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Transcript

Antonella Dolores – Head of School

Welcome to NextSense School and Preschool. Our school offers a dynamic learning experience that cultivates resilience and exceptional growth. With a tailored approach designed to meet students’ individual needs, we specialise in sign bilingual, spoken language and deaf and deafblind programs for children kindergarten to year six. Our preschool provides children aged 3-5 and their families with an early learning community that values and promotes diverse cultures, languages and abilities.

We offer an inclusive program where children learn alongside their peers who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, or have low vision. Let's go inside.

The offices along this hallway for our educational leaders, who come together to develop strategies, and to continue to work on research that underpins best practice in pedagogy.

The staff room is for all staff in the School and Preschool, so it provides a space to come together to eat lunch, have a cup of tea and a good chat. It's got a beautiful, natural outlook and we love to watch the ducks come past.

We've got two large therapy rooms and three amazing meeting rooms. The first one is a nice informal area where we can meet with families and their children and have conversations with them. We can also meet in the next room, which is a formal meeting room, and this larger one is for bigger family groups or staff meetings.

Susanne Barr – Child Care Worker

Welcome to our Preschool. We're really excited to show you around. Our children come in each morning excited to learn, play and explore our amazing space. When you first walk in, you'll see the philosophy of our preschool, and underneath photos of our friendly staff.

Erika Resavac – Head of Early Years

We offer a low 1:5 teacher to student ratio across three classrooms, representing our three education streams - spoken language, sign bilingual and blind/low vision. Each classroom hosts children who are deaf or hard of hearing, blind or have low vision, who learn alongside their hearing and sighted peers. The rooms are set up specifically to meet various sensory needs.

The first room hosts students who are blind or have low vision; the second room hosts students who are deaf; and the third room hosts students who are hard of hearing and may wear devices to assist them in accessing sound. Our inclusive and blended approach helps all the children develop crucial social skills and emotional skills that set them up for life.

The design of these rooms is very much intentional and optimised for learning. Every classroom is acoustically designed with soundproofing through double glazing and ceiling panels to reduce background noise for children with hearing loss.

These large blinds also allow us to control lighting and reduce glare for students with vision loss or who are using Auslan. The furniture has a natural wood feel with some colour to break it up. The classroom for our children who are blind or have low vision has greater colour contrast to help them differentiate between different materials.

An amazing feature of our School and Preschool is the emergency management system which uses sound, light and written messages to alert teachers and students in case of an emergency. Every space has an LED lighting strip and messages that come up on a plasma screen as well as through the speakers.

Our toilets are designed to ensure children have independence and learn about hygiene and self-care while being kept safe by our teachers. Our breakout rooms between the classrooms are used by therapists. Teachers and therapists work in tandem to help children put into practice what they have learned in the classroom.

Karishma Mohan – Lead Educator

This is our preschool playground. If you have a look up, you'll see the roof, which can open and close. It allows the natural light to come through, but also protects the children from the wind and the rain so the children can continue playing.

We have a lovely soft rubber floor, which means that children can run around as fast as they like and if they fall over, they're not going to get hurt. But also, it's great for the blind/low vision children so they can actually make a connection with their location and learn to navigate the environment.

Each day, teachers will set up a variety of different activities for the children to engage with their core skills, matching the children's needs.

The magnetic board allows the children to discover and play with water or sand or cars, and actually work out how things work, how they can start a process and how flow can happen.

All of our garden beds have safe plants so that children can touch and feel them.

Here is our sensory garden. We are so fortunate to have bush tucker. We have things like parsley, chives and rosemary, which are great for children to learn about gardens and how things grow, how to feed the plants and how to look after them. And they can enjoy their food as well.

Our climbing wall is a very popular part of the playground. The children can climb up the wall and then run through the gate and do laps around and around. It burns their energy as well, and encourages the children to learn about risky play and coordination of their physical movement.

Kristie Edwards - School Administration

Welcome to our School. We can't wait for you to see it in person. Our children arrive each morning looking forward to the day ahead with their teachers and classmates.

Rebekah Power – Leader Teacher – Leader of Pedagogy and Literacy

Our wonderful school hall has a wooden floor that sits atop a cement slab, so children who are deaf or hard of hearing can feel the vibrations through the floor. We also have a huge subwoofer to help the children get a feel for the beat.

Each of our classrooms is designed to have two teachers and up to ten children. Each room has a ProWise smartboard and whiteboard tabletops for interactive learning. The flexible breakout spaces like this one are used for focused learning therapy. We’re all about design thinking here, and our students were big decision makers when it came to choosing our classroom furniture.

Prior to the move, our students came together in a workshop to select the colour palette and type of furniture. These wobble chairs were a big hit.

Every student has their own locker with space for a hat and drink bottle outside their classroom.

This is our multipurpose room with an operable wall leading outside. This is where the children get their creative juices flowing with art, craft, music, drama and STEM activities. Here we are at our student kitchen, which is a wonderful place for learning life skills in an inclusive environment. There are height-adjustable benches and sinks so users of all heights and abilities can easily use the space and enjoy the facilities.

We've also got our canteen next to the student kitchen, serviced by the NextSense Cafe and fulfilling lunch orders.

Karen Pentland - Librarian

Our beautiful library is big enough for students to be able to break off into different areas for storytime sessions, reading or other activities. We have a huge range of resources and work closely with our Accessibility and Inclusion team to provide content in braille and large print. Like this display for National Simultaneous Storytime, which features the book in a range of formats and accompanying objects to really engage all our students.

Kellie Walker – Lead Teacher – Leader of Partnerships and Community

Have a look around. We're in the multisensory room. The kids really love coming in here to play. We share this room between Preschool and the School, and also a variety of different therapists will use this to help children develop and improve their skills, such as climbing, balancing and using the balls in the ball pit.

This little cocoon swing is a lovely, calm, relaxing place.

This is our quiet relaxation space. Very calming.

Ujala Maikoo - Teacher

Our classrooms on this side of the school open up onto this large deck, providing an open outdoor learning environment. This deck provides passive play opportunities, like construction and building areas for students. You will also notice our basketball and handball courts here. We continue our tradition of handball competitions which are very popular.

Rebekah Power – Leader Teacher – Leader of Pedagogy and Literacy

Our school playground is designed to be fun, safe and inclusive and suit our students’ different sensory needs. Like our preschool playground, there’s a rubber softball and roofing for all-weather play. You may notice that our swing and roundabout are low to the ground. This enables students equal access.

We also have a Liberty swing for our students who use wheelchairs. From our sandpit to our horns, tunnel and climbing ropes, there's lots to keep everyone busy.

This deck provides sensory experiences for students who are blind or have low vision, with bells embedded in it.

Leonie Quill – Head of Brand and Marketing

One of the most exciting features of the building is our showcase area, which offers unique experiences to our clients and visitors and brings our brand to life through innovation, content and interactive experiences. It also helps to explain sensory conditions which can be experienced and understood better by interacting with the various displays.

Touch is an important part of experiential learning and this tactile ring has a number of textures the children can explore while they're waiting in the reception area.

This light tunnel provides a range of sensory experiences for children, where the internal lights in the tunnel create patterns and shapes in our four brand colors to enable fun play while the little ones are crawling through the smooth tunnel. This inquiry column has already become a favourite with our young visitors. The aim of the game is to spin the outer ring to match the corresponding textures underneath.

The panels beneath the graphics are covered in a variety of different textiles that mimic the different animals featured in the cutouts.

Our cochlear touchtable is a wonderful and highly innovative way to learn and experience how a cochlear implant convert sound. When you press on the different touchpads, sounds and phrases are played and the coloured array in the middle of the table lights up in response to the sounds.

Located within the table itself is an actual cochlear device which draws how the array works, so that what you're seeing is exactly how a cochlear implant responds to sound. You can also have great fun talking into the microphone to see how the array responds to your voice in real time. As you move into the projection space of the immersive pod, you'll notice the ripples of white and colour following your movements.

The soft sound you can hear playing from above is actually the NextSense brand song.

Our multimedia wall honors our rich history, the complex network of people that make us a success, our partnerships and the generosity of our donors. The full production of video content runs for 45 minutes and tells two sets of stories which are broken down into themes. Its real purpose is to showcase who we are while visitors are walking through the foyer.

It's been designed so that people can take away short messages while watching beautiful imagery and effects. Audio descriptions are also available via the ear cups located next to each story.

Nicole Smith – Director, Marketing and Communications

The multisensory wall features a variety of tactile and sensory activities designed for children to keep them busy while they're waiting for their appointments. Great consideration was given to the types of activities here and were specifically designed for children with hearing and vision loss. It was also developed to ease any pre-appointment anxiety and create a really welcoming space for our families.

The fun activities include tactile elements, high contrast colors, a textured quadrant, tracking and sorting activities, patterned light activities and this cute little buzzy bee, which is one of my favourites.

Chris Rehn – Chief Executive

Welcome to NextSense!