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Weekly Update 16, 15 Dec. 2017
Preschool to Year 3 Christmas Performance
On 13 December our little students had the chance to perform lovely songs and dances to celebrate the festive season. A full album of the Preschool to Year 3 performance can be found on the HeadStart Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/headstartphuket/
Dear Parents,
Wow, we made it…….. what a long and completely packed term this has been. There has been so much to celebrate here at HeadStart over the last 17 weeks:
Lots of wonderful Primary class assemblies; so many Stars of the Week; Students of the Month for MFL (Modern Foreign Languages), PE and Science; the super children’s hand prints and Christmas bunting hanging up in the Foundation corridor; class field trips; Inspire Maths Primary parents meeting; Faculty Weeks; Halloween; Year 6 debating teams; Astronauts crash-landing in the Foundation garden; so many excellent pieces of children’s work being shared with me to receive a Head’s Merit award; the Tiger House winning the merits cup this term; exams; reports; Parent Teacher Conferences; Primary House competitions at lunchtimes; Beach clean-ups; Wai Kru; Wacky Tacky dress-up day; 591 Christmas shoeboxes donated and delivered to less fortunate children around Phuket; wonderful Christmas decorations; absolutely fabulous Christmas performances from PreSchool all the way to Year 3; and finally, a super Christmas Market to end the term!!!
I think we have all thoroughly deserved to arrive at this end of term and everyone is really looking forward to the holidays - to wind down, relax and recuperate; and above all to enjoy a family filled Christmas time.
I look forward to welcoming our returning families back on Monday 8th January and I wish the very best for the future to those of you who are leaving our HeadStart family.
A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of our HeadStart community!
Mr Andrew Whittaker
Head of Foundation and Primary
We are extremely proud of the excellent progress the Reception children have made in phonics. They are using their phonics skills to blend and segment words and even remembering finger spaces when writing a simple sentence! By Ms Hannah Kuusik
Reception Blue have loved joining in with all the festivities surrounding Christmas. We wrote letters to Santa and baked Christmas cookies. We have been very creative this week and have had tonnes of fun! Merry Christmas to all from Reception Blue. By Ms Smithie
It has been a busy week in Reception with lots of festive activities and Christmas fun! The children have enjoyed making Christmas cards, Christmas crafts and role playing elves in Santa’s grotto. The teachers are so proud of the children for their super performance in the Foundation show! By Ms Hannah Kuusik
Year 1 Blue wrote letters to Santa and then posted them in the post box …. they are very excited about Santa reading their letters. By Ms Fallows
Year 3 have been getting into the Christmas spirit. They have been solving the mystery of the stolen Christmas pudding using their Maths skills and they had a great time performing as reindeer for the Christmas show!
In English, Year 5 Yellow have been expanding their journalism and storytelling skills by writing Newspaper reports. Every member of the group produced an impressive and intriguing report, however, one report was so tantalizing that it was awarded the Head’s Merit - The incredible report was written by Tim Kuliiev, and it is now on display outside the Year 5 Yellow classroom for all to see.
In History, Year 5 Yellow have been analysing poetry. Delving into the hidden messages and meaning behind Nelson Mandela’s favourite poem ‘Invictus’ By William Ernest Henley.
In Maths, Year 5 have been working collaboratively to conquer tricky Mathematical puzzles - they have shown excellent support, teamwork and enthusiasm throughout! By Ms Kay Forster
The Secondary students competed in their Track & Field Sports Day. They ran, they lept, and the threw their way to victories achieving a whole magnitude of new school records! Final results were:
1st = Yellow Cheetahs
2nd = Blue Tigers
3rd = Green Dragons
4th = Red Phoenixes
Year 7 classes were using their knowledge of geometric shapes and patterns to produce beautiful snowflake decorations. By Ms Bekker
Business, Computing & Technology Faculty
By Mr Peter Mason
This week in Year 10 ICT, whilst some students were being physically adventurous, in class we were being academically adventurous. The Year 10 student, based on research, made some predictions. I’ll share a sample of them below:
Year 10 Top Tech Predictions for 2018
Benjamin in Year 10 Blue
1.) VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality)will definitely have a big impact on the everyday lifestyles of everyone in the next upcoming years. They could take over the businesses in tourism and traveling as one could simply visit the spot of attraction just simply by downloading then loading a few files of the location which would then allow them to look around it from their own house without really having to fly to the destination.
2.) AI (Artificial Intelligence) is another thing that is most likely to have a great impact in everyone’s lifestyles, good and worse. It could bring in some new factors to decision-making, business plans, designer layouts and even more. Either way, they could take over some roles that other humans already are currently occupying which could increase efficiency but could increase the unemployment rate of those who are interested or only have skills for those areas.
3.) Automation will be one of the largest impacts as it is growing at a tremendous rate. It has taken over most “dirty” work in factories and is slowly becoming applied to some general stores. In the future it is most likely that all people will have to do (and the only thing they can do) is just monitor and sit behind a desk to make sure that the automated systems don’t fail.
Evan and Kiki in Year 10 Yellow
FANUC: There are replacing human manual jobs.
Transportation improvement (Drones): There is a possibility drones can develop into transportation in near future, example can be delivery.
AR: Augmented reality is a live direct or indirect view of physical, real world environment whose element are ‘augmented’ by computer generated. This is currently used in 2017, however I will continue growing at faster rate than VR.
Fashion trends in 2018: People might be wearing more like individual style not like this year.
Self-driving cars: hey do exist already in 2017 but it will improve using high quality of AI.
Bitcoin: Bitcoin is A cryptocurrency and worldwide payment system and it is the first digital currency. People these days are using bitcoins more than actual cash, apparently ! bitcoin is 550766.27 Baht.
Ben Caspi in Year 10 Yellow
Net neutrality will be rebelled against- The Chairman on the FCC has revealed a few weeks ago that he plans to draw back a lot of net neutrality laws. This will control what people see and what people think in an attempt to make the internet a more profitable place for creators. For example, someone goes on YouTube and instead of videos, they find a page saying “sorry, you haven’t paid for the entertainment package in your internet plan, please pay $5 more”. This is just the first step though, if this is allowed to happen, it allows information to be controlled which allows control over people see, which allows control over what people think. This would ruin many opportunities for small, maybe undiscovered creators preventing them from doing what they want to do on the internet. This means companies choose profit over people. However, with more people beginning to recognize this issue, I predict, when it is time for vote, there will be enough rebellion force to keep net neutrality laws as they are.
Steadily developing Avatars will be preferred over humans in all areas- once only used in video games and virtual reality, avatars, human robots, are getting more and more real as humanity makes more and more advanced technological improvements. Some people predict robots will take over the social or online life of a human so humans can focus on school studies or work more. However, I think avatars will be more than an enhancement of humans. I think overall, we will have robots replace humans, or maybe secretly live amongst them. Humans will not be able to distinguish between avatars and humans but avatars, with technology beyond normal human capabilities, they will easily be able to distinguish between them.
Self driving cars will be released, and fail.- self driving cars are Electric cars with a GPS downloaded into them. Some self driving cars promise entertainment, speed, accuracy and more. However, I predict that them more these early released of self driving cars are used, the more data is available for hackers to eventually access and control the car and crash it from their computer, editing the GPS or changing a piece of code or entering a virus into the car could end multiple people’s lives because of data access. Once this is revealed to a wider audience, the self driving robo- car business will either shut down or be revamped for a much later time where code encryption will be much more difficult because of the design on the recoded, redesigned cars. Maybe using password or fingerprint identification for identity revelation, however, this will happen much later than 2018.
Karl and Kavin in Year 10 Yellow
In the year upcoming years starting from 2018 manufacturing and manual labour will be taken over by robotics an example of this is currently happening in in Amazon warehouses where little robots are transporting products and relocating them in the warehouses. This may seem as a positive impact for businesses to have robots do manual labour however this will likely to increase unemployment because humans will not be needed as much.
Door dashes delivery robots- Doordash food delivery company is experimenting with robotics deliveries in Northern california. They are trying to have a system where food is delivered through a delivery robot. This is make food shopping much easier for us as food comes to you instead however this creates lack of effort in our daily lives to do simple tasks and if this delivery robot were to deliver other things it could create an boxed in society where people don’t have to leave their homes for resources.
I’m sure you will agree, we have some very insightful young minds in front of us. I would like to wish all of our students and their families a very restful festive season.
Merry Christmas!
Mr Peter Mason
Head of Business, Computing & Technology Faculty
