Thepasttwoweekshavebeenwonderfullyfull,offeringourstudentsarichvarietyoflearning experiences both inside and outside the classroom. Our Y6 trip gave pupils the chance to explore a local ecosystem first-hand, deepening their understanding of interdependence and environmental connection. Whilst in Y5, our cultural and historical visit to mosques and a museum provided a valuable opportunity for students to appreciate the beauty, history, and significance of Islamic architecture and worship. Our Y8 students had the opportunity to attendanopendayatJIS,gaininganinsightintoboardingandschoollifethere.
Back at school, the energy has been equally high. Rehearsals are in full swing for our upcoming performances across different key stages. It has been a joy to see students showing such enthusiasm, teamwork, and creativity as they prepare for the stage. We have also had sporting events, including an exciting bench ball event for Y3 and 4 students that demonstratedbothskillandsuperbsportsmanship.
Last week saw both anti-bullying week and nursery rhyme week with activities such as stories,songs,poemsandlearningaboutbeingupstanders.Wehavebeenfortunatetohave a visit from d’Arcy Lunn, whose engaging sessions encouraged students to reflect on their leadership and impact beyond the school community. Our Diwali assembly was another standout moment — vibrant, colourful, and full of celebration. Thank you to all the students andparentswhohelpedmakeitsuchameaningfulandengaging.
As we move towards the end of term, teachers are preparing student reports. We will be holding a parent information meeting to explain the reporting process and answer any questions you may have on Monday 24th November. In addition, all families will shortly receive a form regarding end-of-day arrangements. Completing this will help us ensure that dismissalproceduresremainsafe,smooth,andconsistent.
Thank you for your continued support and engagement at this busy time. Wishing you all a restfulandenjoyableweekend.
Year 5 & 6 Production Performance (Rampayoh & Teraja)
●Year 5 Exit Point with parents
●Y1-Y6 Optional PTCs
●Christmas Musical Show Dress Rehearsal
●Year 6 MFLtrip to JIS
● Year 1&2 Entry Point
● Year 8 Drama Performance
● Year 5 & 6 Production Final Rehearsal
● Mendaram Entry Point
● Year 4 Residential Parents Meeting
School Disco
● Year 3 Exit Point
● ReceptionTrip
● Subsitising Workshop (Mendaram Only)
● BJSLCross Country at Hornbill
● Melilas Reports to parents
●Mendaram & Rampayoh X’mas Celebration
●Year 6 Exit Point
●Year 4 Exit Point
●Rec Exit Point
Christmas Musical Show Dress Rehearsal
Year 5 & 6 Production Performance (Parents)
●Mendaram Splash Day
●Year 5 Exit Point
●Year 8 History Living Museum with parents
●Y1-Y6 Report Published
Musical Show Performance (Parents)
Year 5 & 6 Production Rehearsal
Community Engagement
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d’Arcy Lunn visit to Panaga
On Friday we were fortunate to have d’Arcy Lunn visit our school to share on his amazing thoughts about the Development goals and how we can all make ‘Teaspoons of Change’ for the greater good. With conversations around the different campuses, chats at the lunch table and ending it with an assembly at Rampayoh, it was an amazing visit and had us all asking, Am I a global citizen?’
Diwali Assembly
Ahuge thank you to our Indian community for
Growth Mindset
What Is a Growth Mindset?
A growthmindset is the belief that intelligence and ability can be developed through effort, practice, and perseverance. Psychologist Carol Dweck, who first coined the term, contrasts this with a fixedmindset, which assumes that skills and intelligence are innate and unchangeable.
Children with a growth mindset see challenges as opportunities to learn, rather than proof that they are ‘not good enough.’ They understand that success comes from persistence and practice - not just natural talent. This perspective helps them tackle schoolwork, friendships, and hobbies with resilience and curiosity.
Why It Matters for Children
Research shows that pupils who believe they can improve through effort tend to be more motivated, more resilient, and more successful across subjects. They are also more likely to take risks, ask questions, and recover quickly from setbacks.
Whether your child is learning phonics, fractions, or French verbs, a growth mindset encourages them to keep trying even when tasks feel hard. For parents, fostering this attitude at home is one of the most powerful ways to support both academic progress and emotional wellbeing.
Encouraging Effort Over Perfection
Children naturally want to please the adults around them. When praise focuses only on results - such as grades, speed, or ‘being clever’children may start to fear mistakes or avoid challenges. To nurture a growth mindset, try and shift your focus from the outcome to the process.
● Instead of saying, “You’re so smart,” try: “I love how hard you worked on that.”
● Perhaps replace, “You’re a natural at drawing,” with: “You’ve improved so much because you keep practising.”
These small language changes send a powerful message: effort is valuable, mistakes are normal, and progress matters more than perfection.
Practical Ways to Build a Growth Mindset at Home
1. Model ItYourself:
Children learn more from what we do than what we say. When you make a mistake, show them how to handle it positively.You might say, “I’m still learning how to cook that recipe - I’ll try a different method next time.”This models resilience and self-reflection.
2. Praise the Process:
Celebrate persistence, creativity, and problem-solving rather than innate ability. For example, “I noticed how you kept trying different ways to solve that puzzle.”
3. Use the Power of ‘Yet’:
Encourage children to add the word yet to their self-talk: “I can’t do this... yet.”This simple word transforms frustration into possibility and teaches that improvement is always within reach.
4. Normalise Mistakes
Mistakes are part of learning.At home, laugh about small errors and reflect together: Whatdidwe learnfromthat?
5. Encourage Challenge and Curiosity
Give children opportunities to attempt tasks slightly beyond their comfort zone - whether that’s learning a new instrument, tackling tricky maths problems, or cooking independently. Support them as they struggle, but resist the urge to step in too quickly.
When Mistakes Happen
For many children, frustration is the hardest part of learning.They may say, “I can’t do it!” or “I’m just bad at this!”At those moments, your response matters most.
Offer calm reassurance:
● “I know this is tricky, but that’s how your brain grows.”
● “You haven’t mastered it yet - let’s think about what might help next time.”
By meeting disappointment with empathy and encouragement, you help your child build emotional resilience and self-belief - essential foundations for both school and life.
Connecting Home and School
Teachers regularly use growth mindset language in classrooms - praising perseverance, encouraging self-reflection, and framing errors as opportunities. When parents mirror this approach at home, children receive a consistent message: learning is a journey, not a race.
If your child sometimes struggles with feedback, help them see it as guidance for growth, not criticism.Ask questions like, “What could you try differently next time?” or “What did you learn from this?”These conversations bridge the gap between home and school learning.
Progress, Not Perfection
Agrowth mindset is not about pretending everything is easy or always aiming for success. It is about finding strength in struggle, purpose in effort, and pride in persistence.
Children thrive when they know they are valued for their determination, not their perfection. So, the next time your child falters, remind them - and yourself - that every setback is simply a stepping stone toward growth.
Because our children’s potential is not fixed. It is growing, every single day.
In Reception Drama, we have been exploring Costumes and Props and how they are important when playing a role. We also identified characters by colouring their costumes to fit their parts in a story. Such fun!
Dramatic emotions in Reception. Can you guess which face is happy, sleepy, angry and sad? Or anxious and excited?
A Fable is a >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You might get a treat if you can finish the definition.
In Year 3, we have been learning about Fables and writing ours, with a little chocolate twist!
Our socks may never match, and neither do our feet— A little reminder that our differences make us sweet. So love who you are, from your head to your toes, And take care of yourself always, as your wellbeing grows.
In Year 4, we have been exploring Clown Gags and Comedia del Arte as a drama genre and it has been so exciting to see how movement and exaggeration can add tension and intensity to our performances.
This week was filled with the sound of nursery rhymes, some familiar, some not. Nursery rhymes boost vocabulary and language development, support early literacy and numeracy skills as well as develop social, emotional and physical skills. And of course, it’s lots of fun singingwithyourfriends.
It was fantastic to end the week with a sing-a-long with children from Pre-Nursery to Year 2. Welldoneeveryoneandkeepsinging!
It was a highly enjoyable and educational visit that deepened our understanding of Bruneian history, culture and traditions, all linked to our IPC unit on the Golden Age of Islam.
Year 4 Active Planet Exit Point
On Thursday 13th November, we concluded our Active Planet unit with a reflective—and explosive—exit point. Children proudly guided their parents through a range of hands-on activities, including lava blowing, volcano explosions, rock investigations, and an art gallery showcasing their work. They also explained their learning using their earthquake-resilient buildings, disaster-relief centre models, and digital projects created on Chromebooks.
As part of our IPC unit: Existing, Endangered, Extinct, students inY6 have been finding out about Biomes and Biodiversity. We took a trip to a freshwater lake to help us think about the complex web of life that makes up an ecosystem.
Y6 Trip to Lalak Lake
Set Design ASA
Preparing for Mystery at Magpie Manor & The Twilight Zone Performances!
Hello Set Design Fans!
We’ve been hard at work preparing for our upcoming shows, MysteryatMagpie Manorand TheTwilightZone!
The team has been busy painting sets, building cardboard creations, and working on woodwork for custom props. We've also been creating electronic light fittings to set the perfect mood and painting masks to bring our characters to life.
It’s all coming together as we dive into the final stages of designing and making. We can’t wait to share the finished sets with you soon!
Thanks for your support, The Set Design ASA Team
Students had a sweet time making their own chocolate bars, adding a variety of toppings to create unique treats. They loved experimenting with different flavors and expressing their creativity, all while enjoying the delicious results of their efforts.
Students made their own patties and build delicious burgers. They had a blast experimenting with flavors and enjoying every tasty bite.
Little Librarian
It’s Pokémon Hunt Week, and the Little Librarians are on the move! Here’s what they’ve been up to on their epic quest!
When they catch all nine Pokémon, they’ll get to award the Panaga Personal Qualities badges—each one matched to the Pokémon’s unique strengths and capabilities! Let the adventure begin!”
After a lively discussion, our little librarians have thoughtfully decided how to award each of the Personal Qualities badges—and even Miss Tika and Miss Sibah can’t argue with their choices! Their dedication and careful consideration truly shine through.
Curious about the reasoning behind their decisions? Step into the Rampayoh Library, where Miss Tika will be delighted to share the story behind each badge. Don’t miss this chance to see the thoughtfulness of our young librarians in action!
Panaga Club Library
The Library Club has been meeting every week in the Panaga Club library this term: exploring the library; learning how to run a library and sharing their love of books. One week we combined all three through the book recommendations: the students chose one of their favorite books, wrote a book review and each review was displayed alongside the book for a week - although several of the books got checked out of the library before the week was up, as the library members were inspired by the student’s reviews to try the book.
To check whether their parents had been paying attention, the children finished the session by testing them with a lively Kahoot quiz. It was wonderful to see our learners speaking with such confidence, clearly demonstrating how much they had enjoyed this unit of work.
huge thank-you to all the parents for attending and getting so enthusiastically involved!
Outdoor learning has become a regular and exciting part of our language lessons.
Whether it’s NTC Dutch, French, or Spanish—and no matter the year group—I am always looking for opportunities to take learning outside the classroom. One of our favourite activities is a reading race: students run to different poles around the space to read the information they need for their task, such as a description of an animal, a Dutch riddle, or a name-and-age introduction in French. The movement keeps them motivated, and the fresh air brings the learning to life.
Taking language learning outdoors offers huge benefits. Students are more focused, more active, and far more engaged. The change of environment reduces stress, boosts confidence, and encourages teamwork. It also allows children to use languages in a dynamic, meaningful way rather than sitting at a desk.
Outdoor learning turns every lesson into an adventure—one where students learn faster, laugh more, and remember more.
In French this term, both Year 1 and Year 6 have been learning all about jungle animals, animal body parts, and descriptions, with the exciting aim of creating their own imaginative creatures. Both year groups completed the same reading task, where students had to read a description and draw the matching animal with the correct body parts. Year 6 completed this independently, and although Year 1 worked through a scaffolded task, they were still able to figure out most of the language themselves, as we have revised the vocabulary many times. The pictures illustrated here show some of the creatures the students drew from the reading activity.
Now the students are using their new vocabulary to design their very own imaginative animals as part of their outdoor learning project. We cannot wait to see what wonderful, funny, and wild creatures they will create!
Over the past ew weeks, our Student Council has been busy with site meetin s and our first official meetin to ether as one team, which was on Tuesday, 11th November. We also worked on creatin a meanin ul pled e, shared ideas to improve our school, and researched local and lobal roups we can support. A ter reviewin several options, we voted to ether on the best way orward. There’s more to come, stay tuned and watch us row this year!
Singing,Speaking&Playing Our Way Through Languages!
Our language learners had a wonderful couple of weeks! Our Year 3 students concluded their first term of Frenchbrilliantlyandarenow ready to transition to their newlanguageinTerm2.Year 5thoroughlyenjoyedlearning Spanish, especially singing a lively song about family members as part of our new topic. Meanwhile, Year 7 studentsputtheirvocabulary skills into action through engaging board games that encouraged communication andcollaboration.
What a joyful and productive weekoflanguagelearning!
ThisweekinMandarinand Malay,ourYear1,2,and3 students successfully concluded their first term of the MFL learning cycle and are now ready to transition to their next language.Duringtheirfinal lessons, they took part in an exciting outdoor vocabulary hunt, applying all the words they have learned throughout the term.Ithasbeenwonderful to see their enthusiasm and engagement as they continue to explore and enjoybothlanguages!
Benchball Tournament @JIS
TheYear 3 and 4 Benchball Festival at Jerudong International School was a fantastic day of sport, teamwork, and enjoyment. Panaga students played with great energy, showing strong communication, movement, and effort throughout. Year 3 children demonstrated growing confidence and control, while Year 4 impressed with their tactical awareness and teamwork. Matches were played in a friendly and inclusive atmosphere, with every child given the chance to contribute. JIS student leaders did an excellent job officiating and supporting the games.
Well done to all Panaga students for their enthusiasm, sportsmanship, and pride in representing the school!
Heart-to-Heart Art: Bringing Well-being Conversations Home
During Well-being Week, we explored fun and accessible ways for students to tap into their emotional landscape. Far from being just a messy activity, art expression is one of the most powerful tools we have for practicing mindfulness and understanding our own feelings.This year, we took inspiration from a contemporary master, Jim Dine, and his famous heart motif to teach students how to use colour as a language for emotion. We’re thrilled to share this project and show you how this mindful activity can easily transition from the classroom to your dining
MelilasStudents,Heart-to-Heart,oilpastels,2025
Heart-to-Heart Art: Bringing Well-being Conversations Home
We encourage you to try a Family Collaborative Heart Project! Find a piece of large paper and designate different areas (or even different days) for each family member to contribute. Use crayons, paints, or pencils to fill a heart with the colours and textures that represent how you are feeling that day.The goal is not a perfect picture, but a visual conversation starter. By creating a shared, evolving artwork, families can open a gentle, non-verbal space for deeper discussions about everyone's well-being and strengthen that creative, collaborative bond.
JimDine, ConfettiHeart,1985.
MelilasStudents,Heart-to-Heart,oilpastels,2025.
We took all the student hearts and created 2 large scale canvases. These will go on display in the council room to brighten the space and act a visual conversation starter.
Wherewillyoudisplayyours?
Heart-to-Heart Art: Bringing Well-being Conversations Home
Step 1: Emotional check in. Take a deep breath and think about how you are feeling right now.
Step 2: Draw a large simple heart shape on your piece of paper.
Be Creative! Display your collaborative artwork proudly on the wall and use it to check in emotionally from time to time.
Step 3: Fill the heart and background with the emotions you would like to express.
TIP: Soft marks for calm. Hard marks for intensity.
A Glimpse into Secondary School: Year 8s Visit JIS
OurYear 8 students recently had an exciting and informative day visiting Jerudong International School (JIS) to get a feel for secondary school life. On Wednesday, 19th November, students and their parents travelled to JIS for a packed itinerary designed to introduce them to the campusandcurriculum.
In Music students explored the different recording rooms available at the school. They also got hands-on with a high-energy session of "chair drumming" and learned a quick song together.
Students were given a behind-the-scenes tour of the theatre, including a look at where the sets are constructed. They also participated in an engaging mini-lesson focusing on performance techniques like freezeframesandslowmotion.
The excitement continued as students moved to the labs. Students observed chemical reactions through colorful flame tests. The group explored static electricity with hair-raising experiments. Budding biologistsconductedfoodtests.
To round off the day, students were takenonatouroftheBoardingHouses. It was a fantastic opportunity for our students to envision their next academicsteps!
Can you solve the mystery at Magpie Manor ? Don the fringes and feathers, dust off the spy glass and join the flapper girls and their family, Inspector Spectre and a whole host of famous guests in this roaring 20's thriller!
This brilliant Downton-meets-Poirot musical production brings comedy, song, mystery and 1920s’ dance routines together in one scintillating performance.
Set in the 1920, Mystery At Magpie Manor is a pacy, energetic whodunit play. Magpie Manor is in a great state of disrepair and Lord and Lady Pica must take drastic action to save their crumbling manor house, but strange things are occuring!
After our beach clean, children from Panaga and Anthony Abell headed to Rampayoh Hall to turn plastic into creative sculptures. The students were incredibly imaginative, making jellyfish, mermaids, and fish of all sizes using bottle tops, straws, and wrappers., etc…
Upcycling is important because only 9% of plastic is ever recycled. By giving rubbish a new purpose, the children learned how creativity can help protect our environment.
Their colourful sea creatures will be displayed at the Under the Sea Disco, bringing our ocean theme to life!
Run around Borneo!
The total distance all the way around Borneo is 4,971km!
Total Distance overall Updated 21st November 4,082 km
Make sure you are in the Running Club WhatsApp group! We will post on here if Running Club is cancelled due to the weather etc!
