St Andrews Dusit Newsletter October Issue

Message from the Head of School

Dear Dusit Community,

What a busy month it has been! We have had coffee mornings, parent and teacher consultations and celebrations for Wai Kru, Global Be Well Day and International Week!

Walking around our campus this week, it has been lovely to see the students (and parents!) immersing themselves in lessons focused on different countries from around the world. Dance, song, stories, maths and English lessons were all geared towards learning more about each country with the intention of providing students with a broader understanding of what it means to be a global citizen.

If the lessons throughout the week weren’t exciting enough, the International Parade and assemblies from Early Years and Primary students certainly made the day one to remember. From French folk dances, learning Japanese, walking through the jungle on safari and even an Indonesian chili challenge for teachers, the morning assemblies really showed how confident and versatile our students are.

The celebrations continued with an around the world food tour. Parent from across the school came together to set up food stalls decorated to represent their class country with an abundance of delicious food choices for our community to enjoy. The International Week celebrations were the perfect way to jump into the half term break; a HUGE thank you to our wonderful parents and staff for creating such a wonderful experience for our whole school community to enjoy!

Have a restful half term break and we will see you all on Monday 24th October!

Upcoming Events

Message from Deputy Head

It has been a very busy and exciting first month at St Andrews International School Dusit. Starting at a new school is always a huge learning curve but I’ve been so lucky to have such a kind and friendly community to support me. Getting to know the students, when outside at breaks or in the classroom, has been an absolute pleasure and it has been great to see such confident and responsible individuals.

This positive attitude was highlighted during the student presentations for house captain roles. The children were able to talk about the school with such pride and passion showing a great understanding of not only the school and their strengths, but also the Dusit values. The respect they showed one another, especially those who cheered others on when they were not successful, was a highlight!

Of course, it is not only through being a house captain that students can have a voice here. There are also playtime leaders, members of the eco committee, junior librarians and the student council, which I am very excited to be co leading this year. Providing these opportunities for students really helps them to develop into young, active and determined members of our school community and I’m looking forward to watching them flourish in their roles as the year progresses.

Louise

Photos from International Day

Photos from International Day

Photos from International Day

Photos from International Day

Nursery

This half term we have been exploring different fairy tales. We began by looking at the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. The children showed a lot of interest in each story, but had a great time retelling the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’, so we followed their interests and dived deeper into this story. Nursery had lots of fun using actions to help retell the story, joining in with repeated refrains such as ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.’

While exploring this we were able to look at filling and pouring and some maths language focusing on capacity; ‘full’, ‘half full’ and ‘empty’. The children also had a great time getting the small world farm animals dirty in sand and mud before washing them with sponges and brushes in the soapy water. We have had playdough and slime out in our setting as we explored different textures, describing how they feel, and using the scissors to cut them into smaller pieces to develop our fine motor and cutting skills, and how to use them safely.

Nursery

This week we are exploring people who are familiar to us, beginning with the friends in our class. The children have all enjoyed searching for pictures in the sensory tuff tray filled with rice and then identifying who is in the picture. We have also been bathing the baby dolls and washing their clothes, and washing the kitchen utensils and pots and pans.

We have all been listening to lots of stories, discussing the characters and beginning to make predictions about what will happen next, and talking about the setting. The children are building up a huge bank of songs that they enjoying singing and dancing along with.

Kindergarten

What a fabulous month we have had! We have enjoyed getting to know each other better both in our individual classes and in the other KG classes. During our free flow time we can choose activities and choose which friends to play with. In the Jellyfish classroom we have been making our own slime, in the Seahorse classroom we have been exploring hands on sensory play and in the Starfish classroom we have operated at the St Andrew’s Doctor Clinic.

Kindergarten

A big outdoor focus for us this month has been exploring hands on learning in the outside environment. We have been doing construction activities with big cardboard boxes, turning them into houses and tunnels. We have practised some excellent mark making, decorating the boxes with both paint and crayons.

Every Friday we have a KG assembly together in the Jellyfish classroom. The students have been doing a fabulous job sitting down together and participating in the assembly activities. In September we also celebrated Wai Kru Day together with the rest of the Early Years students.

Reception

Reception has shown absolute waves of resilience these past few weeks! We have been learning all about the new routines and expectations of the classroom, trying out new toys in our Ocean Room, and making a SPLASH with creative arts and design.

We have been playing lots of fun listening games to increase our understanding and cooperative skills. We have been reading lots of stories about friendship, manners, and playing nicely together. The children have shown a real determination to do the right thing and make lasting friendships.

Reception

We have been super duper excited to go on our very first field trip to Suan Rot Fai! We have been preparing for this trip by reading lots of stories about adventures in nature, how to be safe in a new environment, and practising our listening skills so that we can have the most fun possible! We have been talking about what we will see at the park, what we need to prepare, and what we need to do to stay safe.

Year 1

Reception has shown absolute waves of resilience these past few weeks! We have been learning all about the new routines and expectations of the classroom, trying out new toys in our Ocean Room, and making a SPLASH! with creative arts and design. We have been playing lots of fun listening games to increase our understanding and cooperative skills. We have been reading lots of stories about friendship, manners, and playing nicely together. The children have shown a real determination to do the right thing and make lasting friendships.

Year 1

Next week, we are super duper excited to go on our very first field trip to Suan Rot Fai! We have been preparing for this trip by reading lots of stories about adventures in nature, how to be safe in a new environment, and practising our listening skills so that we can have the most fun possible! We have been talking about what we will see at the park, what we need to prepare, and what we need to do to stay safe.

Year 2

The past month has flown past with our Lonely Beast story continuing to drive our learning. We have worked incredibly hard to write a diary entry in our role as the beast and we even created beautiful poetry about the jellyfish the Beast encounters. We edited our writing together and then published our first pieces of work for the year. This was a tricky process and we had to work extremely hard as a team to achieve our outcomes. We feel proud of our wonderful writing!! During Art lessons we have been exploring patterns in animals and we made watercolour paintings of jellyfish which we used to publish our poem. Cross curricular learning has really helped us immerse ourselves into the topic.

Year 2

Year 3

Having a Blast!

What an exciting term we are having in Year 3. We have fully immersed ourselves into our topic of ‘Fire’.

In Topic, we have been focusing on volcanoes. We have learnt about what a volcano is, different types of volcanoes and where they are most likely to be found around the world. We then delved under the earth’s surface to find out how volcanoes are formed. This involved learning about the layers of the earth through playdough and the tectonic plates. Once we had learnt what a volcano is, we then moved on to looking at the damage a volcanic eruption can cause. Children learnt the facts, drew flow charts and then created a piece of writing to show their understanding of the effects an eruption can cause. Currently, children are creating their own 3D models of a volcano that includes a cross sectional diagram.

Year 3

This month we have continued to explore the three main types of rock and linked this knowledge to our understanding of volcanoes and the layers of the earth. The children have really impressed us with how much knowledge they have been able to retain, and some have even managed to include these facts in their own dragon reports! Our most recent lessons focused on fossils, and after understanding how sedimentary rocks are formed, the children were easily able to link how fossils can only be found in this specific type of rock. We finished our teaching with some fun hands on activities. With mess, mixing, cookies and dinosaurus to play with, the activities were of course a hit with the children. Their fossils will be able to go home once dry and serve as a reminder of what they learnt this term. Whereas the cookies used to practise excavating as a paleontologist are long gone! But hopefully it will serve as a good memory for some time.

Year 4

Year 4’s Egg-citing Egg-speriments!

We have really shown some egg cellent investigative skills over the past week, working as a team to put our scientific skills into action.

To investigate the effects of different liquids on tooth decay, the children designed a fair egg speriment where eggs (which have shells that closely mimic the enamel on our teeth) are exposed to a range of different drinks. We made predictions on what we thought we would observe over the next 7 days, thinking about the changes in colour, cracks and smells.

Year 4

In groups, we then set up a fair egg speriment by changing only one variable, and continued making scientific observations about our tooth decay egg speriment. We were all super egg cited to see what state the ‘teeth’ would be at the end of the week. Once completed, we made our final observations and recorded our findings on a line graph, which allowed us to see the progression of the tooth decay over the week and compare the different liquids. Our conclusion was surprising, as most of the children predicted that a soda drink would show the most decay. However, the results showed that juice caused bacterial growth and weakened the egg shell faster than any other egg. Not egg sactly what we predicted… but egg citing all the same!

Year 5

Year 5 are truly in the swing of things in our second month and have just finished our work on our Jemmy Button text. We are so proud of our students and the debates they have had, discussing and sharing ideas. We had some interesting and innovative perspectives and were truly wowed by the way in which Year 5 articulated their thoughts and ideas.

We have also been conducting an extremely exciting science experiment in the classroom. For weeks now we have been observing vegetables grow in our classrooms and during this time we have had to endure some… interesting smells. Students have shown so much curiosity in how these asexual vegetables have grown and are asking inciteful questions during our learning time.

Year 5

We have been impressed with how our students have been working in maths and reading lessons. During maths, we are finding that students are keen to explain their working out whilst in reading students are keen to both listen to and share their ideas. Having learners who are keen to share is always exciting as we are able to listen to different ideas, perspectives and ways of thinking.

We have had a fantastic first few weeks and we cannot wait to see what else the year brings.

Year 6

Our Animal Kingdom unit has seen some amazing learning and work produced by Year 6 Eagles! In English, we read the book Varmints by Helen Ward and wrote some persuasive essays using ideas from the book. This connected to our science unit on animal classification where we learned about Linnean classification systems. This included a trip to Queen Sirikit Park to collect our own plant samples to identify and classify species in Bangkok. In Topic, we have been learning about endangered species in Thailand in conjunction with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and what we can do to protect them. I’m sure our students will finish this unit with a greater awareness of the beauty and complexity of life on land and below water around us!

Year 6

Wai Kru

Sawadee ka!

Last Thursday, we celebrated our Wai Kru ceremony. Teacher’s Appreciation Day is also known as Wai Kru Day here in Thailand and is usually celebrated towards the beginning of a new academic year. It is a Thai ritual where the students pay respect and show gratitude to their teachers.

At the Wai Kru ceremony, our students bring flowers to their teachers as a symbol of their respect and readiness to learn. The students thank the teachers for having taught them well in the past and in being instrumental in shaping their future.

Wai Kru

Superstars of the Month