Victoria educational organisation

Belcher Kindergarten is unique in that it is a community that has many of our families living in apartments directly above it. Because of this location, the combination of strong family links, as well as a deep interest in education, parents are able to support their children in many ways. These include supporting groups of children on outings, organising and sorting resources, reading with small groups of children, helping in classrooms, sharing experiences, and engaging in PTA events. Parents are also eager to participate in many valuable workshops to enhance their ability to understand and support their own child’s learning.

The design of our kindergarten with all of the classrooms emerging onto the playground gives a feeling of space, and creates an atmosphere similar to that of a large home. The children encounter adults and peers as they move around the school, and begin to build relationships with people outside of their classroom. We further encourage this familial atmosphere by organising mixed year level groupings on our monthly celebration days. This supports the children in building relationships with those less familiar children and adults throughout the year.

We have highly qualified teachers, and the administrative team works hard to ensure that all of them feel welcome and supported. We begin each year with an evening of team building activities in order for new and experienced staff to get to know a little about each other outside the confines of the school. We continue in this vein throughout the year, with teachers working together across grade levels on different projects and tasks. This offers an opportunity for our multicultural staff to share their experiences and understand the perspectives of others. This international aspect is then transferred into our daily lives in the classroom, encouraging the children to expand their knowledge, be open minded, and to look at how the world works beyond Hong Kong. Happy and well adjusted teachers mean happy and successful students.

Our children enjoy the use of unique fixtures in our Belcher campus. The first is our climbing wall, where we encourage children to be risk-takers, to observe, and to learn new skills while having lots of fun building their gross motor skills. The second is the 'Meeting Pod', a wonderful design feature and interesting space, where intimate meetings can take place, and where parents can enjoy sharing storybooks with small groups of children.

Belcher values the importance of balanced literacy in our classrooms. As such, we incorporate the Columbia University Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP) into our daily schedule. The TCRWP is a powerful programme that enables students to become confident readers and writers by teaching them various strategies to foster stamina and independence. These include: Reading and Writing Workshops for the students, shared reading, guided reading, reading aloud, interactive writing, shared writing, and word study; all essential components of a balanced literacy programme.