This week in Dexter Class

Welcome back to Dexter Class and the start of Spring Term 2. I hope everyone had a well deserved break and return feeling rested and recharged. I am really looking forward to popping in and seeing all the children this week as I start a phased return.

In the meantime I would like to let you know what the children will be getting up to this week and throughout the new term. It is Fair Trade Fortnight and the children will be learning about how the Fairtrade Foundation supports farmers and their communities across the world. We will compare farming in the UK with farming overseas and look out how we, as consumers, can make choices which help to support farmers, communities and the environment.

Our literacy is based around Eileen Browne's story 'Handa's Surprise' set in a village of the Luo tribe in south-west Kenya. It is a story about a girl, Handa, who wants to surprise her friend, Akeyo, with seven delicious fruits. Over the next couple of weeks we will look at the way of life in Kenya and get chance to sample some of the delicious fruits that Handa takes to her friend. We will listen and appraise some traditional African music and poetry and we have various art activities planned including weaving using paper to make 2D and 3D baskets.

In Maths, we are continuing our mastery approach and looking at the numbers 9 and 10, how these are composed from smaller numbers and how we can recognise and sort different representations. We continue to work on our rapid recall of number bonds to 5 and beyond.

In RE this term we will look at why Easter is important to Christians, new beginnings in nature and how and why we celebrate Easter. We will continue our weekly visit to Church and worship.

We are consolidating our work on Phonics Phase 3 before we start on Phase 4. The children have learnt a lot of new sounds over the last few weeks including digraphs and trigraphs but we now need to secure their blending and segmenting skills before progressing further. Please support them by continuing with daily reading at home as their reading books are matched directly to their individual reading fluency.

Lastly, I would really like to thank all of the Amberley Family which includes staff, children and families for all the support that has been given. It has meant an awful lot to me and I am really looking forward to being back in the classroom as normal very soon, I can't wait!