K2 News - 6 March 2015

Chinese

Message from:
Jiang Yingying
Head of Primary Chinese

Most parents may have recognised that the Primary Chinese Site is a students' learning platform for K1 to G5 students. Learning materials such as curriculum, unit booklets and other materials have been uploaded there to support students' learning. There are some discussions and other activities for older students, too. However, some parents have had problems accessing the site by using the link in our school website. After consulting the IT support in school, we would like to send the direct link to you for the parents in the infant school to access the site.

Here is the link:

https://drive.google.com/a/gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/folderview?id=0BylRV6cgygkLeV9mWWxVS09pYmM&usp=sharing#

Please bookmark the link for your future use.

A reminder to parents who have children in the Infant School and Grade 2. 

Please make sure you inform the class teacher in writing if your son/daughter is going to the morning performance of the Grade 2 Arts Festival 'Around the World in 80 Days' on Thursday 12 March.  The performance  begins at 10:15am so  any Infant child who is  attending will need to have his/her snack early and we are collating a list so that these children can be collected from their classrooms and supervised. Please inform the class teacher on Monday, if you haven't done so already.

Arts Festival - Wednesday 25 March 6:00pm RBT

A letter was sent home last week asking for ticket requests for our Arts Festival, ‘Once Upon a Time’. Please send your returns in by the requested date. Tickets will be allocated, and we will then try to accommodate the requests for extra tickets.

Our rehearsals are going very well and the children are already so excited about the show. Some are even asking, ‘Is it tomorrow?’ Each class will be telling a traditional tale, as detailed below (the order of performance has not been decided upon):

K2JiS
Hansel and Gretel

K2ZBr
The Pied Piper of Hamelin

K2SMH
Little Red Riding Hood

K2HWe
The Little Red Hen

We are getting the children involved in the whole process of putting on a performance from the invitations and tickets, to the characters, words, props, costumes, songs, music and movements.

During this period of rehearsals, our daily timetables need to have a degree of flexibility to allow us to fit in scheduled practices in the RBT and Music lessons, as well as impromptu ones in our classrooms.

Parent helper schedules may be disrupted as a result. We really appreciate your understanding.

K2 News - 13 February 2015

Shoe Box Afternoon Tea

Thank you so much to everyone who came to our Shoe Box Afternoon Tea on Wednesday 4 February. Your help and support with our elderly guests and the children, and with the refreshments was greatly appreciated and ensured that everything was a wonderful success.

The children thoroughly enjoyed hosting the ‘parties’ in their classrooms and we were really proud of the way they interacted and talked to their guests. They did a superb job entertaining the seniors with their wonderful singing, playing bingo, making a picture and delivering the shoe boxes. It really was lovely to see everyone together for the event.

Service is a big part of the UWCSEA philosophy and it is fantastic that we are able to begin this with our K2 children. We really value your support as the event would not be possible without you.

K2 Arts Festival - Wednesday 25 March 6:00pm RBT

Please make a note of the date and time of our K2 Arts Festival. As it is an integral part of our ‘Telling Tales’ Unit of Study, we would really like all the children to be involved in the production and be able to perform on stage for a large audience. 

If you already know that your child will be absent for the show (due to a holiday or other family commitment), please let your child’s teacher know as soon as possible. It will impact directly on the allocation of roles and all of the practices and rehearsals. Children who will not be at school for the Arts Festival performance on 25 March will unfortunately not be able to actively participate in the rehearsals. For this reason, we sincerely hope that all the children will remain at school until the end of Term 2.

NEW UNITS AFTER THE BREAK

Maths

After the break, we will continue to explore addition and subtraction, and the inverse relationship between them.

Children will be developing their strategies to add and subtract, and determining which work best for them. It is important to realise that there is not one correct way to arrive at an answer. As teachers and parents, it is important to understand the strategies the children are using and then move them forward from there.

Word problems are a fun way of developing number skills and awareness. For example: 

• There are 8 grapes in your brain food box. You eat 3. How many are left?
• You had 15 stones in your pocket at play time but 2 fell out. How many do you have now?
• Tom was playing with 5 cars. Ben gave him 4 more. How many did Tom have altogether.

The first step is for the child to determine whether he/she needs to add or subtract, and then work out the answer.

We will also be revisiting Measurement and Data Handling in the second half of term.

Writing Workshop - 'Stories'

Children will be explicitly taught to tell organised, structured stories bit by bit in a sequenced cohesive narrative. Children will become accustomed to thinking of a character, a trait and a story, capturing it in drawings and words that span across a number of pages.  Children will expand their drawing skills and learn how writers can convey details such as feelings and actions through illustrations.  A balance of focus between developed content and conventions will enable children to raise the quality of their work by stretching out words, recording initial, middle and final sounds, rereading their own writing and adding more to a page. Grammar conventions, capitalisation and end punctuation will also be explicitly taught.  Rereading and revising will have a constant emphasis throughout the unit.

How can I write stories and write them so people can really read them?

How can I learn to tell my story step by step so people can follow what happened?

How can I include what my characters do, feel and say?

Reading Workshop - 'Readers Get to Know Characters'

Our relationships to characters are one of the most important aspects of reading that keep us returning to a book once we start. Whether we like the character or not we often learn things about ourselves and human nature by thinking about the character. We want them to be inspired by, learn lessons from, and think about the characters in their books.

Initially children learn reading strategies to get to know a character well and to name what that character does in a story. As they become more aware of characters they will learn to think and talk more about characters in their partnerships, growing ideas about them as they make them 'talk' and 'think'. 

Unit of Study - 'Telling Tales'

This next unit explores the idea of performance through drama and how we need to be creative, cooperate and collaborate. Key questions will be posed:

What does it look like when we work together?

What is your role/responsibility?

How can you communicate clearly to the audience? 

How does it feel when you perform? 

How does it feel to be in an audience?

The children will identify and learn about what is needed to put on a show, then work together to develop ideas for a script, scenery, props, costumes and invitations. This will culminate in the K2 Arts Festival performance, in which the children will be 'telling the tales' of Little Red Riding Hood, The Pied Piper, Hansel and Gretel and The Little Red Hen.

The K2 Team

K2 News - 30 January 2015

Shoe Box Afternoon Tea

Wednesday 4 February 2:30pm – 3:30pm 

We are very much looking forward to the Shoe Box Afternoon Tea on Wednesday. The vast majority of children and parents are coming to school for what should be a wonderful occasion. Your child needs to be wearing something Chinese or in the colours of red and gold when he/she returns at 2:15pm. We will aim to finish by 3:30pm.

Each elderly guest will receive a shoe box that our children have decorated and packed, with your much valued support. As each class will have about ten guests, not every child will get to give his/her own shoe box. We will talk to our classes about this and explain why, hopefully alleviating any upset on the day.

IMPORTANT

Please note that all the K2 children will need to be collected from the Infant Car Pick Up point at 11:45am to give us time to get the classrooms ready and prepare for the event. There will be no school buses at this earlier time.

We are all very much looking forward to another wonderful afternoon with our guests.

WANTED for K2 Art Project!

Please could you send in any old materials that you may have lying about that could be wound around a pole! Items such as fabric, wool, string, raffia, strips of plastic, wrapping paper, bubble wrap, wool/yarn would be perfect. Thank you.

K2 News 16 January 2015

Shoe Box Chinese New Year Afternoon Tea

Wednesday 4 February 2:30pm – 3:30pm

Two letters and a booklet were sent home last week. Please could you make sure you have returned the Reply Slip by Monday 19 January, saying whether your child will be attending the CNY Afternoon Tea? We need to know numbers before ordering food and drinks.

We hope your child has had fun doing some extra jobs to earn money to buy the requested items for the shoe boxes. This event could not happen without your support in preparing these shoe boxes and we are extremely grateful for your support. Thank you to those of you who have already sent the items to school in a named, plastic bag (Ziploc plastic bags are ideal!). The list below will serve as a reminder of the items that are needed:

• A face flannel

• A tin of tuna

• A tube of toothpaste

• A toothbrush

• A brush/comb

• A small pot of Tiger Balm

• A homemade card

• $20 (for items bought in bulk by UWCSEA and a Hong Bao) 

If you could send the items to school by Monday 19 January, that would be lovely!

Theatre Trip - Wednesday 21 January

On Wednesday we will be taking the children to see a production of ‘The Gruffalo’ It is being presented by The School of the Arts Singapore (SOTA) at the Drama Theatre on 1 Zubir Said Drive. Do remember to ask your child about the show when he/she gets back from school. We are sure there will be lots to tell!

K2 News 9 January 2015

Unit of Study

Our new Unit of Study is titled 'Me and My School' and is focusing on 'What school means to me'. We will be exploring the immediate environment: the natural and man-made features, people's roles, relationships and responsibilities.

This week the children have all been on exploratory walks around the campus, visiting areas that they have not been to before, using their ears and eyes to notice different things and creating many 'I wonder...?' questions. They have identified things that are of interest to them and these will be investigated further, beginning with some simple map making and discussions.

David Watson Library

Throughout K1 and the first term of K2, the children chose their library books from a selection brought to them from the DWL. This term will see each class visit the library, once a week, to share a story and select two books to take home.

The classes will go to the DWL on the following days:

K2SMH - Wednesday
K2JiS - Thursday
K2ZBr and K2HWe - Friday

Visiting a bigger library and choosing books from a much larger selection will be such an enjoyable experience for the children. We are very excited about this transition in our programme, as are the children, judging from our first visits this week! Enjoy sharing these books together. Please remember to return them before your child's next DWL visit to ensure he/she can check out some new books.

Swimming K2JiS and K2ZBr

The above two classes will begin the swimming programme on Thursday 15 January. They will swim on both Tuesday and Thursday, up to and including Thursday 12 February.

Your child will need to wear his/her school uniform to school and bring a separate bag with swimming things packed inside.  He/she needs swimmers, a UVA swim top (compulsory), goggles, pool shoes to wear down to the pool and a towel, or preferably, a hooded towel cape or a towelling bath robe. Please pack a plastic bag for wet swimmers. If your child does not have a UVA swim top, one can be purchased from the UWCSEA College Shop. Please ensure that all items (clothing, footwear, etc) are clearly named.

If for any reason your child is not able to swim one week, he/she will sit poolside and watch the lesson.

K2 Service - Operation Shoe Box 

Our main Service in K2 is our shoe box initiative.  Some of you will be familiar with this, if you have already had children in the Infants, but for some of you it will be your first time. In K2 we have a wonderful Afternoon Tea, where the shoe boxes are given to elderly guests. Please click on the link here "K2 Shoe Box Afternoon Tea 2014" to the video from last year to see just what a lovely event it is for everyone involved.

Today a letter was sent home today requesting items for the shoe boxes, together with a small booklet. Please could you send the items to school in a named bag by Monday 19 January.

All children will be packing a shoe box at school so every child will need the items, irrespective of whether he/she will be attending the Shoe Box Afternoon Tea. Any extra shoe boxes will be delivered by the Grade 1 students to elderly residents in neighbouring HDBs. The list below will serve as a reminder of the items that are needed:

• A face flannel
• A tin of tuna
• A tube of toothpaste
• A toothbrush
• A brush/comb
• A small pot of Tiger Balm
• A homemade card
• $20 (for items bought in bulk by UWCSEA and a Hong Bao)

Thank you so much in advance for supporting this initiative.

Shoe Box Afternoon Tea

Wednesday 4 February 2:30pm – 3:30pm 

Another letter was sent home today giving details about our upcoming K2 Service Initiative.

If you wish your child to attend the afternoon tea between 2:30pm and 3:30pm, please return the reply slip by Monday 19 January. We need to finalise numbers for catering purposes so would appreciate your timely returns.

If your child is attending, he/she needs to wear something Chinese or in the colours of red and gold.

IMPORTANT

Please note that all the K2 children will need to be collected from their classrooms at 11:45am to give us time to get the classrooms ready and prepare for the event. Children attending the afternoon tea will need to be brought back to their classrooms by 2:15pm. We will finish at 3:30pm.

We are all very much looking forward to another wonderful afternoon with our elderly guests. 

K2 News - 2 January 2015

Welcome back! 

Welcome back and Happy New Year to everyone!  We hope that you all had a wonderful holiday and that you and your children had lots of quality family time, rest and relaxation and are ready for a busy Term 2.

Hats, Cardigans & Library Books

Hats and cardigans were sent home at the end of term to be washed.  Please make sure your child has these items in his/her school bag on Monday.  If you have bought new items, please ensure they are clearly labelled with your child’s name.

Please return any library books that were borrowed before the holiday.

Celebrating Achievements Board

Please do continue to send items in to school for our achievements board. It is always lovely to share things that the children do when they are not at school. Remember to include a photograph and caption about your child’s recent achievement. He/she will have the opportunity to share his/her experiences and successes with the class.

Writing Workshop

For the next six weeks, we will be doing a new writing unit called ‘All About’ books. The children will learn that ‘All About’ books teach us about something. They know from visits to the library that these kinds of books are also referred to as information or non-fiction books.

They will begin this unit by thinking of things about which they are knowledgeable, things they ‘know lots about’ and topics of interest. They will be the experts!

By looking at a wide selection of ‘All About’ books, we will identify some of the different features that can be found in these books: title, contents, chapters, headings, labels, photographs, drawings, fun facts, page numbers, glossary and index.

Each mini-lesson will focus on a feature of ‘All About’ books and give the children ideas as to what they can add to their books to make them even more like a real non-fiction book. The children will be encouraged to draw upon skills learned in other Writing Workshop units, such as adding labels, using capital letters for headings and proper names, and adding one more thing to a page.

It is a very exciting unit and we are very much looking forward to seeing the wide variety of topics that the children choose to write about.

Student-Led Conferences - Tuesday 13 January

Our Infant Student-Led Conferences will take place on Tuesday 13 January. A letter was enclosed with your child's report card detailing the times of your child’s conferences. The conference in the classroom will last for about 45 minutes, and then there are the Music and Chinese conferences, too.

Please appreciate that the logistics to coordinate those families with more than one child participating in Student-Led Conferences has proven to be a big undertaking.  Therefore we ask for your cooperation in arriving promptly so that teachers and other families’ schedules will not be disrupted.

Whilst there are no classes for K1, K2 or G1 children on this day, the rest of the College is in session so the usual traffic congestion will occur during peak arrival and departure times. Parking may be difficult, so please allow yourself plenty of time to get here.

Supervision for siblings from other Infant classes will be available in an area of the Main Hall. We request that very young siblings are not brought to school as there will not be supervision for them.

We ask that you please do not take calls or send text messages on your hand phones during the conference.  Not only will this break the rapport you have established with your child, but phones ringing, buzzing or vibrating will disturb other families who are in the classroom at the same time.

We hope you enjoy spending time with your child at school, and gain extra insight into children’s learning.

Maths

Whilst we continually revisit many different mathematical concepts during the course of a week, our main focus for the next few weeks will be on number.  We will be looking specifically at addition and subtraction. 

Key questions will be asked and explored through practical activities:

• How can I add numbers together?

• What strategies work best to add and subtract numbers?

• How many ways can I find to make 5 or 7 or 10?

Knowing number bonds (pairs of numbers that make a given total) and being able to recall them instantly, as opposed to having to work them out, will help your child’s confidence in Maths and increase the speed at which he/she can complete number problems.

For example, the number bonds for 6 are:

0 + 6

1 + 5

2 + 4

3 + 3

4 + 2

5 + 1

6 + 0

We will be spending time looking at number bonds for numbers up to 10 and exploring the number patterns. For those children who already have good recall, they will be applying their knowledge of number bonds to help with problems involving larger numbers e.g. 

15 + 11 = ? 

? + 14 = 20

18 + ?  = 30

Literacy

Over the coming weeks, our main focus will be:

• Writing Workshop ‘All About’ books 

• Handwriting – Curly Caterpillar letters: a, c, d, e, f, g, o, q, s

• Reading Workshop: independent reading, partner reading activities, shared reading, group reading

• Phonics – a few initial blends will be chosen each week from the following:  sh, ch, th, br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr, bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl

Week 17 in K2

RRR Booklets

Please remember to send the ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!’ booklet back to school on Monday 7 December. The children will be sharing and using their booklets so please make sure they are in the blue folders. We hope you have had fun at home focusing on reducing, reusing and recycling.

As a reflection on the booklets, we are asking the children to choose one thing that they think they can continue doing all year (turning lights off, reusing or sending books and clothes for others to use).

It is important that they understand that reducing, refusing, reusing and recycling should be ‘a way of life', and does not stop when our unit has been completed. With your support, we would like the children to continue thinking about the rubbish people produce, where it all goes, what we can do to help reduce the amount of waste we all create and preserve the environment.

End of Term Party - Thursday 11  December

The Infant End of Term party is on Thursday 11 December.  Please make sure the children come to school in party clothes, ready for a fun-filled day of special activities.

Please note that there will be no PE on Thursday, as all the Infant classes will be in the Main Hall at our normal scheduled PE time so there is no need to send in kit.

You will have received a letter this week giving you details about the party, with a request for a small plate of food.  Bite-sized food is ideal, in fact the smaller the better.  If you are at all concerned about what you have been asked to bring in, please contact your child’s teacher as soon as possible.  We do not want stressed parents!

Please remember to send your food contributions in a named container (if you want it back) to school on Thursday morning. In response to a question earlier this week, your food contribution is for your child’s class only. Thank you in advance for your wonderful culinary efforts!

Writing Workshop

You will be receiving your child’s latest folder of books he/she has made very soon. Please celebrate your child’s work with him/her. All of the children are very proud of their work and are eager to share their books with you.

Always recognise and acknowledge what your child can do, not what he/she cannot do quite yet. Honour his/her approximations with both illustrations and writing. Young children will not get everything correct every time they write – nor should they. Positive reinforcement and praise for his/her efforts will make your child feel good about writing, even though it is hard for many of our children at this stage of K2.

Leaving early for the holiday?

We are busy right up until the end of term and we do not encourage families to leave early for the holidays.  However, we do understand that it can be difficult to get flights at this busy time of year. If you do have to leave  before the last day of school (Friday 12 December), please let the teacher know so that items can be sent home with your child on his/her last day.

You will receive your child’s report at the end of the final week of term. Unfortunately, if you are leaving early, you will not be able to have this ahead of schedule. However, you will be able to read the report on ePortal after Friday 12 December. The actual report will be posted to you.

Library Books and Reading Books

All K2 children will be borrowing two David Watson library books to keep over the holidays. These need to be returned at the start of next term.

Please note: Levelled reading books will not be sent home in the holidays. The last day for sending levelled readers home will be Wednesday 10 December. All children will choose 3 readers to bring home on the first day of Term 2.

We would like you to read as much as you can with your child over the holiday and to  encourage him/her to continue with his/her own reading, too.  Keeping the reading process going over the three week break will make things much easier when he/she returns to school in January.

Last Day of Term

The last day of term is Friday 12 December. The Infants finish school at 11:00am.  Buses leave campus at 11:00am. Please make sure there is someone at home to meet your child from the bus at the earlier time.

Car children should be collected at 10:50am from the normal pick up point. All cars need to have left the campus by 11:10am to allow the buses to assemble to take the older students home at 12:00pm.

Reminders

• There will be no eBrief or K2 Blog on Friday 12 December

• The next eBrief will be on Friday 2 January 2015

• UWCSEA re-opens on Monday 5 January 2015

Thank you so much to all class parents and classroom helpers for your invaluable support this term. We really appreciate the time you give up to come to school and help the children with their learning.

We would like to wish you all a very happy, safe holiday.