Weekly Update 12, 17 Nov. 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.

Christmas Market 2017: Traditional Moments

This will be our second year running the Christmas Market at HeadStart. We are looking for UNIQUE flavours, tastes and items that may be hard to find in other places that can be offered to the HeadStart community on 15 December between 2:30-5:30 pm.

Book your table with our front office admin team. 300 Baht per table will be charged as a contribution to the decorations for the event.

The Creative Arts Department are preparing beautiful songs and performances and there will be perfect opportunities to take photos with the many traditional Christmas characters that will be visiting HeadStart on that day.

We encourage everyone to dress in festive Christmas colours (red, white & green) on this special day.

For online information write to [email protected]

THANK YOU!

A special THANK YOU to Ms Joanna, mother of Rosie in Y3 and Emily in Reception, for the House themed table cloths for the Christmas shoebox appeal!

Parent Committee Meetings Notes

On the 2 November the newly formed Parent Committee met to discuss points brought up by parents in the committee as well by other parents who had sent in points prior to the meeting. In the document below are the points brought up as well as the answers from the management team on how we plan to take action.

For a full description of the roles and responsibilities of the Parent Committee and how you can get involved or send points for discussion, check our website Parent Committee

HeadStart Radio Club

The HeadStart radio club went on air on 91.5 FM Saturday morning. Did you manage to catch them live?

Cheerleading Competition 2017

By Ms Fabienne Mester, Dance School Manager

This year the dance academy has 45 cheerleaders from 5 to 13 years old. 12 of them have been selected to be part of the competition team. They had training for 4 to 5 hours per week. Last weekend was their first competition in Bangkok which was a prestigious event. It was the ‘22nd Cheerleading Thailand National Championship’ with teams from all over Thailand competing.

I am proud to announce that the HeadStart cheerleaders came 2nd place in their age group winning the SILVER! Congratulations to Masha Zavalnya, Kira Kavatzarade, Susanna Lee, Yuna Cho, Sofia Fisher, Isabelle Westlie, Fleur Masson-Sauter, Elena Zaniboni, Juliette Guillerey, Anastasia Legrand, Mika Caspi.

Congratulations to Sofia Fisher and Isabelle Westlie who won the Bronze level for ‘Double Freestyle Pom’ category.
We also want to appreciate Fleur Masson-Sauter, Elena Zaniboni, Juliette Guillerey, Anastasia Legrand, Mika Caspi, who won the all girl ‘Cheer Division Group’ Bronze level.

It was an amazing moment for these girls. They trained so hard the last few months. But this is not only about winning medals, it’s also a big lesson for life. To reach a goal you work hard: you cry, you laugh, you argue, you share, you love and most important you are so proud of yourself. I am very proud of these girls. Watching them walking in their uniform with the other teams for the Opening ceremony of the competition, I realized that they reached their goal. They look beautiful and full of pride.

Science Faculty Week

By Mr David Cook, Head of Science Faculty

Last week was science week; it went with a Bang, several in fact. The focus this year was change.

The bangs you all heard were in fact the science department actually making the simple molecule H2O or water. Hydrogen and Oxygen were mixed in perfect stoichiometric ratios by eye, no mean feat, as such the bangs got bigger and better as the science staff got more skilled and braver.

We also were representing physical changes and surprisingly enough discovered we could make quite pleasing bangs doing this too!! Solid Carbon dioxide was added to plastic bottles and as the solid heated up it sublimated into its gas phase massively increasing the volume of gas inside the bottle and satisfactorily exploding.

Chemical changes were also studied in much more detail with Mr Brown’s year 10 and 11 classes Nitrogen Triiodide or exploding paste providing many more explosive bangs.

Finally on Friday much fun was had by all as the school descended into a high level, messy yet educational science quiz written by Miss Leamon; with a particular focus on non-Newtonian solids, or GUNGE!!! All in all science week was a great success!

Year 6 spent some time in the secondary labs this week investigating how to make an egg float. They made the water very salty which, in turn, increased its density and made their eggs float. We also investigated floating fresh water on top of salt water. By Ms Webb

Year 6 Blue used the Science labs in order to investigate water density. By Mr Tim Eke

Sports Department News

Swimming News

By Coach Zak Brown

We had another successful meet! We had 65 amazing swimmers turn up and make some great progress. It was great seeing the everyone try their hardest and score us some big points!

Huge shout out to those who swam the 200 Butterfly this meet. These 13 swimmers stepped out of their comfort zone and finished a very difficult race: Cameron, Dima, Matvey, Michael, Juno, Innes, Armin, Shane, Peter, Nazar, Sasha, Jiraya, Natasha

On top of the amazing swims, we had several top point scorers:

Juno-74 / Peter-67 / Michael-65 / Jiraya-60 / Innes-58 / Dima-55 / Matvey-52 / Kwan-52 / Cameron-51 / Shane-51 /

Results for session 2:

HeadStart-2,496

Thanyapura-1,606

BIS-1,459

ISS- 1,084

KIS-637

Total point standings:

HeadStart-4,469

Thanyapura-3,287

BIS-2,653

ISS-1,874

KIS-1,214

PISAC U15 and U13 Girls Football Tournament

Friday the 10th November saw HeadStart hosting the Phuket International Schools (PISAC) U15 and U13 Girls Football Tournaments. It was a great competition with teams from KIS, BIS and HeadStart battling each others for the honors. BIS won the U13 Competition and KIS won the U15 Competition with our wonderful HeadStart U15 Girls as runners up. By Mr Richard Lukats

Youth Development League News

After each game, coaches vote on a ‘Man/Woman of the Match’. This weeks recipients stood out due to their impressive defensive efforts, as well as some big goal scorers. One players even scored a hat trick!

Results:

U7–Chelsea 7–9 Bang Jo

U9–Liverpool 3–5 Arsenal / Man U 3–7 Chelsea

U11–Liverpool 8–6 Arsenal / Man U 4–5 Chelsea

U13 to 16–Man U 1–3 Arsenal / Liverpool 5–4 Chelsea

House News

Last weeks House Quiz winners were the Green Dragons. The winners of the Primary lunchtime event (Ten-Pin Bowling) were the Blue Tigers. Our weigh your waste winners, wasting only 2.1kg of food, were the Yellow Cheetahs. This result equals the school record, which means the Cheetahs get double points this week! Well done, everyone! By Mr Nick Carter

Foundation News

By Ms Fiona Scott, Deputy Head of Foundation

Reading The Key to Success

This week some of our Reception parents joined us for a meeting to find out about reading in Reception, how we teach phonics and what can be done to support the teaching and learning at home.

Very often in Foundation, a child can listen to story over and over again. They can escape into a world of fantasy which ignites their imagination. Stories can be reenacted where princesses, monsters, space aliens, witches and wizards can all come to life and take part in a child’s game during daily play.

Reading stories with children helps with their language development, encourages them to focus and listen and promotes them to become good readers. Reading is linked to positive learning skills and success in school.

Parents can help at home, by setting aside some quiet time each day for reading stories and sharing books. Getting comfortable and settling down for a bedtime story is a great opportunity for this interaction. Children love bedtime stories. It helps to prepare them for a good night’s sleep, can help to reduce a stressful bedtime routine and will help to build up a strong and secure bond that your child will cherish forever.

Reception showering after swimming

We shower for several reasons after swimming: it cleans off chlorine, is fun and most importantly gets young children used to the feel of water on their face and in their eyes. This is an easy activity that parents can do at home to help develop water confidence. By Ms Fiona Whittaker

Preschool children learning how to balance their bodies and kick at ball which is not easy at this young age…….. these could be the budding footballers of the future! By Ms Fiona Whittaker

Early Years Learning to count from 1-10 in Thai Class! By Kru Dia

Preschool have had lots of fun in swimming class this week and their confidence is developing each week. The children were very brave and even had a go at swimming in the big pool! Well done Pre-School! By Ms Danielle Jones

Stars of the Week

These children performed really well in their phonics this week and reached their personal targets. We are really proud of the great work they produced this week. Ms Candice and Ms Hannah

Primary Department News

Year 3 students have learned and reviewed Thai words with ‘Sara ua’ and ‘o’ to prepare for the end of term 1 exam.

Learning the Thai vowels in Thai class.

This week year 6 have been on a beach clean to Nai Harn. They worked really hard to get rid of rubbish that littered the beach and the surrounding areas. Well done Team 6! By Mr Tim Eke

Around the Island

Maxim Rubtsov, holder of title “Golden Flute”, soloist of the famous Russian National Orchestra will perform at a concert at the Royal Phuket Marina on November 18, 2017. Jasmine from Year 8 will appear on stage with Mr. Rubstov as an accompaniment pianist. You will hear beautiful examples of classical music from different eras, works of modern times, compositions of blues and jazz.

This will be a masterful performance of musicians who have already received recognition in the world music community. For more information about the concert and to buy tickets, please call +66819792082.

Foremost Ironkids from Thanyapura

Thanyapura Health and Sports Resort would like to send an invitation to HeadStart International School, Phuket to be a part of the upcoming event this 25th Nov 2017: Foremost Ironkids at Thanyapura. We would like to publicize local school in Phuket and invite student of each school to be our participants. This is the benefits for students who is interested and talented in triathlon (swimming, cycling, and running) as another event to practice and improve their health and sports skill.

The conditions are as follows: the student can choose one option:

1. Individual competition: For 2 students which is one male and one female

2. Team competition: Including 2-3 students (male, female, or mixed)