Weekly Update 7, 6 October 2017

Dates for Your Diary

Upcoming events can be found on the HeadStart calendar on the website School Life → Calendar but we have outlined upcoming events here for easy reference.

Mid-term Break and Calendar

Just a reminder that this coming Friday, 13 October, the school is closed as the teachers are scheduled for INSET (In-Service Education and Training). The school will be closed for mid term break between 14-22 of October. For a full calendar of the year please see below.

Addams Family

The Addams Family is a power packed performance of singing and dancing along with the mysterious characters that are now so well known to us all. There are two scheduled showings for the 3rd and 4th of November. The doors open at 6:15 pm and the show starts promptly at 6:30 pm. Book your tickets in the front office starting this Thursday, 12 October, in the front office. HeadStart families get free tickets (included in school fees) while members of the public pay 200 Baht per person.

Take a Look into the frightful world of the Addams family…

In the kooky, upside-down world of the Addams Family, to be sad is to be happy, to feel pain is to feel joy, and death and suffering are the stuff of their dreams. Nonetheless, this quirky family still has to deal with many of the same challenges faced by any other family, and the spookiest nightmare faced by every family creates the focus Lippa, Brickman, and Elice’s musical: the Addams kids are growing up.

The Addamses have lived by their unique values for hundreds of years and Gomez and Morticia, the patriarch and matriarch of the clan, would be only too happy to continue living that way. Their dark, macabre, beloved daughter Wednesday, however, is now an eighteen year-old young woman who is ready for a life of her own. She has fallen in love with Lucas Beineke, a sweet, smart boy from a normal, respectable Ohio family — the most un-Addams sounding person one could be! And to make matters worse, she has invited the Beinekes to their home for dinner. In one fateful, hilarious night, secrets are disclosed, relationships are tested, and the Addams family must face up to the one horrible thing they’ve managed to avoid for generations: change.

Dr Parimon Receives ‘Best Practice Award 2017’

Congratulations to Dr Parimon Phaisamran, HeadStart Licensee, for having been selected by the Thai Social Foundation of Thailand for the ‘Best Practice Award 2017’ (รางวัลความดีตอบแทนคุณแผ่นดิน), awarded by General Surayud Chulanont, a former Prime Minister of Thailand. This award is given to the person who has dedicated themselves to educational development as well as for outstanding community service.

HeadStart would like to thank Dr Parimon for her tireless efforts in support of the HeadStart community as well as for the dedication she has shown to the school over the years.

P.E. Department News

On Thursday the 5th October 2017, we took a team of 79 Students to The British International School to take part in this years Phuket International Schools Cross Country Competition. The team left school at 2.20pm, on Thursday, in high spirits and arrived at BIS around 3.00pm. Once we got there we walked the course, warmed up and talked through the race plans. All of the students who took part did exceptionally well, especially as this was the first competition for many of them. It was good to see that all the HeadStart students used what they have been learning in PE to good use and paced themselves to complete the distance. The whole Team did really well and we came second overall behind BIS, the Under 11 Boys Team won their competition as did the Under 13 Girls.

There were also some awesome individual performance, with Natnicha Unsaen Year 8 Yellow coming third in the U13 Girls category, Chayapol Ngernanek (Mac Mac) Year 6 Blue coming third in the U11 Boys category. We also had our first, HeadStart, PISAC Champion with Megan Fenech Year 4 Blue winning the U9 Girls category in impressive style.

Well done to all those who took part.

Sports Faculty Week

Friday the 6th October 2017, saw the launch of this years Sport Week, “Have Fun & Be Active”, with numerous activities taking place during the day. The whole of the Secondary School were involved in Beat the Teacher competitions in the afternoon, Primary and Secondary Students started their House Competitions in lesson time (Bench Ball/Netball/Hoop Ball and Fun Swimming Activities). The activities continue all the way through to Thursday 12th October. Please look out for the Cheerleading Teams demonstrations every morning at 7.45am in the Atrium, when you drop your child off at school. Also students across all years will be having lunchtime activities to get involved with everyday, there is also a small Gym Challenge that all members of the HeadStart Community can take part in (you must be 14+ years old), if you are interested please make sure Coach Mai is there to verify your score. We hope everyone enjoys the weeks activities and that everyone in the School Community takes sometime over the week to just do a little bit more physical activity then normal.

Below are the Primary and Secondary timetables so that you can see what activities your child will be involved in.

House News

Weigh Your Waste winners: The Blue Tigers won for the first time this year, wasting only 3.1kg of food. Last week, as part of our Global Goals initiative at HeadStart we ran the Weigh Your Waste competitions every day. Our target for the week was to waste less than 70kg. Unfortunately, we didn’t quite make our target as we wasted 89kg by the end of the week. However, we did reduce our overall waste to less than 20kg a day.

The House Quiz winners: The Blue Tigers

Primary lunchtime activity winners (Jenga): The Green Dragons

The current House Merits were also announced during assemblies last week. The results were:

4th = Green dragons (999)

3rd = Red Phoneixes (1089)

2nd = Yellow Cheetahs (1127)

1st = Blue Tigers (1185)

Also, all students from Year 4 - 13 participated in a Cooper Run test in their PE classes. The objective was to run as many laps of the athletics track as possible in 10 minutes. Every lap the students completed they received one point for their House. The overall winners, running 473 laps were the Red Phoenixes.

Launch of the Shoebox Appeal

By Ms Fiona Scott

This week HeadStart will be launching Operation Christmas Child. Some of you may already be familiar with the Christmas Shoebox Appeal, as a number of schools in many different countries take part in the Christmas campaign to donate Christmas shoebox gifts for children in need.

Previously HeadStart wrapped and sent over 300 shoeboxes to an orphanage in the North of Thailand called The Children of the Forest. Each child between the ages of 2 – 18 years received a full shoebox package, all of which were donated from the parents, teachers and students from the HeadStart community.

Our campaign this year will remain local to charities in Phuket. We will be providing Christmas shoebox gifts to the children at The Sunshine Village, and the children in the care of Child Watch Phuket.

This year we are aiming to beat our previous target and hope to receive enough donations to make 400 shoebox gifts and make 400 children in and around Phuket very happy on Christmas morning.

If you would like to help and donate gifts for the appeal, here’s how you can help;

1.) Bring in an empty shoebox and leave in the school Atrium.

2) Purchase some items from the lists on the poster, bring into school and place them in the correct collection bucket in the school Atrium.

3) All items must be new and unopened– no second hand donations for this appeal.

4) All donation buckets and boxes will be clearly labelled.

5) Collection buckets / boxes will be placed in the school Atrium and in the Foundation Corridor. Please do not donate chocolate, liquid or toy guns

Thank you for your help and support in this worthwhile Christmas cause. Please contact me if you would like further information by writing to [email protected]

Foundation

By Ms Fiona Scott, Deputy Head of Primary

Due to the mid term break timing, the Foundation ‘Party Friday’ has been moved to this coming Thursday, 12 October. Homeroom teachers will be in direct contact with parents whose children have birthdays in October in order to get organised.

A big well done to our Reception Stars of the Week. Jiwoo and Yasya in Reception Yellow received awards this week for great behaviour, trying hard in all lessons and working hard with phonics and reading. Eva and Andy from Reception Blue also received certificates for trying their best in all lessons. Keep up the good work Reception!

Early Years students enjoying playing water play in many different ways. These kind of activities help to build up confidence in preparation for their swimming lessons. By Ms Whittaker

Reception B confidently swimming in the deep pool on their first class of the year. By Ms Whittaker

Year 1 Blue made ears for their listening walk to collect sounds for their poem. By Ms Fallows

Year 1 Blue sampling different fruits whilst thinking about the 5 senses of sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. By Ms Fallows

Students learn how to remove and to replace books on the shelves. By Ms Mai, Librarian.

In year 6 geography this week, the children have been learning about the earth’s structure and tectonic plates. Here they are trying to piece together the tectonic plates to make a map of the Earth.

Year 4 learning about human and animal teeth. By Ms Dickie

The Chinese Moon Festival occurs on the 15th day of 8th lunar month. This year it was 4 October. Students in Mandarin class learned about the story of the festival as well as tasted yummy moon cakes and make lanterns to celebrate! By Ms Wei

Secondary Department News

By Ms Elizabeth Mason, Head of Secondary

Please ensure that if you have a Year 7 child you attend the PTC on 11 October that runs between 3:35-5:30 pm. It is not necessary to make an appointment. I look forward to seeing you there.

Information brochures created by Year 8’s in ICT on the subject of Computer Crime and Cyber Security.

Duke of Edinburgh at HeadStart is all engines go!

By Mr Duncan Peake

Students in year 10 who partake in the Bronze level International Award had 2 visitors in this week; Katy and Paul from Toppersail based in Ao Yon. Katy and Paul, who are highly qualified and skilled professionals on the water, enjoyed an hour demonstrating and teaching our Group 1 students the safety aspects of the sit-in kayaks that they will be using on the Adventurous Journey section- Right here in the HeadStart pool!

The group learnt how to safely eject themselves from the kayak in the event of capsize. Notoriously, this is an uncomfortable skill, but year 10 have shown great resilience and this was recognised by the visiting staff! Next week this activity will be the same for Group 2 so please remember your swimwear!

I would also like to wish year 10 group 1 good luck in their practice weekend from all of the Duke of Edinburgh staff at HeadStart. Here they will be learning more kayaking skills as well as campcraft, teamwork and developing their independence.