As we come to the end of the first part of Term 1, I just want to say how proud I am of all the Year 1 and 2 children. They have worked so hard, grown in confidence, and made wonderful progress both in their learning and in how they support one another as a class. It’s been lovely to see their enthusiasm and kindness shine through each week.
We finished the term with a fantastic Halloween party today – thank you so much to all the parents who helped make it such a fun and successful celebration. The children absolutely loved it!
I hope you all have a lovely and relaxing holiday together.
Homework Please note that there has been no homework sent home this week. I hope you all have a lovely break with your child. Homework will resume in Week 10 and will be sent home as usual on Friday, November 7th.
I hope you are all well and have had a nice week. The weather was wonderful today and the children are enjoying the cool breeze in the playground now! This week has just flown by 🙂
Literacy
This week, we began our new story, “The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark.” The children explored what they already know about owls, what they want to learn, and how to describe them.
Year 1 students focused on using adjectives and the connective ‘and’ to make interesting sentences. They also learned how to change a noun into a plural by adding s or es.
Year 2 students worked on expanding their sentences with descriptive language and connectives such as because, so, and and to create short paragraphs full of detail. I have been very impressed with their work in class and at home. Well done!
I’ve also been trialing a new “learning pathway” method to support children’s independence and focus. It helps them break tasks into clear steps, so they can see exactly what to do along the way. This links beautifully with our behaviour pathway, teaching children that learning is like a journey – there may be obstacles, but with the right strategies and support, they can reach their goals! 🌈
Maths
In Maths, Year 1 students have been working on:
Number bonds within 10
Systematic number bonds
Number bonds to 10
Year 2 students focused on:
Adding by making 10
Adding three 1-digit numbers
Adding to the next ten
The children are becoming much more confident at spotting number patterns and using mental strategies to make 10 quickly – well done, mathematicians!
We had a lot of fun outside of the classroom this week, investigating giant number lines, searching for number sentences around the school, making posters and sticking stickers! I love to make the lessons as interactive and hands-on as possible.
IPC (If You’re Happy and You Know It)
We’re now in our second last week of this unit, and it’s been full of fun, hands-on learning! The children played ball games, jumped into coloured hoops, and created dances around the Zones of Regulation.
Each zone inspired a different dance, if they landed in the green zone, they danced happily; in the yellow zone, they danced silly! It was wonderful to see everyone expressing emotions through movement and recognising how they feel. Many children can now name their emotions and identify what they need to do to regulate – SO WONDERFUL to see! 💚💛💙❤️
Halloween Party Reminder
Our Halloween Party will take place on Friday, 24th October, from 2:00pm – 4:30 p.m. A huge thank you to all the parents who have been working so hard to prepare this exciting event. We can’t wait for an afternoon of fun, laughter, and just a little bit of scariness! 👻
Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend – rest well and see you all next week!
I hope you all had a lovely break. The children were quite tired today after returning to school, so I hope they can get some good rest over the weekend and come back refreshed for a full week of learning next week.
We had a lovely day together -reviewing in Maths, starting our new book in Literacy, and enjoying a wonderful whole-school assembly in the afternoon, followed by P.E.
Please note that no homework was sent home today. Library books were sent home in the yellow folders as usual.
I hope this finds you all well on this gloomy, rainy Friday afternoon. Let’s have a look at what we have been learning this week.
Maths This week in Maths, Year 1 focused on:
Aut.2.1 – Introducing parts and wholes
Aut.2.2 – Part-whole model
Aut.2.3 – Writing number sentences and reviewing them
Aut.2.4 – Fact families (addition facts)
Year 2 focused on:
Reviewing fact families
Aut.2.3 – Related facts
Reviewing related facts (subtraction)
Aut.2.4 – Bonds to 100 (tens)
Aut.2.5 – Adding and subtracting 1s
The children are building strong number knowledge and beginning to see how facts link together across operations.
Literacy We completed our final assessments this week – planning, practising, and writing! The children showed fantastic resilience throughout, and I’ll be sending their work home after marking.
Our next unit, beginning after the Chuseok break, will be based on the book The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson. The learning outcome will be non-fiction report writing.
Year 1 objectives:
Use plural noun suffixes -s and -es
Punctuate sentences using capital letters and full stops
Join words using and
Year 2 objectives:
Use co-ordination (but, or)
Add -ly to turn adjectives into adverbs
Use commas to separate items in a list
We’re looking forward to diving into this beautiful story together.
IPC In IPC, we moved into our Art lessons and learned about Mark Rothko, exploring how he used colour and paint to express emotions. The children created their own masterpieces, worked collaboratively on a group painting, and discovered that not everyone feels the same emotions when looking at Rothko’s work. It was a busy, creative week, and I hope these lessons are helping the children learn more about identifying their emotions and trying strategies to manage them.
Chuseok A reminder that school will be closed Monday–Thursday next week for the Korean Thanksgiving holiday. I wish you and your family a wonderful Chuseok, and I look forward to seeing everyone back in class on Friday, October 10th.
Happy Friday to you all! I hope you have all had as much fun as we have had this week! 🙂 Let’s take a look at our learning and events from this week.
English
This week, we planned our stories for the upcoming writing assessment. Each story has a clear objective, and this unit’s is to write a version of Troll Swap by changing the main character. The children have carefully planned their stories and drafted detailed beginnings. Next week, we’ll continue with the middle and ending, then practise before the final assessment.
Maths
Year 1 reviewed their first unit on Place Value. We will start our next unit Addition and Subtraction within 10 next week.
Year 2 completed their assessment and started the next unit:
Aut.2.1 – Bonds to 10
Aut.2.2 – Fact families (addition & subtraction bonds within 20)
Aut.2.3 – Related facts
IPC
We read the beautiful book The Colour Monster and explored how different lines in drawings can express emotions. Using oil pastels, the children created their very own colourful monsters representing different feelings. The results were fantastic and tied in perfectly with our field trip. Due to the Chuseok Event, we didn’t have IPC on Wednesday.
Field Trip
What a day we had! The centre was fantastic and the children really enjoyed exploring emotions through messy painting, creating clothes for characters, and designing outfits to show different feelings. The painting turned out to be much messier than I expected, so I was very glad we had worn clothes that could get dirty. After the workshop, we went on to Ochigol Park where the sun was shining and the children had such a wonderful time. They loved the zip line, climbing the giant spider web, chasing mantises, and even finding “chocolate treasure” in the sand. I had also prepared a small toy for them to play with at the park, which was a big hit, though perhaps a little noisy! It was such a joyful day and a perfect fit with our IPC learning.
We took lots of pictures for you all, so I have collated them in this folder. Enjoy!
🌸 Community
It was wonderful to see some of you at the Chuseok Festival—thank you for coming! After such an exciting week, I’m sure the children will sleep very well tonight.
I hope you are all well. We’ve had a fantastic week of learning in Year 1/2! The children have worked so hard and shown great enthusiasm in every subject. Here’s what we’ve been up to:
🔢 Maths
Year 1:
Aut.1.13 – Compare numbers
Aut.1.14 – Order objects and numbers
Aut.1.15 – The number line
Review for their first maths test ✏️ 👏 Well done to Year 1 for completing their very first maths test so confidently!
Year 2:
Aut.1.12 – Compare objects
Aut.1.13 – Compare numbers
Aut.1.14 – Order objects and numbers
Aut.1.15 – Count in 2s, 5s, and 10s
Aut.1.16 – Count in 3s ✅ Year 2 have now completed their first maths unit and will sit their unit test next Monday. Well done for all your hard work!
📖 Literacy This week we finished our class story Troll Swap. The children enjoyed:
Writing letters ✉️
Predicting the ending 🔮
Planning their own characters 🖊️
Next week, we will begin planning our own stories in preparation for the end-of-unit writing test.
😊 IPC – If You Are Happy and You Know It Our new unit on emotions has been lots of fun! This week we:
Took part in a scavenger hunt to find items belonging to different “emotion boxes” 🕵️
Had a relaxing class spa session with calm music, facemasks, and even a little foot massage 🧖 – the children experienced what “calm” feels like and how it helps our brains learn
Created a collaborative mind map of emotions 🧠
Read a story about anger and explored how it feels in our bodies, as well as strategies we can use to move back to calm ❤️
The children have been amazing, and I’m so proud of the way they are engaging with their learning and supporting each other.
Field Trip – Friday 26th September 2025
Next Friday, 26th September, our class will be going on a field trip to Lamfore Children’s Centre, followed by some playtime at Hanmaeum Park in Samsandong area, Ulsan.
This trip has been planned to support our current IPC unit, “If You Are Happy and You Know It”, which focuses on emotions and well-being. The activities at the centre and the park will give the children valuable opportunities to explore and reflect on these themes in a fun and meaningful way.
Please ensure your child wears clothes that they don’t mind getting messy in the morning, as one of the activities will involve painting and stamping with different foods.
🚌 Schedule
We will depart school at 9:10am and return in time for the school bus at 3:30pm.
If your child does not take the bus, please make sure they arrive at school no later than 8:50am.
🥪 Food
Please pack an easy-to-eat snack and a lunch that does not require microwaving.
A water bottle should also be included.
💰 Cost
The total cost of the trip is 22,000 won.
The school is contributing 10,000 won per child, leaving 22,000 won to be paid by parents.
Please send the 22,000 won in a labelled envelope to school by Wednesday, 24th September.
✅ What to bring:
Packed lunch (no microwaving required) and an easy-to-eat snack
Water bottle
Change of clothes (t-shirt and trousers)
Comfortable walking shoes
Small backpack to carry belongings
📌 Permission Please confirm your child’s attendance by Tuesday, 23rd September 2025 by filling out the permission form. Thanking you all in advance 🙂
Below is a picture from the Activity Centre. It sure will be a lot of fun!
We’ve had another fantastic week in Year 1/2, full of learning, creativity, and fun! Here’s a look at what we’ve been working on together:
➕ Maths
We’ve been busy exploring numbers and using manipulatives on our tuff trays to make learning hands-on and engaging.
Year 1 objectives:
✅ Aut.1.9 – 1 less ✅ Aut.1.10 – Compare groups by matching ✅ Aut.1.11 – Fewer, more, same ✅ Aut.1.12 – Less than, greater than, equal to
Year 2 objectives:
✅ Aut.1.8 – Write numbers to 100 in expanded form ✅ Aut.1.9 – 10s on the number line to 100 ✅ Aut.1.10 – 10s and 1s on the number line to 100 ✅ Aut.1.11 – Estimate numbers on a number line ✅ Aut.1.12 – Compare objects
📖 English
We continued with our class story “Troll Swap.” The children really enjoyed diving deeper into the characters and practicing new writing skills.
✍️ Year 1 focused on using the connective “and” to write instructions on how to be a good troll.
✍️ Year 2 worked on including noun phrases to make their writing more descriptive.
💌 We wrote a letter to Tabitha’s grandma asking for help in teaching Tabitha how to be good.
💬 Today, we predicted what Troll and Tabitha might say to each other by using speech and thought bubbles.
🌟 Year 1 are becoming more confident in writing short sentences and improving their letter formation. 🌟 Year 2 impressed me with their independence and focus — well done!
🧠 IPC – The Brain
We have been finishing our unit on The Brain, and the children loved learning more about how it helps us every day.
🎵 In assembly, we sang a song about the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus.
🌈 We explored our calm space and sensory tools to learn how to calm the amygdala and get back to a happy, calm state.
📸 For our research activity, we took close-up photos of objects and guessed what they were. This helped us see how the brain works hard to make sense of information.
📝 We also learned about giving clear instructions. Just like the brain, instructions need to be clear so others can understand and “see” what we mean!
This showed how important clarity is when we communicate – just like how our brain needs clear signals to understand and respond.
🏡 Homework
🌟 Thank you to all parents for supporting homework and bringing folders in on time, it makes such a difference!
🍱 Lunchtime/Snack Reminders To help make lunchtimes run smoothly:
If your child’s lunch needs to be heated, please send it in a microwave-safe container. Some students currently have metal lunch boxes which unfortunately cannot go in the microwave.
It’s also really helpful if your child has both a snack pouch and a lunch bag/box. In the mornings we separate snacks and lunches, and at snack time/lunchtime, the children need to carry their food to the cafeteria or outdoors. Having a proper bag or box makes this much easier (and helps avoid little accidents!).
Thank you so much for your understanding 🌟
🚌 Bus Reminder
If your child is not taking the bus in the morning, please contact the bus teacher or the office to let us know in advance. ✔️ This helps staff know where children are and avoids waiting unnecessarily. Thank you for your support!
Wishing you all a restful weekend! Warm regards, Mrs Sim 🌸
It was wonderful to see so many of you at school yesterday. Thank you for joining the curriculum meeting -I hope you found it both informative and helpful.
We’ve had a very busy and exciting Week 2 in Year 1/2! Here’s a little peek into our learning:
🔢 Maths
The children have been working hard and are getting used to our maths rotations. There’s been lots of hands-on learning using manipulatives, and today we even tried out Sumdog, our online maths programme. The children had great fun reviewing the week’s objectives.
Year 1 have been working on:
Representing objects
Recognising numbers as words
Counting on from any number
Finding 1 more
Counting backwards within 10
Year 2 have been working on:
Recognising tens and ones
Using a place value chart
Partitioning numbers to 100
Writing numbers to 100 in words
Flexibly partitioning numbers to 100
✍️ Literacy
In Literacy, we’ve been busy designing our own trolls ready for next week’s writing activity.
Year 1 have been practising capital letters, full stops, finger spaces, and using the connective ‘and’.
Year 2 have been improving their sentences by adding expanded noun phrases to describe Timothy the Troll from our story Troll Swap.
We’re looking forward to reading more of the book next week!
🧠 IPC – Learning About the Brain
This week our IPC focus has been the brain. The children loved creating posters of the different parts and exploring how memory works by playing fun memory games.
We also investigated the cerebellum by doing an experiment: children threw sponges at the glass door while their partners stood behind it, checking if they blinked or flinched! We then tried out some balance and coordination exercises to test if our cerebellums were working well.
We also learned about the amygdala (our “shark alarm”) and how it keeps us safe. Together we drew a large body outline and marked the different stress responses on it.
👉 Next week, we’ll explore the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in more detail to see how they help us with learning and memory.
🧥 A Little Reminder
Please send in a sweater or cardigan for your child to keep in the classroom if you haven’t already. Even though the air conditioning is set to 26°C, a few children still feel chilly at times. Thank you for helping keep everyone comfortable.
It’s been a fantastic week of learning, and I’m so proud of how hard the children are working. Wishing you all a restful weekend!
It has been such a lovely week welcoming all the students back to school after the summer break. We have had lots of fun settling into our new class, and I have really enjoyed getting to know the children. This week, I have focused on building connections with the students and introducing our classroom routines. I have been so impressed with the kindness they have shown each other. They are already working together beautifully as a team – it has been wonderful to see.
Our Class Agreement
One of our first activities was creating our Class Agreement. Together, we thought about the kind of classroom we want to have and how we should speak and treat one another.
We read the story “Our Class is a Family” and talked about how our class is like a little school family, one where we show respect and care for everyone. To celebrate this idea, we made special bracelets so that we all have our very own “class family” bracelets.
In our classroom, I want every child to know “We all belong here.” This is very important to me, and I will work hard to make sure all the children feel loved, safe, and happy at school.
Each day this week, we burst a balloon with a child’s name inside. The class then shared kind words and wrote positive messages on a poster for that child. This has been a wonderful way to celebrate each student and remind them how special they are.
Learning This Week
The Year 2 students completed two assessments this week-one for Literacy and one for Maths. These will help us as we prepare to start phonics and Maths groups next week.
We also jumped into our learning:
In Maths, we began work on Wednesday. Year 1 students learned the following objectives:
Aut.1.1 – Sort objects Aut.1.2 – Count objects Aut.1.3 – Count objects from a larger group
Year 2 objectives:
Aut.1.1 – Numbers to 20 Aut.1.2 – Count objects to 100 by making 10s (Friday we had the assessment so only 2 objectives were taught)
In Literacy, we started reading our new book, “Troll Swap,” which the children are already enjoying. I dressed up as a troll and we received a letter from the Troll himself. It was a nice introduction to the unit.
Homework
Homework was sent home today along with library books in a yellow file. The students have one week to complete it and should return it along with the library books next Friday.
Reminders P.E.
Children have P.E. on Mondays and Fridays. Please make sure they wear comfortable clothes and suitable shoes on those days.
Water Bottles
Please ensure your child brings a water bottle to school each day so they can stay hydrated.
Air Conditioning
Some students have mentioned feeling a little cold in class. If your child would like to, please send a light jacket or sweater to keep in their bag. It’s difficult to find a temperature that works for everyone, especially while the hot weather continues, so this will help them feel comfortable.
Upcoming Event
I am looking forward to seeing you all at our Information Session on Thursday 4th September at 2:45pm. It will be a lovely chance to meet properly and share more about the year ahead.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend. Thank you for your support, and I look forward to another great week together on Monday!
Welcome to Year 1/2! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful summer, filled with the things you love. 😊
I’m so excited to welcome your child to my class this year. For those who are new, here’s a little bit about me below. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
I’ll be in touch again soon to invite you to our Curriculum Meeting – it’s always a great way to start the year and a lovely opportunity to get to know each other.
