Mrs Sim - 2024/25

Dear Year 1/2,

Teaching you this year has been one of the most rewarding journeys. Our time together has been filled with laughter, learning, and memories I hope you’ll treasure forever. From our exciting field trips to the fun and fantastic learning in class, every moment has been special. Our Christmas dance was unforgettable – I was bursting with pride watching you shine on stage! We learned how to be kind, how to be brave, and how to be curious. And of course, we wrapped up the year with our exciting trip to Gyeongju World – what a day of fun we had!

Watching each of you grow, both in your learning and as little humans, has been a true joy. Every day, you made me smile, made me proud, and sometimes… even made me cry (happy tears, of course!).

I’ll never forget the excitement in the room every time we started a new IPC unit, or the passion you brought to learning (well… most of the time, hehe!). It’s been a privilege being your teacher – and at times, your mummy, nurse, counselor, and class clown!

As you continue your journey through primary school, I hope you carry with you all the important things we’ve learned together. Use your growth mindset, believe in yourself, and always give your best. Keep challenging yourself, be brave when things feel tricky, and above all, never forget the most important thing we talked about every day:

“In a world where you can be anything, be KIND.”

With all my love,

Mrs. Sim xoxo

Please click here to watch a little goodbye message.

Dear Parents,

We have now reached the second-to-last week of the year, and I am having many moments where tears are filling my eyes. Saying goodbye to the Year 2 students will be no easy task next week! Let’s take a look at what we have been up to!

📚 Literacy

We’ve had lots of fun this week stepping into the shoes (or paws!) of the bear from Goldilocks and Just the One Bear 🐻📝

• Year 1 have been focusing on sequencing and adding descriptive language to their diary entries.
• Year 2 have been working on using expanded noun phrases and the suffix -ment to make their writing more detailed and exciting!

The diary entries have been full of imagination, personality, and lots of bear-sized adventures!

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✏️ Maths

Year 1 – Telling Time ⏰

Year 1 have been learning all about time and are doing so well! They’ll complete their end-of-unit assessment next week.

This week, we’ve covered:

• Days of the week
• Months of the year
• Hours, minutes, and seconds
• Telling the time to the hour
• Telling the time to the half hour

It’s been great fun using clocks and games to explore the concept of time!

Year 2 – Super Shapes 🔷🔺

Year 2 are diving into a new unit all about 2D and 3D shapes, and they’re really enjoying it! We’ve especially loved drawing symmetry lines this week.

Here’s what we’re learning:

• Recognising 2-D and 3-D shapes
• Counting sides on 2-D shapes
• Counting vertices on 2-D shapes
• Drawing 2-D shapes
• Finding lines of symmetry on shapes

They’ll wrap up this unit next week with a fun review and assessment.

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🌱 IPC – Little Gardeners at Work!

Our IPC unit continues to blossom! 🌻✨

This week, we’ve been:
🌿 Watching our beans grow like magic (some children are hoping for a beanstalk as tall as Jack’s!)
🌻 Learning about the life cycle of a seed
📝 Drawing labelled diagrams of sunflower seed cycles
🌱 Planting our sprouted beans into soil to help them grow strong and tall!

The children are loving being hands-on scientists and can’t wait to see what happens next in our growing journey.

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🎢 Field Trip – Gyeongju World (Tues 24th)

We’re so excited for our end-of-year field trip to Gyeongju World next Tuesday, June 24th! 🎉

🕘 Departure: 9:00 AM
🕞 Return: 3:30 PM

Please remember:
👟 Wear comfortable clothes and shoes
🍱 Bring easy-to-eat food (no microwave)
💸 You may send 2,500 won if your child would like to buy a waterproof jacket

It’s going to be an unforgettable day of fun and celebration! 🎡🎈

See you all next week for our last week of the year~ Let’s make it a good one!!

Mrs Sim

Happy Friday!!!!

Dear Parents,

I can not believe that we only have two weeks left of the year! I have been looking back at our photos and what a busy few weeks we have had. I have taken a lot of photos and put them in this folder for you all to see. They are from the field trip, Sports Day, ABC countdown events and lots of others in between! 

Gyeongju World

Please make sure you have filled in the permission form for you child to attend this trip. Mr Green sent it out in the newsletter last week. We must receive this before next week. 

Report Cards

Report cards were sent home today and will be in your child’s yellow folder. I look forward to meeting with you next week to discuss your child’s progress. If you would like an appointment but haven’t made one already, here is the form to choose a time. 

Next week, Tuesday the 17th June we will be having a ‘Ready, steady splash!’ event. Please make sure your child brings 

• A swimsuit/swim shorts
• A towel
• A change of clothes (underwear, shorts/trousers, t-shirt)
• A water gun (if you have one)

It may be a good idea to wear shoes that you do not mind getting wet!

📚 Literacy

This week in Literacy, we’ve continued our work on Goldilocks and Just the One Bear.

Year 1 students have been busy describing settings and roleplaying the bear’s journey through the big city. They had a blast imagining what the bear might say in each new place – from noisy roads to tall buildings!

Year 2 have been learning how to use the prefixes -ment and -ful in their writing. We’ve also started exploring the features of diary writing, just like the bear might have done after his wild adventure!

✏️ Maths

Year 1 – Money Magic!

Year 1 have finished their Money unit and did an amazing job on their end-of-unit test – well done, everyone! 🎉

Here’s what we learned:

• Unitising

• Recognising coins

• Recognising notes

• Counting in coins

Year 2 – Perfect Positioning!

Year 2 wrapped up their Position and Direction unit and guess what? Every single student got 100% on the assessment! 🎯⭐👏

Here are the key skills we mastered:

• Describing movement

• Describing turns

• Describing movement and turns

• Creating shape patterns using turns

We’re so proud of how confidently everyone is applying their learning!

🌱 IPC – Green Fingers Galore!

This week has been bursting with excitement in IPC! 🌼

We’ve been learning all about plants and how they grow:

🌱 We planted beans and talked about the process of germination

🌸 We explored flowers and even looked at petals under a microscope

🌊 We carried out a fun experiment to see how water travels up a plant’s stem

It’s a super hands-on unit and the kids are loving every moment of being junior scientists! 🧪👩‍🔬👨‍🔬

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Mrs Sim

Dear Parents,

We’ve had a fantastic and full week in Year 1/2! Here’s a look at what we’ve been up to and what to expect in the coming days:

🔤 ABC Countdown Fun!
The ABC Countdown continues to bring smiles and excitement to our days! 🎉 I’ve included an A3-sized version of the countdown in your child’s folder to help you keep track — I know it can be tricky to remember all the special days!

🎲 Monday is G for Games Day!
Please send a card game or board game with your child on Monday. We’ll have a fun time playing and sharing together!

📅 Important Days This Week

❌ No School on Tuesday and Friday

🏅 Sports Day is on Thursday — I can’t wait to see you all there, cheering and having fun together!

🐴 Field Trip Fun at Pony Land
Last Tuesday, we had a whinnying good time at Pony Land! 🐎
The children:

Rode ponies

Fed sheep and fish

Touched some very interesting bugs 🐛
It was a jam-packed day of discovery, laughter, and learning — fun was truly had by all!

🧮 Maths
Year 1 worked on:

The number line to 100

1 more, 1 less

Comparing numbers with the same number of tens

Comparing any two numbers

Year 2 focused on:

Drawing and interpreting pictograms (1-1)

Drawing and interpreting pictograms in 2s, 5s, and 10s

📊 Year 2 will complete their end-of-unit assessment this week. Great job, everyone!

✏️ Literacy
We continued exploring the busy city with our curious bear friend from our class story “Goldilocks and Only One Bear!”

Year 1:

Practiced using capital letters for place names

Reviewed different ways to spell the /ee/ phoneme and used them in writing

Year 2:

Described the city streets using expanded noun phrases

Learned to use the suffix -ful and wrote about what the characters might do in the busy city

📝 This week, we’ll start planning and writing diary entries about the new cities we are going to imagine, name, and create!

🌱 IPC – Plants and Living Things
Our grassy heads are growing well-they have so much hair now! 😂
We have been:

Naming parts of a plant

Using our senses to describe leaves

Sorting and discussing living and non-living things — the children really enjoyed this interactive activity!

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy-I will email more from the trip-too many to upload here 🙂

Dear Parents,

What a wonderful and busy week we’ve had in Year 1/2! The children have been working hard and having lots of fun along the way. Here’s a peek at what we’ve been up to across the curriculum 👇
➕ Maths Magic
We’ve been diving into new topics in Maths and the children have been showing some great thinking and problem-solving skills!

🧮 Year 1
Sum.3.5 – Ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd…)
Position and Direction Assessment
Sum.4.1 – Count from 50 to 100
Sum.4.2 – Tens to 100
Sum.4.3 – Partition into tens and ones

📊 Year 2
Time Assessment
Sum.3.1 – Make tally charts
Sum.3.2 – Create tables
Sum.3.3 – Read and make block diagrams

The children especially enjoyed collecting data and turning it into tables and diagrams. Future statisticians in the making!

✍️ Literacy Adventures
We began our new book “Goldilocks and Just the One Bear” – a hilarious twist on the traditional tale!
📸 We started by looking at pictures from Goldilocks and the Three Bears and wrote descriptive sentences about characters and objects.
📚 Then, we sequenced the original story and had a go at rewriting it independently – a great pre-assessment to show what we already know!
🎵 This week, we started writing our own poems based on the sounds the bear hears in the city – we’re loving putting a creative twist on a classic tale. Stay tuned for some brilliant bear-inspired writing!

🌱 IPC – Green Fingers Unit
Our new IPC unit Green Fingers is off to a blooming start! 🌿🌸
🌱 We made grassy heads and we’re now eagerly watching the grass “hair” grow. We’ll even have a friendly competition to see whose grass grows the longest!
🕵️ We also went on a tree scavenger hunt, identifying evergreen and deciduous trees around school.
📄 For homework this weekend, your child will bring home a special scavenger hunt to do with you. We hope you enjoy searching together (don’t forget to make it look hard!).

🎨 ABC Countdown – Let the Fun Begin!
We kicked off our end-of-year ABC Countdown and had a blast on A for Art Day, decorating egg cups for a surprise next week.
Please check the ABC poster sent home daily so you don’t miss any of the fun! *Please note that due to our field trip we cannot bring Cuddly Toys on our field trip so instead, on Monday 26th please bring in a BOOK and a CUDDLY TOY! Thank you.

🐴 Field Trip – Pony Land (Tues 27th May)
We’re so excited for our trip to Pony Land next Tuesday!
📝 If you haven’t yet returned the permission form or the payment, please do so by Monday, 26th.
Form here
Thank you to everyone who has already sent theirs in!

🏃‍♂️ Sports Day – Save the Date!
Sports Day will take place on Thursday, June 5th!
The children are already buzzing with excitement as we begin our preparations.
Have a wonderful weekend. I love learning and growing with your children every day!

Take care,

Mrs. Sim

Happy Friday to everyone!

Hope you are all well and have had a great week.

Firstly, thank you to everyone for your support with the literacy writing this week. The children did so well in their assessment, and I was so proud of them. It was a great end to our week. We will be starting our new Literacy unit next week which is based on the book, “Goldilocks and Just the One Bear by Leigh Hodgkinson. I am excited to start this one!

Maths

Year 1 finished their unit on Fractions and sat an end of unit test on Monday, and are now working on a new unit “Position and Direction”.

Year 1

Sum.3.1 – Describe turns

Sum.3.2 – Describe position – left and right

Sum.3.3 – Describe position – forwards and backwards

Sum.3.4 – Describe position – above and below

Year 2

Year 2 students are getting better and better at telling the time! Please encourage them to tell you the time at home too 🙂

Sum.2.4 – Tell time to the hour

Sum.2.5 – Tell the time to 5 minutes

Sum.2.6 – Minutes in an hour

Sum.2.7 – Hours in a day

I.P.C International Primary Curriculum

We have came to the end of our unit “Treasure Islands” and what a blast we had today making our very own pirate ship!

Sports Day Teams were announced today and the students were excited to start getting ready in thier teams. We have our names, slogans and designs for our t-shirts ready to go!

End of the day changes

If there are any changes to your child’s usual going-home arrangements—such as being picked up instead of taking the bus, or vice versa—please inform the school office by 12:00 noon on the day of the change. This allows us sufficient time to notify the bus teachers and update the bus schedule accordingly.

Thank you for your cooperation and support in ensuring a smooth and safe dismissal process.

Have a great weekend.

Mrs. Sim

A little preview of our class photos for you all to smile at 🙂

What a short but fun-filled week it has been in Year 1/2! With the national holidays and our professional development day, we only had two days together—but we packed in plenty of learning and smiles.

Maths
In Maths, Year 1 students explored the concept of quarters. We worked through objective 2.7 – Recognise a quarter of a quantity and objective .2.8 – Find a quarter of a quantity. The children enjoyed using practical resources to share items into four equal parts and really impressed us with their understanding.

Meanwhile, Year 2 students focused on telling the time. We covered Objective 2.2 – Quarter past and quarter to, and Objective .2.3 – Tell time past the hour. They’ve made fantastic progress and are developing confidence reading clocks—such an important life skill! Please do try and ask your children what the time is over the next few weeks to let them practise and show you their progress.

Literacy
This week, we began planning for our final writing assessment. The children designed six imaginative toy characters and used many adjectives to describe them. It’s been wonderful to see their creativity come to life! This activity also acts as a brilliant scaffold for their independent writing next week—we can’t wait to see what they come up with.

IPC (International Primary Curriculum)
In IPC, our pirate theme continues to be a big hit! We took a tour around the school searching for great hiding spots where pirates might stash their gold. The excitement was high, and the ideas were fantastic! Today, we created treasure maps and marked the hiding places we found. Next week, we’ll be testing each other’s maps—Ms. Temple’s class will try to use ours to find the hidden treasure. This is a fun and interactive way to explore directions such as north, east, south, and west, and the children’s imaginations were on full display. Hehe!

Assembly
To wrap up the week, the class performed a cheerful pirate-themed song and dance during assembly. They sang and danced with such enthusiasm and confidence—it truly made me proud. Oh to be young and carefree! They were absolutely adorable.

Looking Ahead
I’m currently planning our class field trip for early June and will share all the details with you as soon as everything is confirmed. It’s going to be a fantastic outing!

Photos
Class photos were taken yesterday and we were lucky with the weather—it was a beautiful day to be outside and the children looked lovely.

Bus Stop Safety

Please may I ask that you stay with your child until the bus arrives in the morning?
Safety is our top priority, and all parents are kindly asked to remain with their child until the bus has arrived. If there is a road to cross at your bus stop, please ensure you walk your child across safely.

Thank you for your understanding and support.

As always, thank you for your continued support. Have a restful weekend, and we look forward to a full week of fun and learning next week!

Warm wishes,

Mrs. Sim

Hello Everyone!

We’ve had another fun and productive week in Year 1/2, filled with learning, creativity and imagination!

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📚 Literacy
This week, we finished reading Toys in Space, and what a lovely, heartwarming ending it was! The children completed a range of writing activities, including creating invitations for a party that the toys organised to help cheer up Octopize. They focused carefully on grammar and punctuation, and I was really impressed by the progress they’ve made in structuring their writing.

We also wrote diary entries, retelling the events of the party from the perspective of one of the characters. It’s been fantastic to see the children becoming more confident and independent in their writing.

To finish the week, we designed our own imaginative new toys as a creative entry point into planning our final story writing piece. Children will soon be writing their own stories inspired by Toys in Space, but featuring their new characters. They made great use of descriptive language and adjectives in their toy descriptions!

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➗ Maths
Year 1 have been exploring fractions, working on identifying and finding halves and quarters of objects and quantities.

🟦 Year 1 Maths Objectives

• Sum.2.2 – Find a half of an object or a shape
  
• Sum.2.3 – Recognise a half of a quantity
  
• Sum.2.4 – Find a half of a quantity
  
• Sum.2.5 – Recognise a quarter of an object or a shape
  
• Sum.2.6 – Find a quarter of an object or a shape
  

Year 2 have been working on finding three-quarters and learning to count in fractions up to a whole. They also began their new unit on Time, learning about o’clock and half past. This is a challenging concept for many children, so we will continue to focus on it over the next two weeks. You can support your child at home by asking them to tell the time throughout the day – every little bit of practice helps!

🟨 Year 2 Maths Objectives

• Sum.1.14 – Find three-quarters
  
• Sum.1.15 – Count in fractions up to a whole
  
• Sum.2.1 – Tell the time to the hour and half past the hour
  

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🌍 IPC (International Primary Curriculum)
In IPC, we had a musical twist this week! We listened to traditional pirate songs and created our own music to accompany a voyage through a stormy sea. The children loved using instruments and sounds to bring the story to life.

We also discussed water safety, learning what to do if we fall out of a boat – including practising the “starfish pose.” The children designed informative posters showing important water safety rules and demonstrated a good understanding of how to stay safe around water.

A friendly reminder that t-shirt sizes need to be chosen as soon as possible so that we can get them ordered for Sports Day. Sports day will be help on the 5th June and there is a lot of exciting planning taking place to make it a fun-filled day for the children.

School Pictures

On Thursday 8th May individual and class photos will be taken. Please may I ask for your child to wear their HFS Blue polo shirt to school on this day. Thank you.

We have a very short week next week. From Monday to Wednesday, there will be no school due to the public holidays, and Wednesday is a Staff-Only training day. I hope you all have a nice long weekend and do something fun with your children. 

Have a great weekend,

See you all on Thursday 8th May!

ART LINKS from Miss Yuli

Dear Parents ,

We’ve had a fantastic week in Year 1/2, filled with exciting learning across all curriculum areas! Here’s a little peek into what we’ve been up to in class:

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📚 Literacy

We’ve continued our journey through the imaginative book Toys in Space by Mini Grey. The children have loved exploring and using the story to inspire their creative work.
The students designed their unique space creatures and described them using powerful adjectives and the grammar points we’ve been focusing on, including ‘un-‘ prefixes, ‘so that’ sentences, and past tense verbs.

The students also began writing letters in character as Hoctopize, the alien from the story, using masks to help them get into role and really think about what Hoctopize might say to his lost toy, Cuddles. I was so impressed with their imaginative ideas and thoughtful writing!

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➗ Maths

In Maths, students have been busy developing their understanding of doubles, grouping and sharing, and fractions. Below are the specific learning objectives we’ve been working on :

📦 Maths Learning Objectives

Year 1:

• Sum.1.7 – Make doubles
• Sum.1.8 – Make equal groups – grouping
• Sum.1.9 – Make equal groups – sharing
• Assessment
• Sum.2.1 – Recognise a half of an object or a shape

Year 2:

• Sum.1.9 – Find the whole
• Sum.1.10 – Unit fractions
• Sum.1.11 – Non-unit fractions
• Sum.1.12 – Recognise the equivalence of a half and two quarters
• Sum.1.13 – Recognise three-quarters

The children have enjoyed using practical resources and drawings to deepen their understanding, especially when exploring equal groups and the concept of sharing.

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🌍 IPC (International Primary Curriculum)

Our IPC topic has taken us on a pirate adventure! We’ve explored the fascinating world of pirates and linked this to our learning in both history and science. Here’s a summary of what we’ve explored:

• Examined real coins and made coin rubbings to create artwork
• Investigated how pirates stored food and what scurvy is, including why it was such a problem for pirates
• Compared historical food storage with how we store food today
• Discussed the importance of rules in different groups and places
• Reviewed what we’ve learned about maps and how to read them
• Designed our own treasure maps for pirates to follow
• Learned about the significance of different coins to pirates and their journeys

The children have been incredibly engaged and curious throughout this unit—pirate fever has truly taken hold in our classroom!

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I am always very proud of the progress the children are making and look forward to sharing more exciting learning with you next week!

Have a lovely weekend,