outdoor Education CPL

Lastweek Paul Hurrell, an expert in adventurous activities in the UK, came to Bangkok Patana school to offer training in kayaking and rock climbing for our Secondary PE team. Paul was thoroughly impressed by the school’s facilities and the dedication of our brilliant PE team to drive outdoor adventurous activities (OAA) such as kayaking, mountain biking and rock climbing to name but a few to compliment our already incredible ‘traditional’ PE sports curriculum.

Paul is also experienced in risk management in adventurous settings and was able to provide some expert guidance and feedback on our Trips and Excursions programme, which will serve to further strengthen our commitment to health and safety.

Incelebration of the Lunar New Year, the Modern Foreign Language (MFL) classes in Year 7 had opportunities to learn about this event in their respective languages. It was really fun and interesting to go around and interview students on their opinions of what they were doing.

In German MFL 1, students were exploring Chinese Zodiac signs in German. They were also looking at characteristics according to their Zodiac signs in German. Finally, students made cards with German text to celebrate Lunar New Year. In the Spanish classes, they were colouring dragon cutouts and thinking about what dragons symbolise in the Lunar New Year celebration. Some classes were doing fun quizzes to help them test how much they remembered.

In French MFL 1, multiple classes made red envelopes (hóng bāo) with money inside them for the main activity. They also watched videos such as a Chinese New Year parade in Paris in 2019. For educational purposes, most students participated in a live Quizlet relating to Lunar New Year. In the Chinese class, the main task was to make a Chinese New Year card and they learned the story of the Jade Emperor’s race (this decided the order of the zodiac animals). They also made cut-out paper rabbits in honour of this year’s zodiac animal, the rabbit,

Overall, the majority of students interviewed seemed happy with their tasks and enjoyed their lesson. Lots of students didn’t find it difficult to learn about another country’s celebration within another language.