A good reader is a better writer and the best learner!

Does the sentence above sound familiar? Tell me where you heard it from and you will get a smiley face from me if you answer correctly! With this week being our library week, I hope all of you will have fun immersing yourselves in all kinds of fables and folktales. Do remember that there will be story-telling by some of your fellow schoolmates' parents in the AVA room during recess time, so hurry down after you have eaten your food! Meanwhile, enjoy doing your activity worksheet as well!

If you have already completed it, you may want to choose your favourite fable or folktale and write a short paragraph about it to hand in to me. The short paragraph can be about your favourite character in the fable or folktale you read, or it can even be about an alternative ending that you have thought of for the story! Do also construct a vocabulary quilt about new words you have learned! What's a vocabulary quilt, you ask? Oh no! Have you forgotten about the vocabulary quilt you constructed for the book 'Pinky and Rex and the Spelling Bee'?

Here are some other nicely done pieces of work about the same book:

I am looking forward to getting your write-ups on your favourite fable or folktale! Bonus points will be awarded to your group if you hand in a piece of quality work to me! Who is up for this challenge? ;)

Welcome back to school, boys!

I hope all of you enjoyed your March school holidays! We are now already into week 2 of Term 2! How time flies! Before I forget, here are some very well done mindmaps on our English unit 3 - Celebrations. Try to spot yours!

We have already started on Unit 4 about My Neighbourhood, and I hope you still remember the worksheet you did about your very own neighbourhood. Is your worksheet showcased below? =)

Before the school holidays, we also managed to revise the Maths topic on subtraction, and here are some interesting problem sums thought up by some groups during your groupwork. I especially like Swimming's example as it involved subtraction with renaming. Good job, boys!

I am looking forward to having more opportunities for fun groupwork this new term! How about you? =)

Guess how much we made from our F1 Racing Game Stall?

Do you remember the target amount that we decided together as a class to raise for our school? I said that if each of us gets at least two customers each to play at our game stall, we will be able to raise at least $124. (It is because there are thirty-one of us, and each customer pays $2.00 for two tries.) Kampton helped me to count the number of coupons collected at the end of the carnival and I am proud to announce that we managed to raise $213 ! WOW! That is almost twice the amount that we aimed for! Well done boys!

Although I did not have time to let all of you distribute pamphlets to attract more customers to our stall, we still did extremely well! Give yourself a pat on your back! All of you had a part to play in our stall's success - from the enthusiastic brainstorming of game stall ideas (special mention to Dylan who came up with the winning idea) to the boys who selflessly volunteered their remote control cars. I am sure many of you went around getting people to come to our game stall too, and I was so proud to see you boys helping me man the stall. I must say that some of my proudest moments were when I saw you cheering your customers on when their remote control cars got stuck, and helping me dilligently to collect coupons for payment and handing out cookies happily to the winners. =)

Special thanks to all parents who turned up to support our school event/class game stall too, especially to Colwyn's daddy and mummy, Wayne's mummy, and Kampton's daddy and mummy for helping me man the stall! Thanks to Dillon, Ollie, Dylan and Kamptons' mummies for buying me food and drinks while I was busy too! Last but not least, how can we forget to thank Raphael's mummy for baking the delicious cookies that we gave out as prizes as well? This enjoyable event was truly a class effort, including all your mummies and daddies! Aren't you all proud of yourselves? =)

Although our two remote control cars' batteries went flat halfway in the midst of all our fun, we managed to tweak our game rules so that our customers could continue playing: Instead of two people competing, one person would navigate one remote control car (while we charge the other remote control car). As long as he or she could navigate the car until the end of the track without hitting any cones, he/she would win a bag of cookies. Here are some pictures taken at our game stall, so enjoy them and try to spot yourself and even your mummy or daddy! =)

Happy March holidays, boys! Please do not forget your holiday homework as well!

Wait a minute, are those groans I just heard? Here is a famous quote for you to think about:

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,
All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.

Agree? Let me know on the first day of Term 2! =)

Are you ready for SSS carnival?

Check out the magnificient poster that Mr Magness has drawn for our game stall!

Have you told your parents, relatives and friends about our school carnival yet? Are you excited about our very own game stall? I am! =D

The end of Term 1!

Wow, time flies and we are already reaching the end of our very first term in school! We have finished up the English unit on Celebrations, and just had a fun groupwork activity to kick-start our upcoming unit on My Neighbourhood. The challenge this time was to construct a mindmap in your groups regarding the qualities of a good neighbour. This time round, we did our groupwork a bit differently:
1) We used a groupwork strategy called round table robin: all group members hold on to a different coloured marker and are supposed to pass a piece of A3 sized paper from one to another systematically. Each member is to add on to the mindmap using his own coloured marker when it is his turn.
2) We also constructed two T-lists for turn-taking and encouraging - two very important social skills that we must master in order to have more efficient and meaningful groupwork.

I am pleased to present the four winning pieces of groupwork:

Congratulations to Tennis, Walking, Basketball and Soccer! I am sure that if all of you practice turn-taking and encouraging in your next groupwork activities, you will all be able to produce excellent pieces of group work!

I am also proud of your performance during the PE camp on Monday, as half the class got a prize for being the 2nd most well-behaved group of the day while the other half of the class came in 2nd for all the activities held. However, there is still room for improvement! Some of you did not take the PE camp activities seriously and were playing around and not giving your instructors full attention. Just imagine how much more better you could have performed if you were more serious and attentive to instructions given! All of you could have come in 1st as well as 2nd for all the activities held! Here are some pictures that I managed to capture:

Ian throwing the foam rocket with all his might!

Nat and Shazrin happily skipping away...

Clowning around....

To end off this blog entry, here is a reminder to all of you. I have gotten you boys to bring home your English files today to revise during the March holidays. Please remember to always keep your worksheets filed neatly and in the order written down on your content page. Right now, all of you should have ten worksheets filed. For those who have missing worksheets or missing parent's signatures, I have written down comments in the Remarks column. Take this opportunity to share with your parents about what you have learned for English in Term 1:
For example...
1) What is your favourite unit and why?
2) What was your favourite groupwork done and why?
3) Which areas are you weaker in and how do you think you can improve in them?
4) Can you try to redo all the worksheets again to see if you can get everything correct this time round?

A quote for you to ponder upon: "Hard work is the price we must pay for success." =)