Dates for Your Diary

Upcoming events can be found on the calendar on the website School Life → Calendar but we have outlined upcoming events here for easy reference. For daily updates and news follow the HeadStart Facebook Page

Announcements

Visas and Immigration

Please be reminded that HeadStart does assist with providing the paperwork necessary to obtain a student visa for your child once enrolled at HeadStart but it is important to remember that we are not an extension of immigration. We appreciate that organising visas can be frustrating therefore our staff will do their best to assist you. In turn we ask for your patience and courtesy when speaking and interacting with staff. In cases where you are too busy or frustrated to manage your visa work, we recommend that you contact an agency to take care of this for you.

Security Access Cards

An upgrade has been made to the security access system at the turnstiles. The new system will be more reactive enabling students and parents to be able to enter and exit the building quicker. In order to complete the process we would like to request that if you haven’t already, you should contact admin in the front office to update your security access card.

Support Bodhi Dog Shelter

On November 10-11, Mr. Paice will be taking part in Phukethon - Phuket’s biggest running event of the year. Across the weekend, he will be competing in the 10k and 5k race on the Saturday and the half-marathon run on the Sunday; that’s a total of 37 kilometers! He has decided to run in aid of The Bodhi Shelter and Clinic for dogs located at Wat Pakhlok, Phuket.

The Bodhi Dog Rescue and Shelter rescues street dogs that are injured or sick and provides them with the medical treatment necessary to give them a chance at a new and happy life. Tina, along with her staff, work tirelessly to help get each and every dog they rescue back to good health with the hope of finding them their forever homes.

If you want to find out more about the great work Bodhi Shelter does, please visit their website: http://bodhishelter.com/

You can also support Mr. Paice on his upcoming run, by donating directly through Bodhi’s website.

If you have missed the presentation on 30th October, 2018 please click on the download below.

If you ordered shirts from Admin in support of the Vachira Andaman Heart Center, good news: THEY HAVE ARRIVED! Come and collect them from the front office.

World Scholars Cup

The World Scholar’s Cup is also an opportunity to perform and share something with the Scholar’s Cup community. Our student’s have been actively involved in the showcase for a number of years now. This year Vitalina, Alicia and Nutcha performed for an audience of over 2,000 people. Here are some pictures of them performing at the last global round - we can’t wait to see what they do next. By Ms Hayley Milner

Volleyball News

UWCT came to HeadStart for the return Volleyball fixture. The HS players have come on leaps-and-bounds and Coach Naomi and Mr Prieur have been helping Miss Sethi really teach our team the nuances of the game. It must have worked because HeadStart prevailed again winning the series 3 games to 0 and one tied game. This was a good warm up for the PISAC Volleyball Tournament, which is being held at Kajonkiet International school next week, on November 6th. Good luck players.

Student News

We have had a super week in Foundation. Our busy week ended with our monthly Fun House Challenge for Reception - they did a grand job working as a team and taking part in the playground activities with speed and enthusiasm. All House points will be added to the school running totals to decide who will be the Term 1 winners. By Ms Fiona Scott

A big well done to our super hard workers - Jacob, Raegan, Lucy, Alex, Tee. Liliia, Polina, Jude, Arte and Puan, they each are awarded certificates for an outstanding effort and trying their very best in all lessons.

This week we have been learning about our bodies, bones and Halloween. We read the story of Room on the Broom. The Early Years children had lots of fun acting out the story and creating their own potions and spells during our messy play day! We are so happy to see the children taking risks, being willing to participate and using the language from books in their talk and play! By Ms Holly & Ms Saki

Reception blue have been learning about new shapes. We went on a shape hunt around the school to see what shapes we could recognise. We’ve been learning about pentagon, hexagon and octagon and I’m sure they will tell you the tricks we use to remember the names. By Ms Candice Smithie

This week Reception Yellow have been doing lots of fun learning all about underwater sea creatures. They loved Messy Monday and experimenting with water play as well as fishing for numbers, bubble wrap painting and seaweed slime. We have learnt about whales and read a story called ‘The fish who could wish’. In Maths we have been practising subtraction using practical resources such as fish in the fish bowl! The children are growing and learning every day and it is so lovely to see their enthusiasm and positive attitudes. We really enjoyed making edible starfish sandwiches (and eating them!) as well as making colourful jellyfish to decorate the classroom. What a super week! By Ms Hannah Kuusik

In Reception phonics the children enjoy practical activities such as the phonics scavenger hunt! We went searching for ‘ch’ and ‘sh’ words hidden in the playground. The children sounded out and blended the words before writing them down in the ‘sh’ or ‘ch’ boxes. I am so impressed with how their reading and writing skills are improving each week. Well done children! By Ms Hannha Kuusik

The Year 1 and 2 children have had lots of fun learning about China.They then made their own Chinese lanterns, instruments and painted the symbol of their year of birth. They even tried Chinese tea. By Ms Danielle

The Year 1 Lego club had a fantastic time making their own dinosaur based on the story DINOSAUR POLICE. Well done to the students for the amazing work. By Ms Lo

Year 1 had fun reading instructions and creating a house in Russian class. By Ms Alina Plaktova

Year 2 White are learning how to play the recorder in music class. By Ms Mency Regalado

Year 2 students are learning about counting animals so we played game “What am I?”. This game has helped students communicate with actions while memorising the definitions of words. We had so much fun during this lesson. By Kru Sue

In Russian class the Years 3 and 4 students created motivational calendars for November to put their stickers on. By Ms Alina

Here are some pictures of the Year 3 art ASP children. They are making ‘relief pictures’ by scratching their artwork into cuttlefish bones. They really enjoyed it! By Ms Lucie Bevins

Ms Dunne is covering lifesaving and personal survival in the Y5 Yellow swim class. The students are developing vital skills to keep them and others safe in the ocean and in pools.

Ms Dunne and Mr Bushell have been collaboratively teaching fitness to Year 3 allowing students to take ownership in their fitness program as well as cross curricular English skills.

Ms Dunne and Miss Brelstaff have been collaboratively working with Year 2 to improve their target throwing skills. We have been using maths calculations to add scores and trying to beat our personal best.

Year 6 were playing battleships to learn how to conjugate regular ‘IR’ verbs in the present tense while Year 2 have been learning to say the members of their family. By Mr Sam Scorey

This week Miss Leamon’s year 8 class have been learning about nutrients and the digestive system. At the start of the week the students used weetabix, chemicals and stockings to mimic food going through the digestive system and nutrients being absorbed into the blood through the small intestines forming fake faeces. Then the students learnt how to test for glucose and starch in carbohydrates. The aim of this topic is to give students an understanding of a healthy lifestyle and diet and a deeper insight into human anatomy.

Year 10 pupils getting really messy with mixed media experiments! A chance to be super creative and expressive with lots of different materials. By Ms Samantha Gill

Year 10 IGCSE Drama have been rehearsing their first piece of coursework, which will be recorded this week and the year 11’s have been developing devised pieces inspired by practitioners such as Jerzy Grotowski and Joan Littlewood. By Ms Hayley Milner

Over a hundred secondary students attended our dress-up Halloween movie night on Wednesday 31st. With different options for different age-groups, there was an offering for everyone along with plenty of popcorn and snacks to go round. Well done to the student leaders who organised everything, from ticket sales to clean up. They showed great organisation and creativity to make the evening a success. Thanks also to the supervising teachers (Ms Caines, Mr Barker, Mr Miah and Mr Brown) for staying late to make sure nothing too spooky happened. The Student Leadership Team plan to use the money raised from ticket sales to fund future fun and social events for HeadStart students, and plans are already afoot for our next event! Watch this space…

Last weekend the Year 10 did their Duke of Edinburgh students did their 2 day training session on Ao Yon beach. They learned how to set up camp, cook for themselves and kayak on the sea.

Student A-Level English Work

Year 13 A-Level English Literature students have been studying Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles with me since August this year.

This canonical Victorian text can, at its worst, seem dry, irrelevant and outdated to modern readers, especially younger people.

However, to their infinite credit, all the students in the class have embraced Hardy’s pastoral, symbol-heavy prose style, and have been drawn into the novel’s often melodramatic events and conflicted characters.

After having written successful essays for their mid-term assessments, over half term the students set about a task set for them which was both creative and collaborative. I asked them to write in the style of Hardy, to explore similar themes as him, but to update and re-contextualise their piece so that it was set in modern-day Phuket in (where else?) HeadStart International School.

My rationale for this task was as follows: given they have to analyse and evaluate the text to succeed in their A-Level examinations next year, were they to be able to re-create Hardy’s style and justify their choices for doing so, the demands of the exam would suddenly seem much less daunting. Additionally, two members of the group, Maeva Lubrani and Denalyn Kwok, hope to study Creative Writing at university next year, so I wanted to give them the opportunity to have some of their work published online.

This was no small task. Not only did students have to synthesise all they had learnt of Hardy’s purposes and the novel’s themes; but they also had to emulate his authorial voice, compelling then to consider deeply their own structural and linguistic choices. All of this in 5000 words (so a short story- different in form too from Hardy’s ponderous 500 page novel); all of this remotely via Google Docs; all of the students showed excellent organisation, communication and accountability- some of the skills we hope to imbue in them in order to succeed in an ever changing world.

I’m sure you’ll agree the students did wonderfully well in their efforts. As you’re reading their magnum opus, look out for some of the features of Hardy’s style: the use of an developed pastoral setting to reflect the mood of the protagonist; melodramatic events and inter-personal relationships; and the conflict between natural and societal law.

The narrative has been divided into colour sections so that you might clearly identify each student writer:

• Part 1: (Red) Maeva Lubrani
• Part 2: (Black) Denalyn Kwok
• Part 3: (Blue) Sasha Miftakhova
• Part 4: (Black) Nikol Smirnovaite
• Part 5: (Pink) Elin Lindgren

Finally, please forgive the awful title, entirely my fault, this one. It was the nearest Phuket-related one that my own addled brain could get to a homage to the original title. Happy reading!

House News

This term’s house competition is on track to be one of the closest ever. In the first 10 weeks of this year the secondary students have tripled the number of merits they earned in the whole of last year. We are really impressed with everyone’s efforts, well done to all. Keep up the good work!

Here are this weeks totals: