Helloooooooo…ween!

What an end to the week! The children have gone home with happy hearts and lots of sugar!

We all had a great time at the Halloween Party this afternoon. They might not be ready for dinner thanks to all the kind donations and homemade treats. Mr Green has taken professional photos of the children in their costumes and these will be uploaded in his weekly newsletter.

In English this week we wrote postcards to Ms Leah’s class thanking them for coming to our wellness centre. The students designed their own postcards and wrote messages on the back. We even turned our classroom into a post office where the students pretended to buy stamps and put their postcards in the letter box….which they made themselves! Ms Leah’s class were so grateful when we delivered the postcards to them! Sorry that some of the children got a little bit of paint on their clothes. We tried really hard not to but it was a tricky.

In IPC this week, we started our exciting new unit “Treasure Island” and we looked at all the different things we’re going to learn about this unit. We had so much fun trying to get across the ‘river’ using only two pieces of paper! Teamwork-yay! We made predictions to True or False questions we don’t know the answers to, and at the end of the unit we will answer those questions again. I wonder if we will have the same answers? We also made a display for the unit. The children all worked very hard.

We also looked at Google Earth and the students took turns sharing where their parents are from, so we could all look at those countries together. We learnt that some countries are big, some are small, some are islands, and some touch other countries.

In PE, we had great fun doing a variety of relays. The children enjoyed taking part in the relays and did a fantastic job at creating their own!

Homework and Library books went home today as usual.

I hope you all have a great weekend. Here are some pictures from our fun week of learning.

Take care,

Mrs Sim

Hello!

I hope you are all well and had a nice week.

We have had a very eventful week with lots of great learning happening. I must admit it was quite a rollercoaster of emotions and we have been working very hard overcoming obstacles in our new Positive Pathways journey. Our new destination (goal) for this week and next is to use kind hands. We are working on keeping our hands to ourselves and being mindful of our movements when lining up and playing. So far we are stuck on a big rock (Our Obstacle) and we are going to have to spend some time next week trying to get over it. 

In Maths this week, we have continued on with our unit on Geometry and the students have enjoyed exploring shapes and their properties. We have had a fun shape maze tuff tray, a sorting shape tuff tray and we even designed our own pictures using shapes. Year 2 have been exploring symmetry and they were challenged to complete pictures that were halved in two on their tuff tray. It was a little tricky at times but we used our growth mindset and kept on persevering.We will all be starting to look at fractions next week and I can’t wait to get my pizza shapes out to help them learn! 

In rotations the children have been working well on their phonics (Year 1) and guiding reading (Year 2). It is great to see the progress they are making and the spelling tests today showed fantastic progress. Thank you to you all for spending time with the children doing their homework. It isn’t always easy, I know! 🙂 

In IPC, we finished up our unit on The Zones of Regulation and we finished off on a high. The children are able to confidently identify how they are feeling, what zone they are in and what would help them get back to the green zone. Yay! We will be officially opening our Zen Den next week and I hope it brings comfort to the children in times of need. 

We had an amazing lesson for our exit point where Ms Temple created a Wellness Centre with the students. We had three stations, “Colour Monsters”, “Yoga” and “Zones of Regulation”. Each group was in charge of their station. We invited Ms Leah’s class to our “Wellness Center” and boy did we have fun! I must admit, sometimes I think I should be an MC instead of a primary teacher haha!  The students did so well teaching the older students all about the things they have learned. They rotated around each station and had a chance to learn about the emotions we have explored and the techniques that help us. I was so impressed with them and we all had a ball. The game at the end was a hit where we had to run to a colour “A zone of regulation” and when they music stopped they all had to dance like the colour zone. In the blue we had the crying dancers, in the red the angry stompers and in the green we had smiling ballerinas! It was lovely! 

In PE, the children worked in stations practising their speed and stamina this week. Hopscotch was a huge hit and the children probably slept very well on Tuesday as they were all exhausted after the circuit!

Lastly, thank you to Yerang’s mum for kindly sending the students gifts for Yerang’s birthday. It made their day and they all loved their new gifts.

We finished off the week with some delicious halloween chocolate which Cillian’s mum sent in for the children to enjoy. They were very happy going home today! 

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend! 

Take care and see you all on Monday,

Mrs Sim 🙂

Haaaappeeeee Friday! 🙂

Today I would like to start the update by sharing a moment of proudness I had today. Two weeks ago, we began working on our ‘destination’. It started with a journey which we call “Positive Pathways”. Our class pathway supports behaviour and helps children work together to reach goals in the class that we may be struggling a little with. Our destination was … “Not to ‘erupt’ (interrupt) the teacher or friends on the carpet. We read the book “My mouth is a volcano”  and we decided as a class that blurting things out on the carpet is sometimes a problem for us as we cannot wait and really want to tell the teacher everything!! 😉 This was resulting in some friends not being heard.

We had to overcome some obstacles, and talk about solutions to the problems we were having…(being silly, talking over friends, not putting our hands up etc).

I have watched the children work as a team, like a little family. They have talked things through and worked on this goal together and it has been an absolute delight to see them reach the destination today. They now sit and wait their turn, raise their hands when they wish to contribute to discussions and really try their best not to talk over their friends on the carpet. I am so proud of them and love that we did it together! I can’t wait to see them complete our next journey!

We have been making lots of progress in our rotations, both in Maths and English. The small group instruction is working beautifully and the students are working well in their set groups.

In IPC, we took a trip around the world! We looked at wellness and explored different techniques from countries around the world. The techniques helped us to learn how we can keep our hearts and minds calm.  We also created our own passports to remind ourselves that we can explore these techniques anytime. We also looked at important people from history and learnt about why they were so special. We discovered that even though they faced difficulties in life they were able to stay in the green zone and achieve amazing things.

In English, we listened to a new story about a fun day out. We voted, as a class, and most people agreed that a theme park was a great day out. We looked at plural and singular nouns and sequencers (First, next, then and finally) and began to think about how to write a recount.

In Maths, we worked on our Geometry unit. The Year 1’s learned all about faces and edges and explored both 3D and 2D shapes. They made their own towers and identified how many faces it had. They also designed their own houses using 2D shapes.  The Year 2’s studied 3D shapes. They can now identify vertices, faces and edges and had fun making clues for their friends to guess what shape they had.  

In PE, Ms Temple continued with the unit “My body, my health” and the children were introduced to a new game where they all turned into mice and had to run away to protect their tails!

Homework

Please make sure that homework is brought back in the folders. I know it is hard to remember, I sometimes do too- hehe. It just makes it easier for the children to take their homework home.

The students were all awarded Star of the Week today for reaching their destination. They should have their toys in their bags. Great week and again so proud of them all. I’ll finish up with this little quote. Have a great weekend! 

Dear Parents,

I hope you have all had a great week. It seems to have flown in! 

It seems to be the season for colds and coughs. A few members of the class have been feeling a little under the weather this week. I hope we are all back to good health soon!

In IPC this week we have been exploring the zones of regulation and learning about techniques we can use to help us stay in the green zone, which is optimal for good learning. I hope that the children can begin to identify how they feel and in turn use some of the strategies we learned. We looked at what we can try to do when we feel angry, silly, sad or tired. I will be introducing our zen den next week as a further option for when children need some time to self-regulate. 

We painted some lovely artwork on Monday after looking at Mark Rothko’s work. The children enjoyed using watercolour paints and mixing them to create colours that represented emotions.

Literacy rotations are going well and the Year 1’s should be proud of the progress they have made so far. Seeing them write and read their first words was a lovely moment and I felt very proud of them. All full marks on their first official spelling test today too!

Year 2 students worked hard on their reading and writing in their guided reading sessions and reviewed some of the sounds they were struggling a little with (cious, tious, tion).

In English, the students learned about diaries and the days of the week. We looked at what people include in a diary. The main focus was on where, when and how questions. We created presentations using pictures prompts.. “I went to the waterpark on Monday by bus. It was a fun day!” The Year 2 students created their own charts which they first filled in and then created their own sentences.

We finished off our Number unit in Maths this week and will begin our new unit “Geometry” next week. 

Year 1 students learned how to write the numbers from 1-10. This was a difficult objective but with the help of some toy cars and a tuff tray we tried our best to match the numbers and then find the letters to write the numbers on our whiteboards. The homework is to practise both the formation and the written form, however do not worry if they cannot write the numbers well. It is just to let them become familiar with them at this point. The students were also introduced to odd and even numbers and we spent Wednesday and Thursday looking at and dividing numbers into the two categories. We will work more on this and I have sent home a worksheet to help review them at home also. Year 2 students this week reviewed odd and even numbers, sequences and completed two short review assessments to go over the material they have studied thus far.

In PE, the students worked on creating their very own journeys using various equipment. They had to imagine going through a forest, a tunnel or a cave. They came up with some very creative journeys and we all loved watching them. We of course finished off the week with lots of fun games today. We had to have a little chat about teamwork and hope to improve on this next week during game time. 🙂

That’s all for this week. Hope you all have a lovely weekend and do something nice with the family.

P.S Sorry for the quality of some of my photos.

Take care!

Mrs Sim

Hello and Happy Friday!

Let’s take a look at what we have been up to in Year 1/2 this week.

I will begin by telling you that we are absolutely LOVING our phonics rotations. The students are so enthusiastic to learn the new sounds and the Year 2 students have been reunited with their Read, Write Inc guided reading sessions. Year 1 have learned the sounds m,a,s,d this week and have worked hard on their formation. The homework this week is related to the new sounds and it would be great if you can practise these with your child (There is a small message for parents inside the small green speed sound book).

Year 2 phonics books were sent home in their bags to begin practising their reading again weekly. If possible, have your child read the story out loud to you and see how great they are! Practise the vocabulary and let them show you how they decode new words!

In English, we began our new unit “Let me tell you” where we looked at first time experiences. We read a story about a first train journey and made an alphabet chart of first time experiences. The students needed some prompting to come up with ideas for each letter of the alphabet. I told them that I still remember my first day of school and they found that hard to believe 😉 Some of their responses were… “I remember eating my first apple, going to the beach, eating my first piece of cake, eating a donut (hehe)  and we will continue this activity on Monday! The students also learned past tense verbs. Year 1 played a game with Ms Temple, where they had to run to the “Yesterday” side or the “Today” side depending on the tense. Year 2 students worked in a group changing present tense sentences to past tense.

In Maths this week, the Year 1 students have been comparing numbers and learning which number is less or more. We had lots of exciting tuff trays to work on this week where they compared numbers and practised the sentences. “There are more______ than…”/There are less _____ than ______” The Year 1 maths homework will require an adult to talk to the students about the ladybirds on the leaves. The idea of this activity is to see if the students can talk about the numbers using the words “more” and “less”. For example, “There are more ladybirds here than there”.

Year 2 students worked on sequences and ordinal numbers this week. We practised making sequences, working out missing numbers on number lines and naming ordinal numbers. We took a progress test today too!

In PSHE, we looked at the emotion ball “anger” and read a lovely story about a girl who overcame her anger by writing nice things about her sister. We explored how anger makes us feel and what we can do to make us feel better. We did this by making “angry toilet roll men” and writing/drawing things that made us feel angry on small pieces of paper. We put them inside our toilet rolls and next week we will take them out and discuss what we can do when these situations arise. 

We also read the story “The Colour Monster”, another one of my favourites!  The children enjoyed making their very own monsters and they turned out beautifully. 

In PE this week the children played a variety of animal movement games and activities. The students loved throwing the bean bags on the beautiful posters that were created for them. They also had great fun doing an animal relay! We finished off with games this morning and did lots of team skill based games. We practised our hockey skills, throwing and catching and finished off with a little dance. It was great fun and they loved my new microphone! 

Have a lovely weekend and enjoy!

See you all on Monday! 

Mrs Sim 🙂

Dear Parents,

I hope you are all well on this lovely sunny Friday!

We have had a great week here in Y1/2 with lots of learning happening.

In English this week, the students had fun using masks to retell the story “Finders Keepers”. The students were given roles and did a wonderful job acting with Ms Temple. 

The Year 2 students spent time writing their own comic strips whilst the Year 1 students drew pictures to tell theirs. We looked at story endings and story settings and finished off the week reviewing the four stories we have read over the unit. We also spent time speaking about mistakes and how they are a good thing as they help us learn. The Year 2 students’ homework is related to making mistakes and they have to help fix the sentences. My aim is to create a classroom environment where mistakes are totally and completely 100% okay. My wish is for students to respond positively to any corrections they may be asked to make. This is a work in progress 🙂 So far so good!

Rotations for phonics and guided reading are starting on Monday! We are ready to go now! Yay!

In Maths, we have continued on with our unit on Numbers. The Year 1 students are getting better each day at forming their numbers and spotting missing numbers on their number lines. They learnt some counting rhymes and had great fun catching the fish in the tuff tray and practising writing the numbers on them.

Year 2 have reviewed odd and even numbers, counting on in 2’s and 10’s and spent time estimating. The students were asked to find easier ways to count larger numbers. One way they came up with was counting in 10’s, therefore grouping the objects first and then counting in 10’s and then 1’s. The tuff tray on Thursday helped them to do this with manipulatives. The Year 2 students also worked on missing numbers in a 100 square. They had to think about whether to add 1 or 10 depending on the direction.  

Maths rotations are in full swing now and we are doing well with the transitions! Well done to everyone for their hard work 🙂

In IPC we finished our unit ‘Brain Wave’ and will be starting our new unit “If you’re happy and you know it” next week. We finished it by reviewing emotions that help us learn well and also looked at  good and bad behaviours in class. We created a poster with pictures of great choice behaviours and bad choice behaviours. 

In PSHE, we looked at teasing and how this can make others feel. We watched a lovely little video which showed how teasing can make others feel really sad and upset. In our class we never want anyone to feel like this.  We discussed what we can do if someone in the class says or does something we don’t like. The students all now know that they can come to me or Ms Temple if they have any problems. The students are still young and learning how to interact with one another. The PSHE lessons are wonderful and really help us build positive relationships as a class.

In PE, Ms Temple prepared a fantastic lesson for the students where they were working on several skills in pairs. The students are still working on teamwork and working with other members of the class. The activities built on these skills and it was great to see them working nicely together.

We ended the week with a nice games session this morning. I have never laughed and smiled so much at Ms Yuli’s enthusiasm on the piano. She played away for us while we played musical statues and the number game. When the piano stopped the children had to run to a mat in numbers. We all now know how many students are in the class 😉 

Homework and library books went home as normal and should be returned next Friday. 

I think that is all for this week! 

Have a great weekend and see you all on Monday!

Mrs Sim 🙂

Hello and Happy Friday to you all!

I hope you all had a lovely Korean Thanksgiving break.

We have had a busy week this week with lots of learning going on.

In English, we continued with our unit “Places we know” and worked on retelling stories and answering comprehension questions. We read a story called “Hide and Seek” and another called “The Park in the Dark”. In “The Park in the Dark” we discussed the rhyming words and how some things can look and sound different than what they really are. The students enjoyed Ms Temple’s lesson about class pets so much so that I decided to let them write/draw about their favourite pets for homework.

In Maths, we had our first week of full Maths rotations and I was so very proud of how well the students did. We had lots of fun with the different tuff trays, great focused faces around the teacher table and lots of progress using Zearn, our Maths online programme.

In IPC, we continued on with our Brainwave unit and learned about which emotions help us learn best and which emotions may make it more difficult to learn. The students love making a large string of emotions fo the classroom and designing their own emotion balls.

We had great fun with the parachute in our games class this morning and the children did a great job working as a team. It was a lovely lesson filled with smiling faces.

HOMEWORK

Homework was sent home today along with library books. Please return them next Friday 🙂

I hope you all have a great weekend and I look forward to another great week ahead.

Take care, Mrs Sim 🙂

Dear Parents,

It has been a very short this week with the typhoon and Chuseok holiday approaching.

We have had lots of exciting things happening this week with the highlight being the party we had yesterday to celebrate the school’s 40th Birthday. The children really enjoyed all the treats that the PTA provided. Thank you!

In English, we worked on our story telling and sequencing skills. We read a story about a little girl who walked for miles to take milk to her daddy. The students performed the story to the class using pictures. The Year 2 students annotated their pictures and wrote some wonderful sentences to describe them.

In our rotations, we began to learn all about the “Work on Writing” station. The Year 2 students produced some lovely work and the Year 1’s practised using their book and pictures to write beginning sounds. We will be working on this more after the Chuseok break.

In Maths, we began our rotations after training hard in all the stations. The children really love the Tuff Tray activities and it consolidates their learning beautifully. We still have to work on our transitions but I was really pleased with how well they all worked today. Great job!

In IPC, we continued our unit on the Brainwave. We only covered one lesson due to the Typhoon and then the celebrations yesterday.

We had great fun looking at what we will look like when we are older. I, not so much (haha) but the children laughed lots. We put the pictures in our cards for the treasure box and these will be sent to the children in 10 years time.

Homework wasn’t sent home today-have a great holiday with your family. If you didn’t bring last week’s, today then please do so by next Friday 🙂 Thank you.

It was lovely to see all the children in their hanboks today. Mr Green took some lovely pictures for you all..

Hope you all have a great long weekend. See you on the 13th! Take care!

Hello and Happy Friday to you all!

Firstly, it was so lovely to meet you all yesterday and thank you for coming.

We have had a great first whole week and I am so proud of how the children are settling in. Lots of teamwork, kindness and sharing has taken place. We are still learning our routines and getting used to our schedule but they have done fantastically.

In English this week, we read two stories and worked on re-telling them through pictures. We practised putting scenes in order with cut out pictures to help us. The Year 2’s worked on their sentence writing and reviewed past tense verbs with uncle ‘ed’. Year 1’s have been working on writing the date in thier workbooks and sticking their work in neatly.

In IPC, we started our unit “The Brainwave” and had lots of fun learning about the cerebellum. It was a difficult word for them so we clapped it out and sang the word to help us remember. We learned about relexes and tested some out. The funniest was when I shouted ‘boo’ and they all blinked. We then looked at the differences between conscious thinking and reflex actions. We made a large poster and had to separate the actions into ‘Conscious’ and ‘Reflex’. We did a little experiment with sponges to see if we would blink when the sponge was thrown. The students LOVED THIS! They practised recording the results on paper and clipboards and found that everyone blinks when a sponge is thrown towards the glass. We also spoke about how we can control some actions to help us learn better in class and be kind to others.

In Literacy rotations, we have been learning the first two stations “Read to Self” and “Listening to Reading”. We have our book bins ready and have been making ourselves familiar with Epic- our online reading programme. Next week, we are going to learn how to work independently when we do “Word work”.

In Maths, we have been learning all about our Tuff Tray station after finishing off learning what we do when we are “At our desk”. The rotations will be Meet with Mrs Sim/At your desk/ Technology (Zearn) and Hands On.

In PE, we started our unit “Time for an adventure” and played some animal based games. We also created a mini obstacle course today which the kids thoroughly enjoyed.

HFS 40th Birthday Party

Next Wednesday, the school will be celebrating its 40th Birthday with a little party in the afternoon. Children are asked to wear their school uniform on this day please (7th September).

Chuseok Thursday 8th September

Next Thursday we will be celebrating Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving) with our annual Chuseok games and activities event. If your child has hanbok please send them in it. We also love to see other traditional clothes so if you don’t have a hanbok, you can wear your own country’s traditional costume.

Homework

Homework went home along with library books today. The students have a navy library bag and a file for their homework. The files were a little small to fit both their homework and the books in. Please return them next Friday together.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend! Can’t wait for another exciting week with lots of fun events taking place.

Mrs Sim <3

Good Afternoon,

It has been a very fun first two days here in Year 1/2. I am sure the children will sleep well tonight 🙂

It has been great getting to know the students and I hope they are now feeling a little more settled and ready for a great year ahead.

We spent the last two days getting to know each other and learning our class routines. Today, I can already see what good listeners they are and what a great team they will be!

We read several stories to help us learn our new routines and help the children feel welcome and loved! My all time favourite is “Our class is a Family”. We made our very own class family bracelets (which the girls enjoyed more than the boys) hehe 🙂

We learned about good choices and bad choices and spoke about what kind of class we would like to be. I was impressed by the students’ eagerness to be good students and I loved watching the Year 2 children be fantastic role models. Well done!

Today we read the book “The Dot” and spoke about growth mindset – one of our school’s core values. We decided to see if we could be as good as the character in the book and use our growth mindset to make beautiful dots. I can’t wait to put a display together next week as they did such a fantastic job! Pictures to follow.

The students took home library books today. These will be sent home every Friday and should be returned the following Friday in the plastic case they were given. Homework will also be sent in the same file case and I would really appreciate it if you could make sure they use this as it makes it easier for their little hands to carry everything 🙂

I hope everyone had a great first few days and rests up over the weekend. Get ready for our first fun week together!

Trainee Teacher

Next week Ms Temple, our trainee teacher will be joining us. She will be in our Class on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We are very lucky to have two teachers twice a week and I am sure the students will love her.

Parent Open Afternoon

Next Thursday 1st September, I would love to meet you all at our Parent Open Afternoon. It will begin at 2:45 and should last around 30 minutes. I will talk about our curriculum and it is a nice opportunity to ask any questions you may have 🙂

Have a lovely weekend and I will see you all on Monday! <3

Mrs Sim