Early Years Foundation Stage

At Whyteleafe School, our Early Years Foundation Stage is inclusive, engaging and challenging. We create an environment that reflects real life situations of awe and wonder through a Whyteleafe designed curriculum, unique to us. The exciting topics we use to teach the early learning goals are relevant, changeable and inspiring for the current cohort. Through a self-selective, discovery-based environment our children are set up to excel and thrive. Our environment is relaxed and nurturing with spacious, bright and open classrooms where our children feel safe and secure.

At Whyteleafe, we create the perfect balance of child-initiated and adult led opportunities. We focus on how each child learns through playing and exploring, active learning, creativity and thinking critically, to best support them to form a positive attitude towards learning that will last a lifetime. The children in EYFS work on a 1:1 or small group basis with their class teacher, giving time to work on specific targets to ensure they make the best progress possible. Our balance of play and child and adult initiation develops independence in every child that joins our school with meaningful interactions to support and extend those ‘wow moments’ in their learning. We embrace individuality at Whyteleafe and use the children’s differences to learn more about people, communities and the world around us.

Our environment is vocabulary rich and allows our children many opportunities to express themselves, further their vocabulary and develop their oracy skills, such as show and tell, a talent show and word of the week.

Our relationship begins from the moment you receive a place at Whyteleafe. We will welcome you to many events across the year. We start with our informative parents’ evening in the summer term before your child begins school and a child’s taster session to support their transition into Reception. In the new academic year, we carry out home visits that are hugely beneficial for all to build a relationship and address any concerns or questions. Throughout the year we have two parents’ evenings and many opportunities for you to celebrate your child's learning. We will support you with our phonics and Tapestry workshops so that you feel confident too. 

We use Tapestry (an online tool) at Whyteleafe to record any learning observations which we share with parents. This keeps our parents in the loop and engaged with the current learning so you can mirror and deepen their understanding at home if you wish. Tapestry also allows our parents to share their child’s learning at home with us at school. We truly have an open door policy here at Whyteleafe and will keep you well informed on your child’s settling in, progress and everything in between.

Children in EYFS are assessed regularly throughout the year and are assessed at the end of Reception against the Early Learning Goals.  At Whyteleafe we aim for all of our children to make a good level of development no matter where their journey began with us. Most importantly, we aim for our children to become social, passionate, creative and adventurous learners ready to shine throughout their journey into Year 1, the rest of their school life and beyond.