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Weekly Update #28, 7 April 2023
Upcoming events can be found on the website under School Life → Calendar and are outlined here for easy reference. If you have questions or require further assistance please email [email protected]
| Date | Time | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 April | Songkran Holiday | ||
| 8-16 April | School Offices Closed for Holiday | ||
| 24 April | 8.00am | First Day Back in School | |
| 26-28 April | Humanities Faculty Week | ||
| 28 April | Humanities Dress Up Day | ||
| 1 May | Supervised study commences for Years 11-13 | ||
| 2 May | 8.15am | Parent Meeting: Exams, Preparation, Reports & Grades | |
| 4 May | UPrep Drop In | Coffee Shop | |
| House Art Competition | |||
| 5 May | BISP Sea Eagles Swim Meet | BISP | |
| 2.30-4.30pm | Friday Market: Table Top Second hand/Homemade item sale | Atrium | |
| 9 May | 8.15am | Parent Meeting: Y1 Language Options for Next Year | |
| 11 May | 8.15am | UPrep for Parents by Parents: studying in the UK |
| Announcements |
School Offices Closed for Songkran
Please be informed that all school offices will be closed from the 8-16th of April in order to give our support staff a well deserved break.
NEW! Table Top Second Hand/Homemade Item Sale on 5.05.23
In keeping with our school’s ethos of sustainability, we are inviting anyone interested (including students) to join our Friday Market table top sale of second hand/homemade items. There will be 15 tables available, free of charge, arranged for the sale throughout the atrium on the 5th of May between 2.30-5.00pm. If you would like to apply for a space, please write to [email protected] stating your name and what you plan to sell so that we can do a check making sure the items are appropriate for school. We look forward to hearing from you!
Lost & Found - Updated Policy and Procedure
- Personal property such as school uniforms, shoes and water bottles found left around school will be cleared and brought to the nurse’s office on the ground floor.
- Valuables such as phones, wallets, keys and watches, found left around school will be cleared and brought to the front office where admin will store the item in a locked cabinet until claimed.
- All lost items will be cleared from the Lost & Found cabinet (outside the nurse’s office) in the middle and end of the month.
- The items will be stored in school storage and donated to charity at end of every month.
- Wet and dirty uniforms will be washed and made available for second hand sale at the school shop at the end of every month.
Blood Donation Drive
On behalf of the Vachira Hospital Blood Bank team, we would like to thank each person who donated blood on the 20th of March at school. The event was a resounding success with 31 donors giving a total of 10,350 cc. The donated blood will go a long way in saving lives and helping those in need. Every unit of blood collected has the potential to make a significant impact in someone’s life, and the donors who contributed should be proud of their selfless acts of kindness. -Khun Pornkamon Roongsiri
| Events - Songkran Festivities |
Songkran Assembly
Thank you to Kamilla, Eugene, Omer, Nailya, Maya, Uliana, Taywin, Yuri and Eric in Year 6 for their lovely performance ‘Serng Kratip’ organised by Kru Gen & Kru Bee. The word ‘serng’ is added to the name of a domestic object used on stage by performers. In the case of ‘Serng Kratip’ the dancers carried traditional rice baskets, known as ‘kratip’ in Thai. These baskets are used to contain one of our all time favourites: sticky rice!
Water Blessing Ceremony
It was lovely to see our student representatives and teachers across the school, join together for the traditional Thai water blessing ceremony during our Songkran assembly. Students pour water onto their elder’s hands to show their respect and ask for blessings for their studies in the new year.
Songkran Assembly - The Long Drum Parade
Thank you to the parents and staff for taking the time to perform ‘Rum Klong Yaao’ which means the long drum parade, traditional at Thai weddings and during festivals. What a great way to start our Songkran assembly!
Songkran Assembly - Muay Thai Show
We would like to give a special thank you to Jada Ketley, a professional Muay Thai and MMA fighter and former student at Headstart, accompanied by her trainer, Top Noi Kiwram, a professional Muay Thai and mixed martial artist from Bangtao Muay Thai & MMA for performing a Muay Thai show for our students at Songkran Assembly.
| PE & Sports |
The HeadStart Panthers VAP Boys football team played their first friendly fixture as they took on UWC in the Panthers Arena. It was great to see the effort and skills on display by all of the players. The match was fun and exciting, with many parents in support. Well done to all involved! - Coach Paul Rothwell
| Primary |
Rock Bottom Performance by Year 3 - 5
Rock Bottom rocked the stage on March 29th and 30th with three shows in two days! After four years with no primary production, the show was a great success, highlighting the new up-and-coming talent that can and will grace our stage for years to come. Not one of the students in this rollicking musical comedy had been on the mainstage in a play; some of them had been in dance recitals but none had taken to the big stage in acting roles, and they did a marvelous, stunning job!
The acting was directed by Joel Adams with lots of help from Alia Sillett. The music was taught and overseen by Tim Costello and Miss Victoria with Paddy Graham adding his considerable expertise. The mammoth job of teaching the dances to the cast and years 3, 4, and 5 was ably undertaken by Amina van den Sanden. We could not have done it without the tremendous help on sets and props from Tommy Dagnall and the art department and Dean Wells and D.T. And, finally, we mustn’t forget how our secondary students, Kristina, Nanki, and team adeptly managed the backstage duties. Now we can’t wait to see what these talented young people will do in future shows.
Mandarin Lessons
Year 2 students recently explored the secrets of Chinese radicals in various ways during First Language class. They made bracelets to learn multiple radicals, categorized characters based on their radicals through a “fishing” game, and played a treasure hunt game with a “radical flashlight”. -Ms Wenhui Zhong
Learning in the Library
Last Friday our Library Monitors from Primary volunteered to read to the Early Years Blue class. It’s lovely to see older children interacting with their younger counterparts. Well done to Charlotte, Isabella, Dhanvi, Anna, Erika, Sophie in Year 5 and Emmali in Year 6 for being March’s library monitors.
Kelly Tuppen
Hello everyone and welcome to my classroom! My name is Kelly Tuppen and I am a Secondary English Teacher, as well as the Homeroom Teacher for Year 10 White. I joined HeadStart in 2020. I have a First Class Honours BA in English Literature and a Postgraduate Certificate of Education for Secondary English from the Institute of Education UCL. Prior to moving to Phuket, I taught KS3 and IGCSE English Language, Literature and some Drama for 4 years at international schools in Yangon, Myanmar, a place very dear to my heart. I have also more recently taught for the rural Canadian school system in the mountains of British Columbia, Canada: ask me about my grizzly bear stories! As an internationally-minded teacher, I take pride in cultivating a plurality of perspectives in my English classroom. I inspire my students to learn how to think, nurturing analytical skills, cultural understanding, open-mindedness and tolerance. Along with developing reading and writing proficiency, I encourage my students to be creative - we might roleplay, hold debates, put a character from a novel on trial and even try to sketch poetic imagery to help us visualise it. Developing independence and confidence in my pupils' communication abilities is central to my role as an English teacher. I also encourage students to see mistakes as opportunities to improve, and never to give up! As an English teacher, I especially love poetry and puns, so you may see some around the classroom. I am very much looking forward to the coming academic year, and feel privileged to explore the magic of the English language with my students and help them to progress. If there is anything you wish to talk to me about, please come to see me. Best of luck to everyone this year.
Model United Nations conference
Six HeadStart students from Year 11 to Year 13 travelled to Bangkok on the 24th March to participate in a 3-day Model United Nations Conference. The students had all been assigned either countries or politicians to represent, and they had spent weeks on end researching their topics in detail during the MUN ASP. During the three-day event they delivered snappy opening speeches to a room full of fellow delegates, composed debate speeches on the fly, all the while remembering the formal rules of procedure and special protocol required of them to imitate the real United Nations process. We were blown away by their professionalism, confidence and commitment to their roles, considering it was their first conference, and very proud to report that Liam and Charles of Year 12 both received Honourable Mention certificates for their efforts in their committees. Well done to all six students, and we hope that the MUN HeadStart team continues to grow! - Ms Tuppen and Mrs Gratton
“Are there any points or motions on the floor?” Followed by many rising placards, gives me a feeling as if I am a part of the real United Nations Conference. Being a delegate with more than 30 similar people in the same room, simultaneously discussing the same problem, can be fascinating - but the stress was real. However, by the end of the conference, we all became our better selves, stepping out of our comfort zones and expressing our feelings and thoughts confidently. Friendship and teamwork, communication and enjoyment, believe me or not, if you join once, you will fall in love with it. -Linda Y13
“Hey guys - I’ve just attended my first Model United Nations conference (THAIMUN), and it was absolutely amazing! The moment I walked into the venue I was struck by the sight of many smart-looking students (including me, of course). During my Historical crisis committee sessions (HCC), I was genuinely impressed by the level of professionalism displayed by my peers, who were negotiating past warfares like The Three Kingdoms. As a first time delegate, I found it challenging to keep up the pace of the proceedings. But with the help of the beloved Chairs and Pages, I managed to achieve my own personal conditions to win, and successfully assassinated many leaders such as CaoCao (The leader of Wei Kingdom) - I even got to create my own empire along with my brothers; which completely changed the course of history! Overall, the MUN conference was a memorable and valuable learning experience that I would recommend to any student who’s interested in public speaking and global affairs. Oh, and not to mention, I’ve made tons of friends with people across the globe and, not to flex, I’ve also got 50+ new Instagram followers.” -Alex Y11
IGCSE English Exam Prep
Songkran celebrations at HeadStart were wonderful and welcome after a hiatus of four years. However, I was more than happy to play the role of the party pooper with Year 11 who, let’s not forget, have only one week left of lessons until the bulk of their IGCSEs. In a move that will surely make me unpopular in the short term but I hope will ultimately reap dividends, in the last lesson of the last day of term, Year 11 Woolf wrote critical essays to answer a past paper question on the play they’ve studied for Literature: Journey’s End. This response represents their twelfth since the mock- a mixture of questions from the Language paper and Literature- all fully marked with strengths and areas of improvement identified. This has seen them steadily improve in necessary areas and (with careful revision over the break) puts them in an excellent position for their upcoming examinations. -Mr. Pollicutt, Head of English
Eco Committee News
During the past three months, the Eco Committee have successfully organised three beach clean-ups with many students, teachers and parents involved. We cannot accomplish anything without your support. Coastal clean-ups are always an adventure, swapping away the garbage of our past and building a future filled with hope. Maybe our actions seem small but it is enough to make people around us aware that we, as a school community, want to make a difference in our environment. Thank you again for joining us every month. Due to the upcoming exams, the next month’s beach clean-up will be postponed until June. Hope to see you in June. -Linda in Year 13
| Student Success Outside of School |
Congratulations to Tiger who was the winnner of the TGA SINGHA Junior Golf Champion 2023-2024. Tiger will go on to represent Thailand in the Junior IMG World Golf Championship and the FCG Callaway World Championship in the USA.
Gymnastics
We are thrilled to announce that we brought home Gold medals! Our youngest competitor, only 8 years old, wowed the judges with her exceptional performance on the new Uneven Bars, leading us to take 1st place with an Olympic scoring system. We are incredibly proud of our team & all levels did awesome. Additionally I am very grateful for the unwavering hard work from the students and support from parents. Training pays off! -Coach Jessica
| Promotions From Around the Island |
