Whitehill Primary School

Hello and welcome to our Early Years page. Throughout the year we will update this page to reflect the steps our class take in their learning, to celebrate their successes and to support you with school life and home learning.

Please find our 'Welcome Leaflet' below under 'Early Years Important Information' for further information on our school policies, our curriculum and ClassDojo.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the school or send a member of staff a message on ClassDojo.

Many thanks,

The Early Years Team

 The EYFS Team

Class Teacher (Mon, Tues, Weds)

Mrs Crockett (formerly Miss Hampson)

Class Teacher (Thurs, Fri)

Miss Milnes

Reception Teaching Assistant

Miss Goddard

 EYFS Lead & SENCO - Miss Milnes 

Summer Term 

Forest School	Trips

 The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)

The statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage sets out the requirements of educational programmes for early learning and care. It gives all professionals a set of common principles and commitments to deliver quality early education and childcare experiences to all children from birth to 5. At Whitehill, we use 'Development Matters' to help us design an effective early years curriculum. We assess against the following statutory Early Learning Goals:

PSED - Personal, Social and Emotional Development (Self-Regulation, Managing Self and Building Relationships)

CL - Communication and Language (Listening, Attention and Understanding and Speaking)

PD - Physical Development (Gross Motor Skills and Fine Motor Skills)

LIT - Literacy (Comprehension, Word Reading and Writing)

MATHS - Mathematics (Number and Numerical Patterns)

UTW - Understanding the World (Past and Present, People, Culture and Communities and The Natural World)

EAD - Expressive Arts and Design (Creating with Materials and Being Imaginative and Expressive)

You can find a copy of the development matters online here: Development Matters non-statutory curriculum guidance

Class Dojo

Class Dojo is a way for teachers to encourage pupils and contact parents about their child's progress in class. It can be used online or downloaded as an app on iOS/Android. (Please ask if you require a copy of your log in). We will be using this in class alongside our Good to be Green system. We will discuss the ways in which points are gained or lost during PSHE times to ensure that it fits in with our behaviour policy. Children can access at home to personalise their avatars.

Phonics

Phonics is a way of teaching children to read and write. At Whitehill Primary we follow the 'Read Write Inc' scheme. Throughout the summer term children will be learning to say, read and write set 1 and 2 sounds and will be developing their skills in segmenting and oral blending e.g. c-a-t... cat.

Please open the following link for some guidance on what phonics is and how you can help your child with their phonics learning at home:

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-age-4-5-reception/

For guidance on how to pronounce sounds, watch the following video:

https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/reading-owl/find-a-book/read-write-inc-phonics--1/phonics-pure-sounds-video

Literacy

Our topic this term is 'What is a life cycle?' and our focus texts are 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar', 'How does a butterfly grow?' and 'Ergo'.

As a class we convert texts into story maps and create actions to develop our knowledge and understanding of stories and language. We also use 'Tales Toolkit' to develop storytelling skills by creating stories with a character, setting, problem and solution. Reading and storytelling should be a magical experience for children and so we provide a wealth of active and interactive learning experiences to inspire their imaginations and encourage them to see themselves as speakers, listeners, writers and readers.

Reading is a bonding experience for you and your child and plays an important role in their development. Please follow the link below for some tips for reading with your child:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHMl70ZmxIQ

Writing, drawing and mark making

Children begin their journey towards writing by making marks. The marks children make slowly begin to have more meaning for them. You can support this by saying "tell me about your drawing/writing" or "I'd love to know more about this". Encourage children to engage in purposeful writing and model this for them e.g. you could write a shopping list or a birthday card with your child. Provide a range of interesting mark making materials such as crayons and paint brushes and encourage your child to use their fingers. They can mark make on paper, the ground or set up a tray with flour, sand or shaving foam. They can mark make with anything and on anything! The more they explore, the more they will see themselves as writers.

Reception are learning to write simple sentences this term. You can support your child by encouraging them to write sentences at home using their phonic knowledge and using capital letters, word spaces and full stops.

Name writing

Your child's name is an important part of their identity. We encourage them to write their names regularly as part of purposeful writing. You can encourage your child to write their name on the back of their drawings and to create name labels e.g. when they make a lego tower they can label it with their name or they could create a name sign for their bedroom door.

Maths

We follow the 'White Rose Maths' Scheme of Learning to support your little mathematicians in becoming deep thinkers and talkers. There are lots of things you can do at home to help your child. Singing songs is important in developing their counting skills and there are lots of counting to 20 songs available on youtube.com, many of which your child will know from school.

Engage in practical counting throughout the day. How many red cars can you see on your walk home from school? How many chips are on your plate? 

We can count anything… claps, jumps on the spot, steps as we walk up the stairs.

Look out for numbers, shapes and patterns in the environment and talk about them e.g. shapes you see on the way to school and numbers on car registration plates and house doors, numbered aisles in the supermarket, patterns on your clothes and shapes of objects around your home. 

You can sort and order objects and talk about similarities and things that you notice... it is all about exploring and talking.

Some useful websites:

For maths and literacy games, visit:

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/Search.aspx?Subject=37

To join in with some singalong stories, visit:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=barefoot+books&oq=barefoot+books&gs_l=youtube.3...609.2938.0.3125.14.8.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0...0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube

To keep active, burn off some energy or just have a dance, follow the link below. There are lots more action videos, songs and dances on youtube.com that are suitable for early years children too.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=go+noodle