarten’s philosophy. They have created their own Term planning template, but have used inspiration from templates that were on Storypark.

The new planning feature can be used for staff or organisational planning, documentation and evidence gathering. Kara says that her service uses planning for everything and have created Child Protection planning, Fire Pit planning, Reconciliation Action Plan, Nature Play, Social Emotional Planning.

Check out some examples of Kara’s templates below by tapping to enlarge each plan.

Term Plan 3-4

Nature play

Quality Improvement Plan

Need help with setting up your planning area in Storypark?

We’re offering free fortnightly online workshops to anyone who is interested in learning more. (We’ll be recording the workshops so if you can’t make it you can watch a video.) Register here.

Do you have questions about the new planning tool? Check out the help centre here, leave us a comment, or get in touch with our friendly customer service team by emailing hello@storypark.com