Woodheys Primary School

Welcome to our Reception Webpage!

We would like to tell you all about Reception and how learning takes place. We will update this webpage to keep you informed of the exciting things we do and to give you some tips on how you can support your child. Please use your child's Tapestry account too!

Mrs Kimitris (RKT Teacher) (EYFS Leader) (Monday - Thursday)	Mrs Towers (RBT and RKT Teacher) (Monday, Tuesday and Friday)	Miss Bailey (RBT Teacher) (Wednesday - Friday)
Mrs Woodcock (RKT Teaching Assistant)	Mrs Taylor (RBT Teaching Assistant)	Mrs Edwards (RBT Teaching Assistant)

Organisation of Classes in Reception

We are a two form entry school which provides 60 places within each Reception cohort. Each Reception cohort is broken down in to two classes of 30 children. Both classes share an open plan indoor and outdoor learning environment.

Our Aims

At Woodhey’s, our aim is to provide children with a wide range of stimulating, creative and challenging early learning experiences within a secure, caring and inclusive environment, both indoors and outdoors. Our school values of together we achieve more, challenging ourselves to grow and flourish, happy and passionate to learn and caring for and respecting others are at the heart of everything we do.

Our EYFS department has been thoughtfully developed following extensive research to ensure that our environment is carefully matched to the needs of our children. We provide a calm, natural and purposeful setting that supports children in becoming confident, real-life learners. We prioritise authentic experiences—such as using real cups in the role play area or making playdough from scratch—so that children can develop practical skills and gain a deeper understanding of the world around them.

We provide rich opportunities to excite the learner within every child, encouraging curiosity, exploration and a love of discovery. Through meaningful ‘real-life’ experiences—such as designing and building boats and testing them in our school pond—children are able to investigate, problem-solve and apply their learning in purposeful ways. These experiences are supported through a balance of adult-led and child-initiated activities, alongside carefully chosen, stimulating resources.

Our natural environment is intentionally designed to reduce overstimulation, recognising that a calm, thoughtfully resourced space helps children to focus, engage more deeply and regulate their emotions effectively. This supports sustained concentration, independence and high-quality play.

We aim to offer every child a consistent and personalised learning experience, ensuring that all children make good progress from their individual starting points and are not left behind. During carpet sessions and continuous provision, we focus on each child’s personal next steps, providing the best possible opportunities for them to thrive within our environment and achieve their age-related expectations, including a Good Level of Development.

Please find more information in our EYFS Policy.

Please find more information in our EYFS Vision Statement.

Our Curriculum

Our early years setting follows the curriculum as outlined in the 'EYFS Statutory Framework' and the 'Development Matters' guidance material.

The EYFS framework includes 7 areas of learning and development that are equally important and inter-connected. However, 3 areas known as the prime areas are seen as particularly important for igniting curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building children’s capacity to learn, form relationships and thrive.

The 3 Prime Areas are:

• Communication and Language - Communication and Language is a core Prime Area in the Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework, emphasising high-quality interactions and a language-rich environment to develop listening, understanding and speaking skills. It focuses on building vocabulary, encouraging conversation, and fostering communication through stories, songs, and play, serving as a crucial foundation for all other areas of learning.
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development - Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED) is a prime area of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework, focusing on helping children develop a positive sense of self, respect for others, social skills, and emotional wellbeing. It enables children to manage emotions, build relationships, and gain independence, acting as a crucial foundation for learning.
• Physical Development - Physical development in the EYFS is a prime area focusing on gross motor skills (strength, balance, coordination) and fine motor skills (precision, tool use) to support healthy growth and independence. It covers physical activity, self-care, and health, enabling children to navigate their environment safely. Key goals involve building strength, confidence, and agility.

The Prime Areas are strengthened and applied through 4 specific areas:

• Literacy - In the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), Literacy is one of the four specific areas of learning and development, focusing on fostering a love of reading, developing language comprehension, and introducing early writing skills. It involves engaging children with books, stories, rhymes, and mark-making to build foundational skills for future learning.
• Mathematics - Mathematics in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is a statutory area of learning focused on developing a strong grounding in number, spatial reasoning, and pattern recognition. It emphasizes practical, hands-on experiences—such as counting, sorting, and shape exploration—to build confidence and mastery in numerical patterns and relationships.
• Understanding the World - Understanding the World (UtW) is a specific area of learning in the EYFS framework focused on helping children (birth to 5) make sense of their physical, social, and cultural world. It encourages curiosity, exploring environments, understanding communities, and using technology. It includes three main aspects: Past and Present, People, Communities, and the Natural World.
• Expressive Arts and Design - Expressive Arts and Design (EAD) is one of the four specific areas of learning and development within the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) in England. It focuses on enabling children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, fostering their imagination, creativity, and self-expression. 

Start of Reception/ Baseline

When children first start in Reception, we offer them a transitional period where they can initially visit the environment with a parent/carer and then attend for short periods of time by themselves. We feel that this gives each child the best possible start to our school and enables the following:

• our teaching staff to build a strong relationship with each family;
• our teaching staff get to know each child, including their interests and needs;
• our teaching staff are able to meet each child's interests and needs;
• each child gets to know and can begin to build a strong and positive relationship with our teaching staff;
• each child becomes familiar and happy with their new school environment, its routines and expectations;
• each child will have met and made friends with some of the other children who will be in their class.

Each child will be given a key worker who will be able to help make them feel safe and cared for. During the Autumn term, each key worker group will have snack together and talk about their interests and family news.

Once we are confident that each child has settled in positively, we will begin 'baselining' the children. This is a 6-week informal process that will enable us to work closely with each child and find out about their interests, needs and abilities. The children will think that we are just 'playing' with them and will not be aware of this process. In addition to our gathering of information, the Government have implemented a statutory Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) that all Reception children are required to complete. The RBA will be an activity-based assessment of each child’s academic starting points in:

• language, communication and literacy
• mathematics

The RBA will be a short task-based assessment. Each child will use practical resources to complete these tasks and our teaching staff will record the results on the government RBA website. We will be required to carry out the assessment within the first 6 weeks of pupils starting reception. No numerical score will be shared with schools and the data will only be used by the government at the end of year 6 to form the school-level progress measure. To find out further about this statutory requirement, please access the 'RBA Government' webpage.

Once our 6-week baseline period has been completed, we will begin to focus further on specific areas of learning and give each parent a bespoke 'Next Step' sheet which will highlight their child's individual learning aims.

Parent- School Relationships

We strongly believe that positive parent-school relationships can influence a child's school experience and ensure they continue to flourish. We aim to keep parents up to date with their child's learning through a variety of ways. These include:

• Tapestry (Online Learning Journey that has at least 1 observation added each week)
• Personalised Next Steps that are released 4 times a year (Autumn, Spring and Summer Term)
• End of Year Report (Summer Term)
• Parents Evenings (Autumn and Spring Term)
• Parent Workshops (Autumn, Spring and Summer Term)
• Stay and Play Sessions
• Transition Events including a Parent Welcome Meeting, an open 'Stay and Play' session before the children start school, home visits and  nursery contact.
• Weekly Parent Home Learning Guides
• Reading Records that are updated weekly
• Daily Contact at the start and end of the school day
• Tree-mendous Behaviour Leaves (Home Learning Link)
• School Values certificates from our Celebration Assemblies  

Woodheys Videos

Parental Support

Reception Admissions Booklet

We have created a Reception admission book to help prepare our parents/carers for their child's start of school journey. Please find the link below:

Reception Admissions Booklet

Tapestry and Systems Workshop (Autumn Term)

For those parents who would like to recap on our parent workshop or who were unable to attend, please find a copy of our parent workshop Powerpoint below. Click on the links below to open up the PowerPoint and the Booklet.

Tapestry Parent Workshop PPT

Tapestry Parent Guide

Phonic and Reading Workshops (Autumn Term)

Please find our phonic and reading workshops below:

Video 1 - How to blend sounds together to read a CVC word 

Video 2 - How to read a tricky word

Video 3 - How to read a simple sentence

Video 4 - What to ask my child when they are reading their book to me

Video 5 - How to pronoune the phonemes (Videos on LW page)

Video 6 - How to read a word with more than one syllable 

Video 7 - Early Reading (Phase 1) Workshop 

Little Wandle Resources : https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

Maths Workshop (Spring Term)

Please find our maths workshop below:

Maths Workshop Link - Maths in EYFS Workshop

Number Formation Rhymes - Number Formation Rhyme Cards

Early Writing Workshop 

Please find our phonic and reading workshop below:

Main Workshop Video - Early Writing Workshop

Video 1 - How to write a CVC word

Video 2 - How to write a longer word with more than one syllable

Video 3 - How to write a simple sentence

Little Wandle Sound Mat: Phase 2 and 3 Sound Mats

Stay and Play Sessions

Please remember to check our Tapestry messages to see when our next Parent Stay and Play session is scheduled for.

Parent Questionnaire

Thank you to all the parents who completed our EYFS 2025 Questionnaire. Our EYFS lead has analysed and read all parent questionnaires to ensure we are mindful of all parental/ carers opinions. These do mean a lot to us as we always aspire to be the best we can be. We are extremely proud to confirm that 100% of EYFS parents/carers would recommend our school. As these questionnaires were anonymous, we have created a document to summarise our findings. This can be found by clicking the links below:

• Summary of all the results

Our News

Please log in to your Tapestry account to view your child's personal learning experience at our school. It is a good system to support home discussions about school days. Your Tapestry login email has been sent to you. If you are unable to access your child's account, then please let our EYFS team know and we will be happy to help.

Who Can Help?

At Woodheys, we value our families and know that sometimes our parents/ carers may need some extra support to guide them with aspects they are unsure about. You may be worried about your child’s development or wellbeing. You may need help with your own wellbeing. Please see our attached leaflet, where we have listed some key agencies and charities that you may want to make contact with.

Please also remember that we care and that we are here to help too!