Dear Parents and children,

I can’t believe the day is here. It has been such a joyous time teaching at HFS these past few years,. The students have all etched themselves into my heart and memory. What an awesome farewell. I truly feel special. Thank you to everyone for their kind words and generosity. I will miss you all and I will treasure the time that I spent at HFS forever.

Thank you to the rocking 2-3’s for being such amazing, hardworking and diligent students. you have really worked hard and made outstanding work.

This week we learned the features of and how to write explanations, linking with our math to produce explanations of symmetry and writing explanations of habitats for our 3D habitat diorama’s.

In Math we continued with Geometry, this week learning about quadrilaterals and looking at Symmetry in 2D shapes and pictures and then progressing to 3D shapes. The students learned about horizontal and Vertical symmetry and how to create a symmetrical picture in Microsoft Paint.

In IPC we completed our presentations from our AR research and made them into posters.

We ended off the IPC unit “Our World” by making wonderful 3d Habitat diorama’s and wrote explanations to go with them.

We also celebrated Clare’s Birthday on Thursday – Thank you for the treats Clare!

The highlight of the week was Scary Dress up day. The students all had amazing costumes.

Thank you to my superterrificawesometastic year 2-3 students. I will never forget you.

Mr. Kearney

Wow, it has been a full week of learning in the Year 2-3 Class. This is what we have been up to.

The students conducted their assembly on curiosity and it went excellently. Well done to all the year 2-3 students for putting on an impressive display of what it means to be curious. Their performance of the “Greek God Rap” was superb as well.

In class this week we did a lot of work. We continued learning about dictionaries and word meanings in English and learned ai /ay/ei word sounds in phonics. In grammar we had fun learning about compound words.

In Math we continued with our Geometry unit, focusing on position and direction. We discovered that right angles can be viewed as 1/4, 2/4 3/4 turns, understanding clockwise and anticlockwise. We then progressed on to giving directions using the correct terminology of North, South, East and West and looking at grid reference points on a map. The students had fun playing pirates looking for treasure.

IPC was the most exciting this week as the students each adopted a flowering plant to take care of. They gave their plants a name and will water and nurture their plants in the coming weeks.

We also stimulated our curiosity and had fun using the Augmented Reality software to research facts about a country of our choosing.

The students worked in pairs and compiled the information they researched into creating Google slide Presentations.

We also used an Atlas to learn about the Continents and Oceans. We learned a song to help us remember the names of the 5 Oceans. Ask your child to sing it to you.

A full week of curiosity, exploration and discovery in the year 2-3 class. That is all for this week. Have a wonderful weekend.

Mr. Kearney

It is great to be back after the Autumn break and wonderful to welcome Seoa Kim to the Year 2-3 class! She is settling in nicely.

In Class this week we have been busy. In English, the students “Wrapped-up” their Mythology unit by learning their Greek God Rap for our assembly next week. We also started our new unit on dictionaries by practicing putting words into alphabetical order and looking up words in a dictionary. We had a fun scavenger hunt activity around the school looking for the meanings of words.

In Maths we also started a new unit, Geometry, first revising the properties of 2D shapes in terms of sides and vertices. We learned about regular and irregular polygons and then progressed on to learning about the different angles in shapes – acute, obtuse, and right angles. We ended the week by learning how to measure angles with a protractor. Very advanced work which the year 2-3’s excelled in.

In IPC we continued our unit on “Our World”, this week focusing on habitats. We took advantage of the HFS surroundings and took note of the different habitats that are in our immediate locale. The students compared 2 different habitats understanding that living things need food and water, shelter, and a safe place to raise their young in order for a habitat to be ideal. We also understood that different animals are suited to their different habitats and vice versa. We read the book “After the Storm” by Nick Butterworth and designed effective habitats for the animals that needed them after the storm destroyed their tree habitat.

In ICT the students worked on creating a Google Slideshow for their assembly next week and learned how to add animations to their slides.

We also practiced our assembly and the students are excited about conducting their first assembly for the school next week.

It has been a full week of learning and fun. Have a wonderful weekend

Mr. Kearney

Dear Parents and Children,

It is a short week but the students have been busy. we had a great time celebrating Chuseok yesterday and the students performed their play excellently.

We also enjoyed playing traditional Korean games in the gymnasium to pay homage to this important cultural holiday.

In English, we completed the beginning of our Myth stories and planned the middle and ending, understanding that every story has a hero and the hero has a problem that he or she needs to solve by the end of the story. I am so impressed with their creativity and writing ability, Well done Year 2-3’s.

In Math, we had fun revising all that we have learned this term and played some addition and subtraction board games as a reward.

We were very lucky and grateful to receive lovely gift packs from the UNESCO Team who put on the fantastic exhibition of martial arts in our assembly. Thank You!

That is all for this week. Have a wonderful Autumn break and we will see you bright and early on Monday 12 October.

Mr. Kearney

Dear Parents and Children,

It has been a busy week in the Year 2-3 class. We have covered a lot of learning material.

In English this week the students got really creative and, using the adjectives that we learned last week, created amazing character and setting descriptions for their Myth story. We took a walk to the school surroundings to stimulate our imaginations for our settings, thinking about our senses of sight, smell, touch, hearing, and how different settings make us feel..

For our character descriptions, we linked with our ICT for the week and built avatars based on the descriptions we wrote.

In Math we continued our exploration of calculations and the number system, this week focusing on strategies for mental addition. The students learned that when adding a series of numbers, it is easier to find pairs that make 10 first and then add numbers to that. We then applied that to finding number bonds to 100 using number lines and had fun creating number sentences with math triangles.

In IPC we took advantage of the school surroundings to explore “Our World”. The students looked at the variety of trees in our area and labeled the different parts. We also looked at the different living things that are found on trees.

We followed this up with a lesson on the 7 life processes. Ask your child about Mrs. Gren and the different processes that all living things share.

We ended the week by acting out the story of Theseus and the Minotaur and practicing our punctuation skills for our grammar.

The students also learned how to play scrabble to develop their word skills.

In P.E. we practiced our football dribbling.

It has been a fun week of learning and I look forward to our Chuseok presentation on Monday and seeing students in their traditional outfits.

Have a great weekend.

Mr. Kearney

Dear Parents and Children,

It has been a great week full of learning in the Year 2-3 class. There is much that I wish to share with you.

This week we were lucky to have the school turtles join us in class. The students were enthralled to watch them and feed them.

In Math, we continued with number and problem solving, this week we learned about balanced number sentences and used scales and blocks to prove this. We moved on to learning our addition and subtraction facts to 20 and making number bonds to 100 using multiples of 5 on a number line. The students are getting good at reciting their 5 times table to 100. they can do it in 14 seconds!

In English we continued with our unit on Greek Myths, this week we learned about Mythical beasts and created our own. We also worked on our Chuseok play, creating our backdrop.

In IPC we started our new unit “Our World”. the entry point was a fun scavenger hunt around the school looking for places that we don’t normally notice.

We continued this by looking at our environment and learned about Andy Goldsworthy’s Magical land art.

We followed this up with a lesson about arranging found objects into patterns that we see in nature such as spirals and circles.

In P.E. we continued with our dribbling skills and in ICt we practiced typing and created our Scratch class. We will be working on Scratch projects in the coming weeks.

We ended off the week with a lovely show and tell fro Clare and celebrating David’s birthday – Have a great day, David!

That is all for this week. Have a wonderful weekend!

Mr Kearney

Dear Parents and Children,

It has been a short but eventful week in the Year 2-3 class. We covered a lot of work in spite of the typhoon causing the school to close on Monday.

Sadly we had to say goodbye to Lynn Choi this week as she and her sister depart HFS. We enjoyed having her in our class and wish them both luck and happiness at their new school. We will miss you!

In our learning this week we did a lot of work.

In English, we continued with our unit on Myths. We read the story of Pegasus and learned about mythical beasts and monsters. Some are good, like pegasus and some are bad like Chimera. We also looked at the different characters in a myth, in this story Bellerophon is the Hero.

We had a lot of fun learning about the different Greek Gods and made a poster for our display. The students learned a rap rhyme to remember some of the many Greek Gods.

In Math, we progressed on to 4 digit numbers and place value. We also learned how to partition 3 digit numbers and played card games where we made addition and subtraction calculations using place value.

We came to the end of the IPC Brainwave unit as the students consolidated all of their learning about the brain into creating Google Slide presentations. We linked in with our ICT and learned how to add a picture to our slides.

In P.E. we started a new fundamental skill of dribbling with our feet as in football or soccer. The students did quite well in learning to control the ball with their feet and navigate around cones.

We were very lucky to have our new student, Chaeeun, visit us on Friday. Welcome to the Rocking 2-3’s Chaeeun! We had a blast learning about nouns, verbs, and adjectives for our English Grammar lesson. We also started our new IPC Unit – “Our World” by exploring the things around the school that we see every day but might not notice. It was n exciting scavenger hunt that the whole class enjoyed.

It was a week full of learning and fun and we shall see what next week holds in store for us.

Have a wonderful weekend

Mr. Kearney

Hello, Rocking 2-3’s!

I am so glad that we have been able to do so much learning this week despite the typhoon’s interruption. The year 2-3’s are doing such good work, I am so proud.

In English we started our new unit on Myths, focusing on famous greek myths and learning the story of Pandora’s Box. We looked at a few different Greek Myths to see what they had in common.

In Math, we continued with learning place value of 3 digit numbers and ended up with fun activities on partitioning into hundreds, tens, and units.

We completed our IPC unit on “Brainwave” by consolidating all our learning into starting a google slide presentation. The students will describe what a brain is and the different parts that control different things that we do. We also learned about different kinds of memory and what reflex actions are, testing these with fun activities.

In ICT we all made sure that we could log in and access the Google Classroom for our online learning on Monday since the building will be closed because of the oncoming typhoon.

We had fun practicing our throwing and itching skills in P.E and learned a new game based on “Duck Duck Goose”

It was a fun week of learning and I will see the students on Monday for E-Learning.

That is all for this week. Have a great weekend!

Mr Kearney

Please click here to view the Year 2-3 Term 1 Curriculum Overview

Welcome to Mr Kearney’s Rocking Year 2-3 class. We have gotten off to an excellent start with this week.

We started by writing about ourselves in our English and Math books.

in Math this week, we started by practicing counting from 1 to 100 and back reviewed place value up to three digits, Units – Tens and Hundreds. We then moved on to comparing and ordering numbers, understanding greater than and smaller than.

In English we learned about recounts, understanding that recounts must have information about “who, what, when, where, why, and be written with past tense verbs. The students also learned about using time words to order their recounts. We did a recount of “The three little Pigs” We reviewed our phase 2 phonics and high-frequency words. We ended off the week by writing in our journals.

In IPC we started the “Brainwave” Unit by learning about what the brain does. The students put forth some interesting questions which we will explore as we go deeper into the unit. We looked at a model of a Brain and the students were enthralled to learn how soft and squishy a brain is. We learned that the brain has 2 sides, left and right, that control different things and that the brain stem helps with our breathing, heart rate, and digestion, and the cerebellum sends messages and helps with balance.

We were very busy in ICT as the students learned how to login to their Google accounts and find our google classroom. We used ClassDojo to take photo’s and practiced correct finger placement on the home row for typing.

In P.E. we practiced fundamental skills of throwing and catching small and large balls individually and in pairs and groups. We also practiced throwing at targets accurately.

It has been a fun week of learning and an amazing start to the new year.

Mr. Kearney