Getting Ready

Getting Ready is an early learning approach for parents with a child attending preschool or nursery in disadvantaged communities. Getting Ready is not a curriculum or a packaged, stand-alone intervention but is a process of interacting with families that occurs during all exchanges with the aim of supporting parental engagement and helping them support their child’s school readiness skills.

Getting Ready is delivered by professionals who work in early childhood (infant/toddler and preschool) classrooms and occurs when practitioners are interacting with families. During these interactions, practitioners provide advice on how to support their child’s early learning through daily activities that they can implement in the home and community.

Getting Ready is also delivered through six ‘meaningful contacts’ that are scheduled during the course of the school year in addition to the incidental interactions that occur with parents while their child attends school. During these contacts, parents receive more detailed and tailored advice for supporting their child’s early learning needs. These contacts can take place in the child’s school, but also in the family home.

Practitioners are supported to offer this advice through the following flexible and responsive strategies aimed at supporting a positive ‘triadic’ relationship between the practitioner, parent, and child:

1. Establish parent–child and parent–professional relationship
   • Establish a context for parent–child interaction
   • Listen, respond to parent priorities, concerns, challenges.
2. Share observations/knowledge of child over time
   • Share/seek information about child’s progress
   • Affirm parents’ insights and competent observations.
3. Identify mutually agreed-upon developmental expectations for child
   • Focus parents’ attention on child strengths and developmental needs
   • Share developmentally appropriate information.
4. Share ideas and brainstorm methods for helping child meet expectations
   • Mutually identify natural learning opportunities in the home
   • Identify current and potential parent behaviours that can support targeted learning
   • Make suggestions when necessary.
5. Observe parent–child interactions and provide feedback
   • Observe parent and child in meaningful context
   • Identify current strengths related to developmental expectations
   • Provide developmental information
   • Model/suggest on-the-spot when necessary to support parent interactions with their child.
6. Monitor the child’s skill development and determine directions for continued growth
   • Engage parent in noting child’s progress and measuring progression towards individualised developmental expectations
   • Discuss needed adjustments in interactions and/or learning opportunities
   • Cycle to new developmental expectations and learning opportunities as needed.

The strategies are used in a fluid manner and are not intended to be practised in any sequence or order and they work together to support parents and children as they prepare for lifelong learning. The Getting Ready strategies are used across various contexts where parent and child learning occurs. Unstructured contexts include any chance encounters that educators may have with parents or settings that are social or informal. Structured contexts or settings are where formal educational discussions and planning occur between an educator or educator and parent.