Weekly Update #28, 27 May 2022

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]

All free ASPs are finishing on Thursday the 2nd of June which, unfortunately, does increase the amount of traffic in the car park and surrounding roads. In order to keep things flowing, as of Monday, the 6th of June, the turnstiles will be opened so that everyone can exit the building quicker. Members of management will monitor students leaving school to ensure that no Foundation and Primary students go past the turnstiles without a parent or guardian accompanying them.

Some good news is that we are looking to improve and increase the amount of car parking spaces for the upcoming academic year and the plans for this improvement are already underway. More news to come!

HeadStart’s Creative and & Performing Arts Academy presents Aida. Winner of four Tony Awards in the year 2000, Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida is an epic tale of love, loyalty and betrayal, chronicling the love triangle between Aida (Alicia Martin), a Nubian princess stolen from her country, Amneris (Stella Thipsak), an Egyptian princess and Radames (Nick Gold), the soldier they both love. An enslaved Nubian princess, Aida, finds her heart entangled with Radames, an Egyptian soldier who is betrothed to the Pharaoh’s daughter, Amneris. As their forbidden love blossoms, Aida is forced to weigh her heart against the responsibility that she faces as the leader of her people. Aida and Radames’ love for one another becomes a shining example of true devotion that ultimately transcends the vast cultural differences between their warring nations, heralding a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

• Producer: Ms Erika Cramp, Director of Creative and Performing Arts
• Leading roles: Aida, Alicia Martin. Amneris, Stella Thipsak. Radames, Nicholas Gold.
• Cast: 60+ Year 5 to Year 13 students

We are excited to announce that tickets go on sale at 250 Baht for the middle section of the auditorium and 200 Baht for the side sections of the auditorium. The link for purchasing your tickets will be released on the 6th of June at 12.00 pm HERE!. Stay tuned for further promotions, announcements and show information.

Last UPrep Talk of the Year

Last Thursday concluded this year’s UPrep talks with a presentation titled ‘Show me the Money.’ If you weren’t able to make it to the presentation, you can refer to the download provided below. As always, if you require further information or would like to speak to our Uni Prep officer, contact Ms Bedi by writing to [email protected]

The HeadStart Curriculum, which is a modified version of the English National Curriculum, has clear objectives for every subject and year group. These learning objectives tell teachers what our pupils should be learning and inform our lesson planning. By the end of a school year, it is our expectation that children will have met the learning objectives for that year. We refer to this as ‘Age Related Expectations’ (ARE) and continuously assess our pupils to ensure that they are achieving the objectives; supporting and extending them as necessary. This on-going teacher assessment is our most important source of information as to how well your child is doing at school. This data appears on the end of term reports as the Progression Marker; we refer to this data in terms of a child being: Below ARE; Working Towards ARE; Meeting ARE; or, Exceeding ARE.

Twice a year in Primary, once in Term 1 and again in Term 3, we conduct progress tests during our assessment weeks. All Primary children take assessments in reading, writing and maths with our Key Stage 2 children also taking assessments in science. The children and teachers have been working extremely hard in preparation for these assessments and the majority of children in Primary have now successfully completed their Term 3 assessments. The data generated by these progress tests is represented as a Grade (A* to E) on the end of term report and supports the information that the teachers have gathered throughout the year about the children; further allowing us to effectively track and analyse the attainment and progress of the individual child.

In Term 3, we use GL Progress Tests to assess the children in an effective and ‘smart’ way. These standardised tests are used around the world and measure how our school and children are performing in English, maths and science against the UK national average. They provide us with valuable information regarding attainment and help us to identify and target areas for development in the children’s learning.

Following these assessments and as the children complete their units of work over the coming weeks, the Primary Teachers will be writing the end of year reports which will be available to parents via the Parent Portal on Thursday 30th June 2022. There will be the opportunity to discuss the progress your child has made this year and their targets for further development at the Parent Teacher Conferences which will take place on Friday 1st July. Further details of these and how to book an appointment will be relayed by Mr Khan over the coming weeks.

This week the Humanities Faculty continued with their three-part professional development workshops based on the groundbreaking book “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning”. Drawing on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and other disciplines, the authors of this book offer concrete techniques for becoming more productive teachers and learners. Last week Mr Cramp delivered a workshop on Retrieval Practice which focuses on training our mind to recall information without any help from materials. Today, Mr Downes, Mr Kasim and Mr Pritchard delivered a fantastic workshop on how elaboration strategies in the classroom can help with finding additional layers of meaning in any given topic (pictures below). In two week’s time, Mr Benham and Miss Jones will deliver a session about a technique called “interleaving”, which means interspersing topics over time, rather than “blocking” single topics chronologically.

All of this stuff is what your teachers do to help you do the best you can and it’s part of what makes us truly enjoy our work. So remember, the next time a teacher asks you to do a task, there’s always a reason behind it. Here’s to learning. -The HeadStart Humanities Faculty

Football

Another week of entertaining football here at HeadStart as both the U13 and U15 boys and girls had matches.

The U13 played some great football to overcome a competitive Republic side, whilst the U15s battled and worked extremely hard against Shino Academy. We were very impressed by the work rate of the players which resulted in them playing some fantastic high intensity football. Next up the girl’s teams travelled to KIS in their first matchup against each other for some time and it turned out to be such a fun and positive experience for all of them. Both of our teams showed great ability to play good football and work rate in very hot conditions. -Coach Frost

Did you know…Research says it takes only 1/24th of a second to correctly interpret facial expressions. Research also shows that increasing the ability to read non verbal messages correlates directly with higher popularity, grades, and even a better love life! Over the last few weeks we have been exploring empathy. We have discussed how we can read emotions in faces and in body language. Also, that emotions are contagious (this is a scientific fact, look up mirror neurons) so how we are feeling affects others. As part of our exploration of empathy, we also took part in role-plays and experienced how it feels when we show and are shown empathy and vice versa. We ended our empathy sessions with identifying what empathy looks, feels and sounds like. -Ms Indu Bedi, Deputy Head Secondary

This week, these fantastic children received the award of Primary Student of the Month in Computing. This honourable achievement recognises the effort and enthusiasm these pupils have shown in computing lessons throughout this academic year. Through computing lessons, pupils gain greater independence in working with computer systems, and also develop skills in problem solving and resilience. These pupils have consistently demonstrated a commitment to improving these skills and have clearly impressed their teachers during their computing lessons this year. This is a great achievement and they should all be extremely proud of themselves. Well done! -Ms Kirsty Hark

An outstanding performance by our Tiny Tots, Baby Jazz & Hip Hop, White Ballet, Pink Ballet and special appearance of Black Ballet on Friday 13 and 20 May at the foundation assembly. I would like to thank all the parents and students for their support of the Dance Academy. I hope that you all have enjoyed watching and performing the show. Most importantly, thank you to our amazing teachers, Miss Ann and Miss Anna for choreographing and taking care of the students. -Coach Mina

Last week we were pleased to welcome back children’s author Gail Clarke. Her animal adventure stories are based on themes such as migration, animal behavior, and looking after our planet. The children were captivated by her stories and she really brought them to life with the help of Patrick the Parrot and his Grandfather Gilbert. -Ms Donna Wintersgill

On Friday, Year 1 invited their families into school for a stay and read session. The children were so excited to share their writing with their families. They had worked really hard on writing their own adventure story and then created their own book. -Ms Megan Meck

Our BTEC Performing Arts students and some cast members for our upcoming production of Aida had the privilege to do a workshop with Samara Clarke today. Samara is a West End musical theatre actress. She shared her experience and wisdom with our cast while we get ready for opening night on the 15th of June. –Ms Erika Cramp

The Year 9 students have been busy making wooden pencil boxes on the Laser Cutter in Design and Technology this term. They then created designs for their boxes using CAD software. The designs were then printed onto the sides of their boxes using the sublimation printing process and the best ones were also printed onto tee-shirts. Well done to Berta, Mali and Allen for doing some of the best work this term. -Mr Dean Wells

Year 9 Gogol have been getting inside the heads of characters from William Golding’s infamous novel ‘Lord of the Flies’. They presented their work in an eye-catching and original way, including quotations from the text and adjectives to describe the characters. -Ms Tuppen

On Friday, the Secondary students witnessed a highly organised and engaging assembly by the English and Maths Faculties. In the Countdown quiz show formula (itself taken from the French Des Chiffres et Des Lettres), student pairs in their Houses had to grapple with letters and numbers to manipulate them to their wills. Congratulations to Theo and Lena in Green House on their superb victory! -Mr Pollicutt and Dr Portelli

Rarely have I had the pleasure of teaching a harder working Year 13 class than 2022’s iteration at HeadStart. Voguish terms like ‘growth mindset’ often pepper the discourse of educators (or ‘teachers’ as we used to be known) but this term really is the mot juste in this situation. It has been wonderful to see the group grow from apathy to engagement; uncertainty to confidence and, ultimately, into sensitive and articulate students of literature ready to do well in their examinations this week. On Friday and Sunday, these impressive critical thinkers attended revision sessions with Ms Tuppen and me to put the final touches on their study of Parts 3 and 4 of the A Level course. -Mr. Pollicutt, Head of English

Writing in an assumed role is an important skill at IGCSE. Robert Frost wrote that ‘Good fences make good neighbours’, but it is also received wisdom that good talking leads to good writing. Thus, I was particularly cheered to see these exceptionally high quality videos made by Year 7 Gogol, as they assumed the voice -and in some cases appearance (!)- of the unlikely murderess Mary Maloney from Roald Dahl’s dark short story Lamb to the Slaughter. Their development of character; the techniques they employed to express themselves and their voices, gestures and general performances were of an outstanding level. -Mr Pollicutt, Head of English