Hello Everyone! Happy rainy Friday to you all! 

A Fantastic Week of Learning!

Dear Parents,

I hope this newsletter finds you well and that you had a wonderful week. It’s been an exciting and enriching week in our Year 1/2 class, and we can’t wait to share all the highlights with you!

Mathematics Mastery:

In mathematics, our Year 1 students have been exploring the concept of comparing objects using the vocabulary ‘more than,’ ‘less than,’ ‘fewer,’ and ‘the same.’ It’s amazing to see how they’re grasping these foundational concepts!

Our Year 2 students have been working diligently on counting in 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s, and they’ve even begun diving into the world of ordinal numbers. This has been quite challenging for some of our young learners, so I kindly ask for your support in reviewing these concepts at home as part of their homework.

Literacy Rotations:

Our literacy rotations are in full swing, and the groups are working hard. It’s incredible to watch their reading and writing skills develop. The homework will always be linked to what they have done in their rotation. I know the writing worksheets can be repetitive but I love to see the students practising their formation. It is important to get it right from a young age and it will help them to produce some beautiful handwriting.  Please also encourage your child to practise their spelling words. I recommend a few words a day 🙂

IPC Adventures:

In our IPC (International Primary Curriculum) lessons, we’ve been exploring our fascinating brains and learned that different parts of the brain are like certain animals! The prefrontal cortex is our wise owl and the amygdala is our guard dog. This helped the children remember the difficult names of the brain and associate them with their functions. 

Today, we delved into mindfulness practices, using leaves to help us focus and find inner calm. The children created wonderful crafts with the leaves, showcasing their creativity and the serenity they found in this activity. 

PE Delights:

Physical Education has been an absolute blast! We had so much fun watching the children slide on their “hungry hippos” backs during the lesson. Laughter filled the gym, and their enthusiasm for physical activity is truly inspiring. We even put Mr Green on one and pushed him around. 

Positive Pathways:

Positive Pathways is our class behaviour support system where students collectively decide on a class goal. This week we have chosen to improve on how much we interrupt both each other and the teacher. We read a book called “My mouth is a volcano” and we have come up with some ways in which we can be respectful, listen to others, and not interrupt. 

Library Book Bags:

A quick reminder to please ensure your child brings their library book bag to school each week. This makes it easier for both myself and Miss Yuli to assist them in selecting new books and returning the ones they’ve finished. I will put their homework file inside their library bag to make it easier for them to carry home.

Timetable Change:

Next Monday, 18th September the school will be changing the timetable slightly to allow for the children to all play together at lunchtime. I think this will bring lots of happiness to the children as some of them miss their friends in the older year groups at lunch. Here is our updated timetable. 

I look forward to another week of exciting discoveries and growth! Wishing you all an amazing weekend ahead. 

Warm regards,

Mrs.Sim

Dear Parents,

I hope you are all well and looking forward to a nice weekend ahead. I must apologise for the EXTRA LARGE font last week’s update was delivered to you in, haha! I made a mistake, sorry!

We have had a very busy week with lots of great learning taking place.

We have now completed all assessments for our literacy rotations and the students will begin our official rotation from next Monday. They will spend 30 minutes working with me in small groups and then 30 minutes completing an independent task. I have been super proud of how well they have been working and following through with the expectations set. Well done my kiddies! 🙂 

We had our first spelling test today. I know that the Year 2 words are much harder and the children are not too happy about this 🙂 I had a chat with them today and said to try and practise 2 words a day and not leave them to the last minute. I will also give the children time in class to review them each week to support their learning.

In English, we practised writing sentences (Y2) and spelling words from the story (Y1). We looked at the connective ‘and’ and answered comprehension questions related to the story “Don’t Spill the Milk”. We enjoyed using letters to create words together.

We got off to a great start with our Maths rotations and were able to smoothly rotate around the stations. Year 1 focused on number formation and representation and I have loved seeing how excited they get working on the tuff trays. So cute! The homework this week is related to the objectives from this week of learning. The Year 2 students were learning about numbers from 1-100 and boy there is a huge jump from Year 1 to Year 2 objectives. Last year children focused on working with numbers from 1-20 and now we are learning up to 100. The homework is a review of what we did in class, however, some students are still finding some objectives a little difficult so they may need some support to do the homework. Thank you in advance 🙂

In IPC, we continued on with our unit Brainwave and I have absolutely loved teaching the children about our memory, our emotions, and how we can self-regulate. We had lots of fun taking pictures on our tablets and letting our friends guess what they were. It wasn’t easy to guess some as they weren’t in our long-term memory! We also played a game called ‘Barrier where the children had to give instructions to their partners on how to draw a picture that was displayed on the board. They realised that giving specific instructions is very important! Today, we designed our own emotion characters and will look at more ways in which we can self-regulate next week.

Today we ended with lots of parachute fun in games! The children really enjoyed themselves and it was great to see them working together so well. It was a huge improvement from our P.E. lesson earlier in the week where we were struggling a little to work in teams. After giving the children some guidance on how to work together they listened to each other and it was lovely to see. Yay!!

Henri Matisse Exhibition

Next Wednesday, 13th September the children will be going to the Henri Matisse exhibition at the Hyundai Art Centre. They will be walking there with Ms. Yuli and Mr Green. Departure time is 1:30pm and they will return to school at 3pm. This is a great opportunity for the children to make connections with what they are learning in Art class.

Library books and homework were sent home today 🙂 

That’s all for this week! I hope you have a great weekend! 

Mrs. Sim

Happy Friday!

Thank you to everyone who came to the Meet the Teacher session yesterday. It was great to meet you all.

We have had a great first week in Year 1/2 and I have been very impressed at how well the students have settled in. We worked on our classroom routines and the children did exceptionally well learning how our rotations will work this year.

We will be starting our first unit in the Maths curriculum next week now that the children know how the rotation works. I’m excited to let the fun begin! This week we did lots of tuff tray activities focusing on numbers from 1-10 (Year 1) and number bonds to 10 (Year 2) and practised accessing the online programme ‘Education City’. 

In English we started our first unit and read a story called ‘It’s much too early!’. The students wrote sentences about the pictures (Y2) and the Year 1 students practised writing words that connected to the pictures from the story. I started assessing the students in preparation for our literacy rotations to ensure they are placed in a group that is a good fit for them.

In IPC we started off learning all about our brains. We played several memory games which were lots of fun.  We learned the names of the different parts of the brain and what each help us to do. We did a fun experiment where we learned all about reflexes. The students had fun throwing sponges at each other to see if their partner would blink! Today we looked at short term and long term memory and tried to find ways to help us remember information.

In games we are learning how to work in pairs and did several activities that encouraged good teamwork!

Homework was sent home today along with library books. Ms. Yuli has given students the navy library bags for their books. Please use this to send the books back each week 🙏💗

Overall it was a great first week back and I think we are going to have a great year together! Excited!

Have a lovely weekend and I’ll see you all on Monday. Enjoy 🙂

Mrs. Sim.

Dear Parents,

Happy Friday to you all! We have gotten off to a great start in Year 1/2 this week and it has been so lovely to see the students again and welcome Ayla, Elena and Lua to our class family. They have all been so kind and worked hard in class.

We spent time getting to know each other, reading some fun books and interviewing our new friends. We created our own class rules and I was touched at how the students all wanted their classroom to be filled with happiness and kindness. I think it is important for the students to create a class agreement together as it lets them voice their opinions about how they would like their classroom to be run. I asked them “What would you see?” if you looked through a magnifying glass and saw your dream classroom. Then I asked “What would you hear?”  Here are some of their pictures. (LOVED THEM!).

We had fun doing some dancing and working as a team making shape. We also made some family class bracelets.

P.E/Games

P.E will take place every Tuesday and Games every Friday. Please may I ask for students to be wearing trainers/sneakers and comfortable clothes on these days. For the girls, please remember to tie your hair up 🙂 

Homework

There is no homework this week but from next week it will be sent home every Friday. I will send it home in a plastic file folder that has small handles on it to make it easier to carry to school. Please ensure the homework is also returned in this file so that I can organise the homework efficiently. Many thanks.

Library Books

Library books were sent home today. May I ask that the students bring their navy library bags each Friday to take their books home. 

Meet the Teacher

Next Thursday 31st August at 2:30pm there will be a ‘Meet the Teacher’ afternoon at 2:30pm. This is an opportunity to come and learn about the curriculum and ask any questions you may have. I hope to see you all there!

First day of school pictures are always lovely to keep. Have a great weekend and I will see you all on Monday!

Take care,

Mrs. Sim.

Dear Parents,

A very warm welcome to Year 1/2! I am really looking forward to seeing you all on Thursday 24th August. The first two days will be packed with lots of team building activites to allow the children to get to know one other and settle in.

Things to remember: