30 Apr 14 (Wednesday)

Dear children,

Although I could not let you have your Math Test papers back today, I'm pleased to announce the fantastic achievements that 2/2 has made for this test:

27 out of 32 children
achieved Band 1
(26 marks and above)

• 13 children achieved the perfect score of 30/30
• 6 children scored 29/30
• 4 children scored 28/30
• 1 child scored 27/30
• 3 children scored 26/30

10 of you made significant improvements of at least 5 marks from the Practice Test. That's awesome and I'm very proud of your effort! :)

One girl in particular improved by 15 marks from her Practice Test to achieve the perfect score of 30/30! Another two boys also made huge improvements of 14 marks and 13 marks. This is what putting in hard work can help us achieve!

Our next target is to conquer the English Test next Monday. Will you put in your best again? ;)

You would have received your English Practice Test paper today and realised that we did not do very well this time round. My target for each and every one of you was 38.5 marks, but unfortunately, only 7 of you achieved that. Please look carefully at your paper and see where you went wrong. Most of you made many mistakes in the section on editing. When you come back on Friday, we will do an editing exercise to help you get better at that.

I trust that you will put in your best to prepare for the actual test over the next 4 days. My offer of a pizza party still stands. ;)

Here are today's reminders:

1) Please remember to prepare for Friday's spelling. The words to be tested can be found on Page 3 of your Spelling List. The first word is "spade". Please ignore the error in the date. We are having the spelling on 2 May (Friday), not 5 May. Prepare your Spelling Book so that we can start immediately on Friday.

2) For the art lessons on Friday, please bring along a 2B pencil, a box of colour pencils and a box of crayons.

3) Show your English Practice Test paper to your parents and ask for a signature. Bring it back on Friday.

4) Check AskNLearn tomorrow (Thursday) after 2 p.m. for some English online practice tasks. 

Have a fruitful and enjoyable holiday with your family! :)

29 Apr 14 (Tuesday)

Dear children,

I hope you learnt something from the Social Studies Learning Trail today. Some of you might not have enjoyed it thoroughly because you had some arguments with your group members. Remember, however, that there is something to learn about yourself from every experience. Tonight, before you sleep, think about the following questions and be honest with yourself:

1) Have I been respectful towards my group members?

2) Have I been a cooperative group member?

3) Have I listened to my group members' suggestions, or have I simply insisted on my ways?

4) Have I left anyone out?

5) Have I given my best to the group, or have I chosen to give up when my group members didn't want to accept my suggestion?

Here are some photographs from the Learning Trail today:

I'm looking forward to marking your English Practice Test later. We'll go through it tomorrow.

Here are today's reminders:

1) You would have received your Spelling Book. As always, work on your corrections and update your contents page before showing your Spelling Book to your parents for a signature. Bring back your Spelling Book on Friday for the next spelling.

2) Finish up the remaining corrections and re-corrections in your Math Unit 6 blue booklet and show the booklet to your parents for a signature. Bring it back for me to check tomorrow.

3) If you have not completed all the questions in your Math Unit 6 green booklet, complete them at home and submit the booklet to me tomorrow. You should be able to complete all the questions in the booklet without referring to anything. However, if you find that you are really not too sure, you may refer to your blue booklet.

Have a good evening. See you tomorrow! :)

28 Apr 14 (Monday)

Dear children,

I'm glad we completed our Magnetic Max booklets today. We will be having an English Practice Test tomorrow to help you prepare for next Monday's English Language Test. Your task before we meet tomorrow is to continue reviewing your Food Fit For A King and The Chinese Opera Game booklets. Review your spelling words from those two units too.

You will be having a Social Studies Learning Trail in school tomorrow after recess from 3.30 p.m. to 6 p.m.. More instructions will be given to you tomorrow.

Here are the Super Spellers for last Friday's spelling:

Isaac and Raeann from Gold
David from Lego

Seth from Avatar

Ezra from Ice
Zhi Zong from Disney

Jonathan and Jenna from Seashell

Lea and Elijah from Legend

Isaac has put in tremendous effort this time round. He is both a Super Speller and a Super Improver, so he earned 4 ice-cream sticks for Gold!

The other 6 Super Spellers earned 2 ice-cream sticks each for their respective groups. 

I just logged onto KooBits and was amazed to see that P2/2 JOY now has more than 6000 Challenge Points!

That makes us ahead of the second class in Singapore by more than 2000 points. I like the continuous effort and perseverance you are showing, 2/2! :)

Not only are you earning more and more Challenge Points, you are also mastering more and more skills to move up the charts for the various Math Leagues.

Brian has moved up to the Genius League, while Natalie, Elijah, Zhi Zong, Isaac and Janine have moved up to the Masters League. 

Jenna and Christian are now in the Champions League, while Luke and Dawn are in the Professional League.

I also see that Seth, who has mastered every single skill in the P2 Math Leagues, is now working on the P3 skills.

Keep up the good work, 2/2! :)

Here are today's reminders: 

1) We'll have our art lessons on Friday instead because we'll have to prepare you for the upcoming English test over the next few days. That means you don't have to bring your art materials tomorrow.

2) Gold, Avatar and Ice, please make arrangements to help your respective group members for re-spelling tomorrow during recess. Each of the three groups will need to send one helper. Re-spellers, remember to prepare well for re-spelling tomorrow.

See you tomorrow for another great day of learning! :)

25 Apr 14 (Friday)

Dear children,

I hope you conquered the Math Test easily today. With enough effort put into preparation, any difficult task can become much easier! I'm looking forward to hearing good news from the teacher marking your papers. :)

We didn't manage to have our art lesson today because my laptop wasn't working well and I couldn't show you the needed slides. We'll have an extra make-up art lesson next week.

I'm glad we made progress in our Magnetic Max booklets though. We discussed the connectors "when", "but", "so" and "then" and used them to make sentences. Do you still remember which connector can be used to show addition? What about sequence, result and contrast? Practise making sentences at home with your parents. Try to use the vocabulary you learnt from Magnetic Max too: "iron bolts", "skateboard", "paper clips", "magnet", "bunch of keys", and "pocket".

I think we could have done more if you were better behaved. Please work on that.

Once we complete our Magnetic Max booklets next week, we'll have a practice test to prepare you for the English Language Test on 5 May (that's next, next Monday). You'll be tested on three units:

1) Food Fit For A King

2) Chinese Opera Game

3) Magnetic Max

Your homework for this weekend is to review your Food Fit For A King booklet and your Chinese Opera Game booklet.

Here's the ice-cream sticks update for this week:

Seashell is still leading! Let's see if another group will work harder to surpass them next week. ;)

Have an enjoyable weekend with your family! See you next Monday! :)

24 Apr 14 (Thursday)

Dear children,

We read Magnetic Max today and discussed more examples of the past tense of some regular and irregular verbs. We also talked about the differences between common nouns and proper nouns, and learnt to use the words "a", "the", "this", "that" and "no" correctly in sentences.

I'll be attending a course tomorrow and will only see you when I'm back at 5 p.m.. There will be relief teachers going into the class before 5 p.m..

The Math Test will be held right after recess at 3.30 p.m.. Please do not play at the field or basketball court during recess. You need a clear mind - not a perspiring body - to help you do your best. Joel and Natalie will help me to remind you about that tomorrow.

Joel and Natalie, please note down the class schedule for tomorrow in your handbook. I will need your help to remind the relief teachers about these:

1.25 p.m. to 1.45 p.m.: Spelling/Dictation.

1.45 p.m. to 2.15 p.m.: Write a journal entry and submit your journal. The title is "What a friend should not do". In your entry, write about an unpleasant encounter with a friend. Describe what happened and how you felt when your friend behaved in a negative way or did something unpleasant to you. Explain what you learnt from the encounter. If you like, you could start your writing with "I once felt sad when…".

2.15 p.m. to 2.30 p.m.: Work on corrections for blue Math booklets (The relief teacher will show you my solutions for Pages 15, 16 and 17). 

2.30 p.m. to 3 p.m.: Complete the remaining questions in the green Math booklet on your own. If you have time remaining after you complete that, use it to do your own revision for the Math test. 

We will have our art lesson when I'm back at 5 p.m..

Here are today's reminders:

1) Bring your spelling book tomorrow for spelling.

2) If you received your blue Unit 6 Math booklet from me today, please show it to your parents and ask for a signature.

3) Bring a 2B pencil, a box of colour pencils and a black marker tomorrow for art.

4) Bring the Social Studies work Mrs Jamal gave you today to submit tomorrow.

5) The re-spelling for the 3 pupils will be moved to Monday's recess instead so that all of you can focus on preparing for the Math Test.

See you tomorrow! :)

23 Apr 14 (Wednesday)

Dear children,

We continued with Booklet B of our unit on multiplication and division models today. I was glad to see many of you focused and hard at work. I noticed that all of you are getting much better at multiplication and division word problems. That's really good news!

Because of your effort, I shall make a special offer to you: If every single child in P2/2 JOY scores at least 26 marks for Friday's Math test, I will treat the class to a pizza party in school. How does that sound? :)

We worked on our Magnetic Max booklets today and discussed the use of regular and irregular verbs. Do you know the difference between the 2 kinds of verbs? Share an example with your parents!

We also discussed the use of "is", "are", "was" and "were" in different sentences. When would you use which? Share with your family too.

Here are today's tasks:

1) If you did not do too well for the spelling two weeks ago, please be reminded that there's re-spelling for you tomorrow.

2) Work on Math Practice Quiz 5 on AskNLearn once more to revise for Friday's Math test. I will check the AskNLearn records tomorrow night at 10 p.m. to make sure that you have tried it again.

If you don't remember how to access it again because it has disappeared from your Task List, click here and scroll down to the section in blue:
http://shps-twotwojoy-2014.blogspot.sg/2014/02/19-feb-2014-wednesday.html


See you tomorrow! :)

22 Apr 14 (Tuesday)

Dear children,

We learnt how to draw "broken division" models today with dotted lines and practised more division word problems. That should help us become even more prepared for Friday's test. 

Do you remember when we should be drawing "broken division" models to help us? Is it when we don't know the "T" in the question? Or the "I"? Or the "G"? 

With the Part A booklet of Unit 6 completed, we'll be moving on to the Part B and C booklets next. 

Here are today's reminders:

1) Show your parents the Note-taking Practice we did yesterday and ask for a signature. Bring it back tomorrow for me to check.

2) If you have not passed your I-Read book to your friend, please do so before Silent Reading time tomorrow.

See you tomorrow! :)

21 Apr 14 (Monday)

Dear children,

You would have received your Spelling Book this afternoon. Here are the seven Super Spellers for last Thursday's spelling:

Christian from Lego

Ashley, Zane and Joel from iPad

Zhi Zong and Luke from Disney

Jenna from Seashell

As usual, please work on your corrections if you have any and update your contents page before showing it to your parents for a signature. Your next spelling will be on this Friday. Make sure you prepare well! 

This time round, I will be awarding 2 ice-cream sticks to each Super Speller and 2 ice-cream sticks to each Super Improver -- those who improve from the previous spelling by 3 marks or more. That means if you improve by 3 marks or more to achieve 15 marks, you will earn 4 ice-cream sticks for your group. Does that sound good? Let's encourage everyone to improve! :)

We had a note-taking practice today to prepare ourselves for the upcoming Listening Comprehension test. I hope you have a clearer idea now what note-taking is all about. 

During FTGP, we looked at different facial expressions and realised how being angry makes us look. We discussed how anger, if not managed properly, can be very bad for our relationships with others. We'll talk more about managing anger next week.

We moved on to drawing models for division word problems. I'm glad that most of you are learning this very well.

Here are today's reminders:

1) Please pass the letter from the Traffic Police to your parents.

2) Consider joining the Sony Creative Science Award 2014 Toy Making Competition. Many of you have curious minds and lots of creative potential, so make good use of what you have! It's not difficult to win something in the P1/P2 category. I hope P2/2 can have many winners this year! :) Give it a try!

Prizes will be given for the following:

• Classes with the highest number of toy submissions (per level)
• Toys selected by the school's judging panel (School Award)
• Top three most 'Liked' toys on AsknLearn
• Top three most constructive comments on AsknLearn

3) This week's art lesson will be shifted to Friday instead, so you do not need to bring any art materials tomorrow.

Have an enjoyable evening with your family. See you tomorrow! :)

17 Apr 14 (Thursday)

Dear children,

Although we did not have much time together today, I'm glad we managed to move on to the third paragraph of our composition. Many of you are putting to use what you have learnt and writing very descriptive paragraphs. Great job! We'll continue to improve our writing skills next week.

Here's the ice-cream sticks update for this week. I've not included the scores from today's spelling yet.

Seashell is still leading! Will Seashell be the Group of April, or will another group do its best to surpass Seashell in the coming week? ;)

I just logged on to KooBits and was surprised to see that P2/2 JOY now has more than 4000 Challenge Points! 

We are now ahead of the second class in Singapore by more than 1100 points. I remember our class target last week was to be ahead by 1000 points. We have exceeded last week's target! ;) Great job, 2/2! With continuous effort and perseverance, I'm sure we will remain at the top of the leader board until 30 May when the competition ends.

I'm glad to also see that many of you have mastered more and more skills to move up the charts for the various Math Leagues.

Natalie, Isaac and Elijah are now in the Champions League while Zhi Zong, Janine, Luke, Christian and Jenna are in the Professional League.

This weekend, please focus on the AskNLearn quizzes and prepare for next Friday's math test on multiplication and division. I've posted Quiz 7, titled "P2/2 Math Practice Quiz 7 (Units 3 & 4)". Complete it before we meet on Monday.

Besides trying Quiz 7, I would also strongly encourage you to try Quiz 5 and Quiz 6 again and aim for full marks for both of them. Natalie took 4 tries to perfect her score for Quiz 6. That's a good example of continuous effort and perseverance.

Be very familiar with the kinds of questions asked and build your confidence. Then, you will not feel nervous during the test.

Remember to complete your Journal and submit on Monday too. 

Have an enjoyable long weekend with your family! :)

16 Apr 14 (Wednesday)

Dear children,

We continued with our composition today and discussed how we can describe a boy in fear and the different ways he might call for help.

Of course, there are many more phrases we can use, but using some of these will be a good start to making your stories better. Remember: You want your reader to be able to imagine what you are imagining. Using these phrases can help to paint clear pictures in the minds of your readers! :)

You would have received your Math Practice Test paper today. Show it to your parents and ask for a signature. If there are re-corrections that you have to work on, please complete them. Bring the paper back tomorrow for me to check.

For art lesson tomorrow, you'll be making a card. Please bring:

-A piece of drawing paper

-Pieces of big and small coloured paper (if you have them)

-Decorations you would like to paste on a card, such as stickers, buttons and cut-outs

-Scissors

-Glue

-Colour pencils / crayons / markers

I'll be attending a course tomorrow and will only see you when I'm back at 5 p.m.. There will be relief teachers going into the class before 5 p.m. to conduct spelling and tell you what to do for art. 

Don't forget to pack your Spelling Book into your bag. I hope we can have more Super Spellers this week. Put in the effort to prepare! 

See you tomorrow! :)

15 Apr 14 (Tuesday)

Dear children,

We did not do as well as expected for the Math Practice Test this time. Isaac, Zane and Seth are the only ones who scored full marks. There were 6 others who were quite close, scoring 28 and 29 marks. Half the class scored 26 or more marks, but I think we can do better than this. Unfortunately, there were 3 who did not pass the practice test.

I'm exceptionally happy for Richelle and Phoebe because the two of them have worked very hard and improved a lot.

As always, no matter what your results are, remember that it is not the end of the world. This practice test is supposed to prepare you for the test next Friday, so if you did not do too well this time, you know it's time to look at where you went wrong! Aim to become better in those areas! :)

You'll get back your paper tomorrow after I've marked your corrections.


Here are today's reminders:

1) You would have received your spelling book today. Work on your corrections if you need to and show your spelling book to your parents for a signature. Update its contents page too, and get ready for the next spelling on Thursday.

2) If you have not completed Math Quiz 6 on AskNLearn, please do so before we meet tomorrow.

3) If you have not passed your I-Read book to your friend, please do so before Silent Reading Time tomorrow.

4) You would have received your journal today. Write a new entry titled "My Best Friend". Choose one of your friends and write about what makes that person a good friend. Share what you like to do with this good friend too. Write at least 5 sentences, and at most 2 pages. You may draw a picture after you have written. Submit it on Thursday.

5) If you received your English and Math booklets from me today, please show them to your parents and ask for a signature on each of them.

Have a restful evening with your family! :)

14 April 14 (Monday)

Dear children,

It's such a wet day! I hope you were not drenched on your way home.

We had a Math practice test today to prepare for next Friday's test. I'm looking forward to marking your test papers to see how many of you scored full marks! We'll go through the paper tomorrow and make sure that we improve on all your weak areas over the next three days.

During our special Moral Education lesson today, we talked about orderliness and discussed the biblical story of Noah's Ark. From it, we learnt about how we, too, can be orderly in our daily lives and when we lead others.

We started on our next writing package during English lesson and discussed how we could write the first paragraph about the first picture. We'll continue tomorrow and focus on how we can describe a boy in fear and the different ways he could call for help. Look forward! :)

Just for this week, you'll have your art lesson on Thursday instead, so please don't bring your art materials tomorrow. I will tell you again the things you'll need to bring for Thursday.

Here's a reminder: Log on to AskNLearn and work on the quiz titled "P2/2 Math Practice Quiz 6 (Units 3 & 4)". Complete it before we meet on Wednesday. I will go through it in class on Wednesday.

Have an enjoyable evening with your family! :)

11 Apr 14 (Friday)

Dear children,

After spelling today, we discussed the traits that make a good friend and you wrote on a body cut-out some adjectives to describe good friends. I saw words like "faithful", "loyal", "responsible", "polite", "helpful" and "kind" on your beautifully coloured pieces. I hope we can all work towards being all of that to our friends. Let us always ask ourselves: Am I being a good friend to my friend?

We also went through the section on phonics in the "The Chinese Opera Game" booklet and finished it up. We'll focus on composition for English in the first few days of next week.   

We started on a new math unit today and learnt to draw models for word problems on multiplication. These models are not very different from the part-whole models and comparison models we learnt for addition and subtraction.

Click on the picture below and look at the two questions. Think about the steps you would take to draw their models. Use the different colours to help you. You can share the steps with your parents. When would you draw the first kind, and when the second kind?

Although this topic is not tested in the Math Test on 25 April, knowing how to draw these models may help you answer word problems that you were previously not able to answer.

Here's the ice-cream sticks update for this week:

Seashell is leading so far. Will Seashell be the Group of April? We'll find out in two weeks' time! ;) In the meantime, I look forward to the other 7 groups catching up with them!

I'll be putting up "P2/2 Math Practice Quiz 6 (Units 3 & 4)" on AskNLearn by Sunday evening at 5 p.m. to help you further prepare for the upcoming test. You'll have until Tuesday night to work on that.

If you have time this weekend and want to do some work, log on to KooBits and try some questions. Focus on mastering skills. I'll put up a short video later to show you what I mean. 

Have an enjoyable weekend with your family! :)


-------------------------------------------------
Update on Saturday at 11 p.m.:

1) I have uploaded Math Quiz 6 on AskNLearn. You may start on it early if you want to.

2) Here's the promised video. KooBits's target for each of you is to pass 29 skills by the end of April, but so far only 5 of you have hit the target. Work hard! :)

3) We've got only 12 Super Spellers this time:

Joshua from Lego

Raeann from Gold

Seth and Brian from Avatar

Vanessa and Joel from iPad

Risa and Wei Xiang from Ice

Phoebe from Disney

Jenna and Natalie from Seashell

Elijah from Legend

-------------------------------------------------

10 Apr 14 (Thursday)

Dear children,

I'm sure all of you enjoyed the birthday party today! Thanks to many of your parents who put in the time, effort and money to organise the party for us, we got to celebrate the birthdays of the April babies with lots of scrumptious food! I hope you remembered to thank the mummies and daddies personally for the goodies they gave you too. Here's a video and some photographs taken by some of your parents:

During English lesson, we learnt to use the conjunctions "and" and "when" to join pairs of sentences. Do you remember when you need to use a comma and when you don't need to? Where should your capital letters be? 

We also discussed how to identify verbs and how to change them from present to past tense by adding "ed" behind it. We continued with the prepositions "for", "of", "off", "over" and "from" and tried to use them in sentences. Here's a quick test. What's the difference between the two sentences below?

Tammy took her hand from the hot handle.

Tammy took her hand off the hot handle.

We also went through a grammar cloze on the Mid-Autumn Festival. Do you remember what "annual" means?

We're well on our way to completing the The Chinese Opera Game booklet. When we're done with that, we'll start on the next composition. This time round, I'd like to guide you to write one paragraph at a time. We'll go slow, but we'll make each paragraph good.

Here are today's reminders:

1) Super Spellers-to-be, please remember to bring your spelling book for spelling tomorrow. Prepare your spelling book so that we can start immediately tomorrow without delay.That means that your spelling book should have:

(a) Tomorrow's date, spelling number, and the numbers 1 to 11 written on a fresh page

(b) Your parent's signature on the previous spelling test

(c) Its past corrections and re-corrections completed

(d) Its contents page updated

2) If you have not completed the Math quiz on AskNLearn, please do it. I will be checking tomorrow morning at 11 a.m..

3) Show your parents the English and Math booklets you brought back today. Ask for a signature on each of them. Bring the booklets back to show me tomorrow.

4) If you received your composition from me yesterday, please submit your corrections tomorrow.

See you tomorrow! :)