Sustainability Week saw lots of interesting activities and visitors around the Primary School and our children had a thought-provoking time thinking about how we can protect our environment. Meanwhile, our teachers take part in a maths conference, ensuring that our children are getting the best possible teaching.
Last week was a challenging one, with the air-pollution levels resulting in some changes to playtime and timetabling. This coincided with Sustainability Week and provided a very graphic illustration of how important it is that we make some changes to the way we live.
With the high pollution levels last week, you will be aware that we have made some scheduling changes to PE and swimming, and also reduced playtimes on some days. The Foundation Stage children have also had a limit on the amount of time they spend outside. Primary children are not able to regulate their activity levels in the same way that older students can, so teachers have to do it for them by reducing time outside.
For more details on how we are monitoring the pollution levels each day, please read Mr Roo’s section of the newsletter.
To launch Sustainability Week we had a visit from Markus Pukonen. Markus is circumnavigating the globe without motorised transport to draw attention to the need to work together towards creating a healthy future. His talk, though entertaining with its photographs of his travels, was certainly thought-provoking, and the children really seemed to take his messages on board. You can find out more about Markus and his expedition here. It might be nice to follow up with your children at home by looking at his website together.
A few months ago when we opened the playtime junk modelling station for KS1 children, we couldn’t believe the amount of plastic - especially bottles - that came into school following our appeal for junk. We received so many of them that we couldn’t use them all for models and had to send them off to be recycled.
Last Sunday, when the last traces of Fun Day had been cleared away, we saw the arrival of Bobo the Whale to the Primary School. Bobo is part of an environmental project that helps to raise awareness about the amount of plastic that is finding its way into the environment, encourage recycling and search for solutions.
More information can be found here.
This week the children have been adding to the Bobo installation with posters and their own messages. Hopefully, they have been bringing some of these messages home with them and encouraging you to use a Bag for Life and where you can, say no to plastic
On Friday and Saturday St Andrews International School Bangkok hosted a Maths Conference for Primary Teachers, attended by around 30 teachers from around the South East Asian Region. The two days were packed with the sharing of good practice, delivered by not only our own teachers but also the visiting schools.
The networking opportunities provided by events like this ensures that teachers can work together to develop outstanding curricula. Thanks to Ms Lauren B and Ms Jo for leading the event and also to Mr Dai, and Ms Tracey for their contributions.
With the goal of providing meaningful help to the flood victims in the northern regions of Thailand, our entire community at St Andrews Bangkok came together to raise funds and donations for the affected families. In the span of a few short weeks, added to donations of food and clothing, we managed to raise an astounding total of 386,676.50 THB in donation funds. To all students, teachers, parents, and staff who participated in our efforts and contributed to this cause—thank you!
Last Friday, the STA Primary campus was transformed into a celebration of all things maths! The day was packed with engaging, hands-on activities across all year groups, making maths truly come alive for our students.
Senior student at St Andrews Bangkok, Pun (Year 13), devises an innovative solution for effective waste management. Recently, he completed an ambitious project: an AI-powered waste sorting system. After much research and testing, he got the system to work and put the model to use in one of our rooms at school!
Physics students from St Andrews Bangkok made quite an impression at the Beamline for Schools (BL4S) competition and won the Best Outreach Award for their brilliant work. BL4S is a prestigious global physics contest organised by CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland) and DESY (the German Electron Synchrotron in Hamburg, Germany), inviting High School students worldwide to propose detailed experiments to be conducted at a particle accelerator beamline. While our students did not win the main prize of conducting their experiment in Geneva, they still stood out and were recognised from an entry of over 400 teams.
