Primary School students at St Andrews International School Bangkok had the opportunity to meet staff from WWF and learn about the plight of tigers in the world...Our ECO BEASTs and Sustainability Market helped children think about how we can live in a more sustainable way and kicked off Sustainability Week which is taking place all this week.
Last week was very exciting as Primary School launched their new topics, we hosted our first ECO-Beasts day, welcomed WWF Thailand and held Mindful Self-Compassion workshop for parents.
The children were obviously excited to be back with their friends on Monday morning and you could feel the buzz as they arrived in school and caught up with each other’s news. They quickly settled into classes and met a few new friends.
Anyone visiting school on Friday would have been surprised by the sight of hundreds of tigers joined by rangers from WWF Thailand, all gathering together to find out more about the plight of tigers in Thailand and what we can do to raise awareness and help support efforts to protect them. The children had the opportunity to work with the rangers and look at an exhibition in the small music quad.
This was an exciting launch to Sustainability Week which begins today.
Thank you to everyone who sent in a donation to this worthy cause.
Many of you visited last Thursday’s Eco-BEASTs Well-being Market that followed the Eco-Beast’s conference.
Sixteen schools, including ourselves, were represented by teams of student delegates at this inaugural conference. Throughout the day, the students were able to take part in a range of workshops which either gave them information about the problems of pollution and non-sustainable living, or showed them some solutions to living a more sustainable life. The day was rounded off with the children having the chance to create an action plan for their school to either begin or continue their journey to becoming more sustainable and doing their bit for the future of our planet.
Though mainly aimed at KS2 students, many of the ideas presented at the conference will be shared in class by KS1 teachers during Sustainability Week.
This event grew into something much bigger than was originally intended due to the overwhelming interest of schools and organizations interested in taking part. Well done to Ms Helen who helped organise this event. Also, well done to the students who took on leadership roles and helped make the day so successful. A big thank you to our Estates Department too who worked so hard behind the scenes to make this event such a success. Photographs of the event can be found in the KS2 section of the newsletter.
You can click on the links below to find out more about each of the workshop providers that came along on the day.
Courageous Kitchen - Good food education
Permaculture Thailand - Organic farming
Precious Plastic - Upcycling plastic into useful household items
Soap Opera - Making your own soap
Scholars of Sustenance - food waste
Style seal - Air pollution. Will be selling high quality masks
Super Bee Me - A replacement for plastic wrappers made out of beeswax
Plastic Free NIST - Selling bamboo straws
Bambew - Selling sustainable straws
Eco bricks Thailand - Waste management and upcycling
Trash Hero - a Community action project
Refill Station - How to shop smart
Kayaking for Chao Phraya - Cleaning up the waterways in Thailand
Closely related to this topic is the current crisis of poor air quality that Bangkok is facing.
We currently have six air quality monitors around the Primary School that provide us with ‘live’ data and give us a picture of air quality in the different areas of campus and also inside the buildings. We also have filters fitted to each aircon unit in school.
During this period of poor air quality we will restrict outdoor free flow play for EYFS students, reduce or cancel breaks for KS1 and KS2 students and do less intense activities in PE and ECAs. (We do not cancel sports ECAs unless readings are over 200, but it is of course the choice of families to withdraw the children until the conditions improve.)
We keep an especially close eye on younger students and those students with asthma, or other medical conditions, and who are more sensitive to air pollution.
If in doubt we keep children inside and take the opportunity to run around later in the day if conditions improve.
To support new families especially, Mr Keith, our Director of Learning Technologies, will be running a workshop for parents to explain Moodle, our online learning platform. This meeting will be held on Thursday 17 January at 7.45 a.m. in the Library Classroom. It will last around 30 minutes and will explain how to navigate around the system. There will also be members of the senior team at the meeting to answer any general questions.
The meeting is of course open to anyone who would like to find out more about using Moodle.
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Tuesday 15 and 22 January |
KS1 and KS2 Parent Consultation Afternoons |
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Thursday 17 January 8.30 - 9.00 a.m. Library Classroom |
Moodle Workshop for New Parents |
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.
