This week in Dexter class

Welcome to the Summer term. I really hope that you all had a lovely break and managed to spend time with your families and friends with maybe a visit from the Easter Bunny thrown in! The children have been very excited to share what they have been doing and we are also really happy to welcome Ottilie B to our class, she has made us complete and now we are full and raring to go with our learning this term.

This week, we begin our literacy journey based on the story What the Ladybird Heard by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Lydia Monks. To start off with, we will familiarise ourselves with the text and discuss whether it is fiction or non-fiction and why. We will then map out the story and using our 'boxing up' technique decide which parts are at the beginning, middle and end. We will then complete guided comprehension and reading activities before we progress to writing the story next week.

I have challenged the children to create a display for this story and they have started by creating some of the characters by drawing and painting them. We will add to this by writing speech bubbles using our phonics knowledge to help us write short captions.

Our phonics focus is on Phase 4 this term and we will be aiming to get all children reading at this level, blending and segmenting securely in order to achieve our Early Learning Goals for reading and writing.

In Maths, we will be looking at the counting pattern beyond 10 and supporting children to understand that the numbers beyond 10 are comprised from one lot of ten and an amount of ones so for example, 10 is 1 ten and 0 ones, 15 is 1 ten and 5 ones, 20 is 2 lots of 10 and 0 more etc. This is part of the mastery approach to mathematics which helps children to see the patterns in the number system. We will also be recalling our number bonds to 5 and 10 which also helps children to calculate rapidly. You can help at home by holding up an amount of fingers and seeing if they can identify how many more they need to make 5 or 10. For example, hold up 7 fingers and they will be able to see that they need 3 more to make 10. The more practise children have at retrieving these facts the more confident they become. We like to use a lot of visual resources to support them and a quick bit of finger maths goes a long way!

A letter will be coming out shortly detailing trips which will be taking place to Cotswold Wildlife Park and also to Nature in Art. We are very excited to have these experiences and will provide more information shortly.

We have had singing practise today and we will also be starting our new music unit this term called Big Bear Funk!

This is a transition unit that prepares children for their musical learning in Year 1. It includes listening and appraising Funk music, embedding foundations of the interrelated dimensions of music using voices and instruments, learning to sing Big Bear Funk and revisiting other nursery rhymes and action songs. We will be playing instruments within the song and also having a go at improvisation using voices and instruments. We will look at riff-based composition and share and perform the learning that has taken place

Our new value is Justice and we will be discussing this in our RE lesson this week. We will talk about how we often say "That's not fair!" and dig a little deeper in to what this means and how it makes us feel. Please find the activity sheet on the whole school BLOG. There are some lovely activities which could be done at home.

On Friday we will have our PE session with Mr Spurrier and as always children are asked to come into school wearing their PE kit. Please make sure ALL items are labelled clearly and this applies to all other items of uniform as it is quite a feat trying to reunite children with their clothing at the end of the day. I'm afraid we have lost items quite regularly as the children do not always put them where they are supposed to and if they don't have a name in we have no hope!