Weekly Update 33

HeadStart is Awarded ‘Silver’ Accreditation Status by Educational Development Trust

By Mr Adam Drew, Director of Studies

At the start of this week, a team of three senior and experienced school inspectors from the UK visited HeadStart for three days of our school ‘accreditation’ visit. Those of you that have been with us for a long time will remember three years ago when we were first visited by CfBT and awarded the ‘Bronze’ accreditation standard. This was a major milestone in the HeadStart journey and at the time the focus was on gaining the recognition that the accreditation would bring. Three years on, CfBT have now become ‘The Education Development Trust’ https://www.educationdevelopmenttrust.com/en-GB and the standard of our school, our teaching and educational offerings has risen dramatically, to a point now where we felt the school was easily able surpass the accreditation findings from three years ago.

During the visit, the team of inspectors visited 44 lessons, held 19 meetings and spoke to 18 students formally, as well as countless others informally as they observed lessons and traveled around the school. They also held key meetings with parent representatives, the school board and members of the school management team. On Wednesday they presented the school their findings.

I am pleased to report that the school has been awarded the Silver rating and in all of the 8 accreditation standards the school was rated as either good or outstanding. Therefore, we can now confidently declare that HeadStart International school is a ‘Good school, with Outstanding features’.

It has been a pleasure to be part of the journey in raising the attainment of the school and accreditation from Bronze to Silver over the last 3 years, and I look forward to being part of the team that will lead our school over the next three years in solidifying those aspects of the school that are Outstanding and raising the bar yet further in those areas that are already Good. We aim to ensure that all areas become Outstanding, and the school reaches the Gold standard that it is aiming for.

None of this would be possible without the hard work, passion and dedication of the teaching and support staff at HeadStart, the hard work and commitment of our students, and the wonderful supportive and productive relationships that we have with our parents. This success belongs to all members of the HeadStart community. Well done on everything achieved so far, I look forward to sharing the next phase of this journey with you in the coming years.

Announcements

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.

End of Year Awards Ceremony and Year 13 Graduation

HeadStart’s end of year Awards Ceremony for Years 3-13 will take place on 23 June, 2017, between 1:00-3:00 pm. Around 80 awards will be given to the students who have worked hardest to earn them. The ceremony will also include a graduation segment for the Year 13 students who will be leaving HeadStart and continuing their educational journey in various parts of the world.

It is with great pleasure that we announce a guest singer will be coming to entertain our students but specifically to wish our Year 13 students a fond farewell. Christy Gibson (คริสตี้ กิ๊บสัน) is a professional Anglo Dutch singer and performer of Mor Lam and Luk Thung, which are traditional styles of music in Thailand. She will be performing a mix of Thai and western music alongside our very gifted dancers and singers.

All parents of students who will be receiving awards will be sent a personal invite to the event by Wednesday next week. Parents should RSVP with Mr Adam Drew, Director of Studies, by writing to [email protected]. A limited amount of seats will be on offer for other parents who would like to attend the event. Bookings must be made through the front office.

World Scholars Success

On May 13th, HeadStart hosted the very first Phuket round for the prestigious World Scholar’s Cup. HeadStart entered one team who competed against local schools in the competition in debating, writing and team challenges. Our team was highly successful and came out on top placing first overall in competition. This outstanding achievement will see our new scholars: Anastasia Buneeva, Reece Jaden Edouard, Alexandra Syrkina, follow in the footsteps of the other scholar’s who competed in Bangkok earlier in the year and now all HeadStart teams will be heading to the global round in Hanoi, Vietnam later this month.

Some of the highlights of the Phuket round were:

1st Place in the Team Scholar’s Bowl

1st Place in Team Debating - Anastasia Buneeva, Reece Jaden Edouard, Alexandra Syrkina

1st Place in Individual Debating - Alexandra Syrkina

2nd Place in Individual Debating - Reece Jaden Edouard

3rd Place in Team Writing - Anastasia Buneeva, Reece Jaden Edouard, Alexandra Syrkina

Champion Scholar - Alexandra Syrkina

A huge congratulations to all our new scholars on their outstanding effort. We wish them and our other WSC team members well as they prepare for their global competition in Hanoi.

Project School Radio!

By Joel Adams

We’ve just started work on a new VAP (Very Able Pupils). Project School Radio! Interested and talented students in the fields of presentation and/or technical skills from KS 3 and Year 9 have been chosen to create their own radio show. We are learning the skills with the help of Bryon Jones from Phuket Island FM Radio as well as recording the daily quotes for the radio. We’re laying the foundation to launch the show in a big way next school year. Here are some photos of students learning from Mr. Jones, recording quotes, working on research and finally the whole group having fun!

Sports Department News

Primary Swim Gala at KIS

Last Wednesday, 53 Primary students went to KIS for the PISAC Primary Swim Gala. There were many first time competitors and a lot of impressive swims! Anna Prokhorova (Year 1 Blue) really stepped by swimming against Year 2 girls! She did an incredible job for our team. Another noteworthy swimmer was Kwan Lynch (Year 5 Blue) who swam both in her age group and against Year 6! It isn’t easy swimming against people older than you, but both Anna and Kwan tried their hardest and scored points for the team! We had an amazing showing, especially since we had many first time swimmers. Great job to everyone who competed on Wednesday!

Next Tuesday, we take our Year 7-10 swimmers to BIS for the senior PISAC swim gala. The final point standing was:

BIS-375

UWC- 268

KIS- 253

HSIS- 251

Foundation Department News

By Ms Fiona Scott, Deputy Head of Foundation

A warm welcome back to the final half term of the academic year. It has been a super week in Foundation and I have really enjoyed some of the indoor play this week. Due to the on and off rain this week, we brought the outside learning, inside! The Preschoolers looked to be having great fun learning about Pirates and buried treasure while Early Years and Reception enjoyed some super space activities and games throughout the corridor in Foundation. It was very pleasing to see all the children playing so nicely together, taking turns, sharing the toys and being kind and respectful to each other.

This week our Reception children took their first steps into Year 1 as part of the HeadStart transition process. It is hard to believe that they will soon be flying out of the Foundation nest and landing safely in the Year 1 homerooms. The transition process allows the children to get a taster of what’s to come in Year 1. Over the next few weeks they will learn where all the different classrooms are on the Primary corridor, where they will have their Thai, language and Computing lessons. They will also be joining in with the Primary assemblies and eating lunch in the big canteen. A big well done for all our Reception children for taking such a big step during their first week of transition.

Finally a big well done for all of our hard working teachers, deputies, nannies and students for helping to achieve the Silver award this week. It has been a fantastic achievement and I am very proud to be working with such a dedicated team of professionals. Wishing you all a very relaxing weekend.

The Preschoolers had lots of fun walking the plank as pirates. They then painted their own treasure chest and will take turns taking a piece of treasure out of the box.

A happy Early Years swimming class who are working on technique and jumping confidently into deep water with Ms Whittaker.

Reception Swimmers

With lots of practice, all Reception children are now more confident and capable at swimming across the width of the deep pool. The focus of the lessons, is to develop an effective leg kick and to swim with the face in the water but importantly another aim is for the children to enjoy the lesson - Learning is Fun. Ms Fiona Whittaker

Primary Department News

By Mr Andrew Whittaker, Head of Foundation and Primary

This week has been another very busy one: with the very successful accreditation visit on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then 54 swimmers from Primary attended the PISAC swim meet held at KIS, Phuket; for many this was their first ever competition and they all enjoyed representing HeadStart, so well done to them all and a big thank you to the P.E. staff for arranging it all and to our Primary parents for supporting our swimmers.

An email will be going out to all Primary parents regarding our healthy snack policy, which is outlined in the Parent Handbook, reminding everybody to not bring in any unhealthy snacks as these will be confiscated by the teachers.

I wish you all a very enjoyable weekend with your families.

Year 2 Students have learnt how to name rooms in the house in Thai. They practiced to name the rooms and even made their owns houses with Kru Karn.

Year 4 students are learning about viscosity and properties of liquids with Ms Dixie.

Year 4 students are learning to tell the time in their Thai classes. We used the football pitch as a clock. The boys were the minute hand and the girls were the hour hand.

Secondary Department News

World Scholars Additional Study Sessions

With the global round of the World Scholar’s Cup being at the end of this month, we are holding some weekend study sessions for our scholars. This is not compulsory but provided as optional for scholars. However, we will be using these sessions to prepare with games, debating, essay writing and activities for the students. This should ease some of the stress of studying for some students and give them the opportunity to work in their teams and have fun which is one of our main goals in extending and stretching these very able students.

The first study session planned is this Sunday 4th June at HeadStart from 10.30am until 2.35pm. The session will take place in English 2: Miss Milner’s classroom. Students can bring a water bottle and snacks, while Mr Mason and Ms Milner will provide a pizza lunch for the students.

Thank you for your support with your child’s journey with the World Scholar’s Cup. We hope they can make the preparation session this Sunday.

Year 11 Transitioning to Year 12 Meeting Recap

A big thank you to all of the Year 11 parents who joined our transition meeting. Below is a download of all the information for those who were unable to attend the meeting. If any of you have questions, please contact our head of sixth form, Ms.Heather Lucass at [email protected]

In Thai class, Kru Sue invited Nurse Kaew to take part in Year 9 role play on the topic of ‘Going to see a doctor’. We had lots of fun and laughed a lot.

House News

By Nick Carter, House Coordinator

Please congratulate the new House Captains, for next academic year, who were announced during Friday’s flag raising ceremony. They are:

I want to confirm that since we have moved from the metal trays to the white plastic plates in the lunch hall, the students have wasted much less food. In fact, the entire school only wasted 10.6kg! This is a huge improvement, as Weigh Your Waste results usually fluctuate between 20-22kg of waste. So, well done, everyone!

In other, sporting news, the Yellow Cheetahs were the Year 9 ‘Capture The Flag’ winners, solidifying their position at the top. The Blue Tigers came second in the capture the flag and also won the House Quiz which means they have now overtaken the Green Dragons who slip into third place. But, we should never underestimate the Red Phoenixes, who snatched victory from the Cheetahs at the very end of last academic year. So, don’t count them out!

Be aware that the House competition is still up for grabs by any of the four Houses, so keep working hard everyone!