Weekly Update #4, 18 September 2020

Upcoming events can be found on the website under School Life → Calendar and are outlined here for easy reference.

For daily updates and news follow the HeadStart Facebook Page and You Tube channel.

To join the Parent Community Facebook group click here!

Thai Parents Meeting Invitation

There will be a drop-in session for Thai parents on Tuesday 22nd September about the After School Programme (ASP’s) and how to sign up. Kru Nee and Kru Dia will be sharing information about the ASP policies and give a demo on how to sign up and select classes on the Parent Portal. The meeting will be presented in Thai. Looking forward to seeing you there.

UPrep Talk 1: How Does HeadStart Prepare Students for University?

It was great to see so many parents show up for our introductory UPrep session last week. We are committed to guiding our students and parents through the detailed process of University applications so please do take advantage of these sessions and contact Ms Indu Bedi and Ms Gem if you have any questions or require assistance. If you were not able to attend the presentation in person, have a browse through the presentations that found below.

We would like to thank all of the parents who have dedicated time and effort as Parent committee members. Your ideas, comments and suggestions are valuable to us and help the school to improve the overall well being of the students. For those who are staying on, we look forward to working with you in the coming year. We are currently looking to recruit new Parent Committee members to join the team! To find out what this entails, have a look at the roles and expectations on our website link HERE.

Parent committee meetings for this year are scheduled won the following days: and a confirmation will be sent to members one month before the meeting.

• Term 1 meeting is on 29th October, 2020
• Term 2 meeting is on 25th February, 2021
• Term 3 meeting is on 13th May, 2021

Cardboard Boxes for the Art Department

Ms Jody would like to appeal to the community to please bring in any cardboard boxes that you may have as they are needed for art projects. The Art department can be found on the ground floor just opposite Steps Coffee Shop.

Dearest HeadStart community, I take great pleasure in introducing to you the brand new Humanities Faculty at HeadStart. In previous years, Humanities only consisted of one History and one Geography teacher bolted on to the English faculty. Now, however, the team has grown into a fully fledged faculty in it’s own right. Please let me introduce the subjects and their teachers:

Business Studies IGCSE and A Level - Mr Downes

Business Studies BTEC - Miss Jones

Geography KS3, IGCSE and A Levels - Mr Benham/Mr Morris (KS3)

History KS3, IGCSE and A Levels - Mr Cramp/Mrs Caines (Y10 and Y13)

Travel and Tourism IGCSE - Mr Morris

Travel and Tourism BTEC - Mr Morris

For any of you unsure as to how we decide what subjects fall under the ‘humanities’ discipline, essentially it is any subject that looks to study human beings and their culture. Broadly, it can encapsulate literature and art too, not to mention music and drama - however, our subjects in Humanities are more debates of humanity itself, rather than partakers of it. Of course, at one point, we need to ask ourselves when do we as learners stop observing and start partaking? When do we start to apply the knowledge in Humanities we have acquired in the ‘real world’?

Many times students and parents have asked me the same question over and over again at subject fairs for IGCSE and A Level: “What job can you get just because you know what happened in the past?” and time and time again I respond that it is not the knowledge they acquire, but what they do with it. Ask any lawyer, journalist, politician, public relations manager, author or any other profession that requires people-oriented roles that require communication skills and emotional intelligence, I am pretty certain most of them majored in a Humanities subject. The content is simply the ingredients - what you make of it is the key. These are the skills and concepts we teach across our faculty. These are the skills that your children can use in any profession they choose and to better understand the world they live in: research, teamwork, critical enquiry, analysing and questioning evidence, literacy, debate, understanding people’s motives, empathy, the impact and reactions to change…the list goes on.

It also makes for a fun and engaging place to be! I’m sure anyone my age or above can remember our History or Geography teachers when we were at school - all tweed jackets and coffee breath, lessons as dull as their voices and us sat at a desk copying down facts scratched out on a chalkboard. If you had someone ‘fun’, you were lucky. Nowadays, however, if you walk into any classroom you will see students actively engaged in a lively classroom full of conversation and sharing ideas.

In a world of ‘fake news’, environmental uncertainty, political polarisation and pandemics, these skills have never been so crucial. Your child needs to be equipped to partake in their changing futures, not with the content they learn, but with the skills and concepts they master along the way.

I look forward to the year ahead and meeting any parent who would like to enquire about their child joining our subjects for IGCSE and beyond.

Here are Year 4 Yellow proudly showing their spooky story setting paintings that they created in English this week. They carefully considered what contributes to a spooky setting and took the time to paint using watercolours and then added additional details using black card. They created silhouettes of castles, trees, bats and even werewolves before adding thought bubbles of what they could see, hear and feel all to inspire them ahead of writing their story next week. All of the class took great care with their paintings and they are proudly on display in our classroom! - Mr Stephenson

This week, Year 6 have been finding ways to improve their scientific questioning. We took haribo candy and studied their physical, and other characteristics such as flavour, creating a classification key where we were able to classify each candy individually. This helped the year six children create scientific questions to classify animals, based on their physical and behavioural characteristics. Here are some photos of Year 6 working hard, discussing and classifying. -Mr Sean Clarke

This week Miss Leamons Year 7 Science Class have completed their Introductory Science topic. This includes learning how to plan and carry out investigations safely and accurately in the lab. The students have been studying the use of different pieces of lab equipment including how to turn on and use the bunsen burner. The students investigated the difference between the yellow safety flame and the blue roaring flame and the hottest regions of the flames. All the students demonstrated how sensible they are and have officially proved themselves to be more than capable of planning and carrying out some exciting investigations in the future.

This week Miss Leamon’s Year 8 Science class tested for the presence of starch in photosynthesizing leaves as a part of their studies on Plants. The students used the Bunsen burners to boil the leaves in water in order to break down the cell walls and then used ethanol to release the chlorophyll from the cells. Once the leaves had gone white in colour the students used iodine to test whether there was starch stored in the cells. The students did extremely well and all leaves tested positive form the presence of starch. Well done Year 8’s.

It is great to see the students in the school workshop solving problems through design and making. We are now four weeks into Term 1 and the Key Stage 3 students are making key ring fobs from sheet steel that will be sold at the Phuket Aquarium, a model concept chair suitable for a millionaire business lady working in Bangkok and an acrylic mobile phone holder that is designed on the computer and cut on our laser cutter. It’s a busy and diverse department giving the students the opportunities to explore new skills, improve their confidence and think in a different way when confronted with problems. As part of one of the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects at the school, they can learn about robotics, plastic recycling and manufacturing/business strategies through curriculum activities and activities offered in the after school program. -Mr Dean Wells and assistant Krit

Our new Deputy Head Girl and Boy ran their first meeting with all the Prefects and launched the new committees to be headed up by Senior Prefects: Service (Gemma Brain & Regina Lee); Environment & Sustainability (Anya Belova); Student Well Being (Esther Herbold); House (Sara De La Rosa). This is how we are creating agency amongst our students; giving them a real voice in areas that matter to them and developing their skills as future leaders. -Indu Bedi

Advertising ‘Bikes & Bites’ at Taste Bang Tao on Friday 2nd October! E-GO Motors Thailand, are importing electric motorcycles to Phuket, trying to make Thailand greener and cleaner, to help make a difference to the environment of this beautiful country. On 2nd October from 6 pm at Taste, guests can test drive electric motorbikes, followed by a fun event with free-flow tapas & wine and guest DJ. Before 22nd September there is a special early bird rate of 2,000 THB, of which part goes to PHBGTU to support the underprivileged children at Kamala School. Bookings should be made with [email protected]. Link to Facebook Event HERE