St Andrews Secondary Spotlight - May 2019

Spotlight on Secondary Spotlight on Secondary

St. Andrews International School Green Valley

May 2019

Year 13 Graduation Ceremony On the evening of Saturday May 25, the St Andrews Green Valley community came together with it’s Year 13 students to celebrate their Graduation. The 26 Year 13 students had just finished their IB exams so were able to relax and enjoy their final event as high school students.

The highlights of the evening were the individual speeches about each student, the students receiving their Graduation Diplomas and of course the many, many photos. Congratulations Year 13 and best of luck at University. Go and live your dreams!

Year 13 Farewell Assembly After the Year 13 students finished their formal lessons and just before they started to sit their IB examinations we held their Farewell Assembly as a way of commemorating their time at St Andrews and wishing them good luck in their exams. Students, parents and teachers laughed, smiled and even shed a tear as the students reflected on their time here at school and offered words of encouragement and advice for younger students. After the assembly, the Year 13 students planted trees that will serve as a permanent reminder of their time here as a student and will ensure that there will always be a small part of them here in the future.

Honouring the Coronation of H. M. The King Below is a photo of the staff wearing Coronation shirts in recognition of the Ascent of King Rama X to the throne.

Staff will wear these shirts on a Monday throughout term 3. LONG LIVE THE KING

Cooking Crepes with Year 8 It was Year 8s favourite French lesson of the year! As part of their Unit about food, Year 8 had the opportunity to make crepes. As you can imagine the students had lots of fun! Amy and Pierre were experts at flipping the crepes while Angelina and Flo worked hard on presentation skills.

Stem Challenges @ Patana On May 8 seven Year 7 and 8 students tested out their Maths and Design Technology skills at a special enrichment day, STEM@Patana in Bangkok. Porsche, Prem, Keda, Paul C and Justin used their Maths and decision making skills to set up virtual racing cars and then compete in Grand Prix style races with 60 students from other international schools. Ink and Djef, meanwhile, were issued with a design brief and then designed, developed, prototyped manufactured, and finally raced a model F1 racing car. The races were very exciting - at one point all 5 year 7s were on the leaderboard! Everyone showed excellent collaboration skills and made great improvement to their skills throughout the day.

Year 11 Assembly On Thursday May 10th we held the annual Year 11 Assembly. We formally wished our Year 11 students good luck in their IGCSE exams, acknowledged that this was their last assembly together as a group and also bid farewell to students who are leaving at the end of the year. The highlights of this year’s assembly were the speeches from the Year 11 tutors, the student speeches and the musical performances by the Year 11 students.

Piano Perfection by Charm and Ben Well done to our extremely talented musicians in Year 7, Ben and Charm, who both recently played at the final round of the Yamaha Thailand Music Festival.

Their piano solos were at Grade 8 exam level, and they were some of the youngest musicians competing in the 'Under 16' age group. Charm played 'The Dancing of the Snow' by Debussy - an expressive, complex, polyrhythmic piece from the late Romantic period. Ben played 'Sonata in E' by Schubert - more Classical in style, but using the full range of the piano requiring some large hand stretches. Both were awarded a 'Gold' certificate, putting them in the top group of young pianists in Thailand!

You can listen to their performances by clicking on the Toutube links below. Congratulations Charm and Ben! Charm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWzSIg7Ul4 Ben: https://youtu.be/3n5QibMwlMc

Experimenting with Year 9 Science During the month of May, Year 9 were busy in the Science class using the technique of ‘Titration’ to neutralize a base with an acid. Careful manipulation skills and reading of scales were needed to find out exactly how much acid was needed to produce a neutral salt solution. The students used Phenolphthalein indicator to find the end point – it gives a very clear colour change from bright pink to colourless but it is a very hard word to spell!

Learner Profile Award Winners

Ploom in Year 11.

Eva in Year 10

Emily Year 10

The attribute focus for this week was ‘Thinker’, which encourages students to use creative and critical thinking skills to take responsible action on complex problems. Ploom was nominated by Mr Minty for her positive approach to problem solving in Business Studies.

Congratulations, Ploom, and thank you to Mr Minty for the nomination.

In this week the Learner Profile Attribute was ‘Balanced’, and, for the first time, the winner was nominated by other students. Shantel and Jenny nominated Eva in Year 10. In their words, “She gets good grades but takes part in lots of charity and sports events and looks after her friends, always keeping herself and everyone else happy.” Congratulations, Eva!

The Learner Profile Award was won by Emily for her outstanding ’Reflective’ skills. Emily was nominated by Mrs Gilbert, who said that she is really able to look at her work in Geography and analyse it for strengths and weaknesses, and set targets to improve.

Congratulations Emily, and thank you to Mrs Gilbert for the nomination.

Year 10 IGCSE Drama In a dystopian setting 3 characters, mysteriously named, 'x', 'y' and 'z' struggle to maintain their humanity whilst showing their devotion and loyalty to a vengeful leader. This was the scenario for the Year 10 IGCSE Drama group who staged their riveting performance of 'Weed Dreams' by Eric Kaiser. Well done Morgane, Shantal & Jake for a memorable and thought-provoking performance!

Visiting Author / Illustrator At the beginning of April Green Valley was host to the award winning, internationally acclaimed author and illustrator Karin Littlewood. She has illustrated over 40 children’s books, as well as writing and illustrating her own books (these include Immi, Sea Horse, Moonshadow and The Colour of Home) and is published in the UK and over 20 countries worldwide. Many of her books have been nominated, shortlisted and have won awards including three Kate Greenaway Medal nominations.

Karin spent time with Years 7, 8 and 9 and she delved deep into the students’ imaginations and used her novels to help them create their own ideas. She managed this not only by looking at the drawings but also with the challenge of focusing on just one line! A difficult task for students but they all came up with diverse and imaginative ideas. The students have been able to take these ideas and continue to use them within English lessons!

Dutchstream Programme Our Dutch teachers Mirna and Kris were invited to the Belgian Embassy in Bangkok.

They met with the Deputy Head of Mission and had a productive conversation on how to improve future collaboration between both parties in organising Dutch language projects and Belgian cultural events.

Green Valley are proud to be the only school offering a Dutchstream programme on the Eastern Seaboard for Dutch speaking families.

Community Service Painting Trip Towards the end of term 2 we had another successful trip to Ban Chak Mak school. The students managed to complete two major tasks by getting two classrooms and the fence outside Early Years painted. The next part of the project is an art mural . A huge thanks once again to Khun Manit & Khun Tanit for all of their help!

IGCSE Art Work On this page you can see some excellent IGCSE Art coursework and exam pieces from our Green Valley students! Congratulations to the graduating Year 11 IGCSE Art group. Students from this group have completed some unique and outstanding artwork this year.

Songkran Celebrations As usual our secondary students and teachers celebrated Songkran– one of the most popular events of the year!

The day started when donations of food were given to the monks as a blessing, ensuring our ancestors and relatives have good fortune in the next life. Next the students paid respect to their teachers before we ended the day with water slides, wet sponges, a dunk tank and even a fire truck to hose students down. It was the best end of term ever!

Senior Games Success!

This year in the Senior Games we achieved our best results ever. Gold and overall trophy winners in the Girls Football and Silver in the Boys Basketball! Thanks to all the coaches for their hard work and the parents for turning out in force to support the teams.

U15 League of Champions On Saturday May 25, nerves and excitement created a great atmosphere as the players from St. Andrews 107, Garden, Tara Pattana and Team GV left their school allegiances at the gate and picked up new jerseys ready to compete in the inaugural League of Champions.

The new concept format gave each participant not only the opportunity to play both football and basketball but to make new friends as well. Each team competed well and had an enjoyable day of competition.

Thanks as always to the parents for their support, the coaches who had to strategise and motivate teams they haven't coached before and a big thanks to John from Year 12 who refereed all day and did an excellent job.

Well done to all of the players who will have learnt so much about teamwork and have hopefully made lots of new friends over the course of the day.

Fantastic Fifa Wins Again Congratulations Fifa!!

Fifa in Year 9 is ranked the number 1 Golf Junior in Asia. He recently shot a final round of 74 to win the Ciputra Golfpreneur Junior World 2019 in Jakarta, Indonesia, where there were participants from 20 different countries. Soon Fifa will be heading to Japan to represent Thailand in the Toyota Junior World Cup and then to the US to play tournaments there.

Congratulations Fifa - we are very proud of you!

Looking Ahead To access the 2018—2019 Calendar click here: Calendar 2018-19 To check all Upcoming School Dates please click on this link: School Dates Upcoming Events: October and November Thur 13 Year 12 Geography, Biology and ESS field trip to Koh Chang

Community Service visits to Baan Chaak Maak School and Baan Kru Boonchu

Thur 13

Public Holiday in honour of the birthday of H. M. The Queen

PYP Exhibition Grand Opening (1700 1830)

Fri 14

4 day visit from 10 students from the Bamboo School

Band Slam Rock Band competition from 1700 - 2000

Mon 17

Year 11 IB Information Day

Year 7 - 10 Environmental Enrichment Day

17 - 18

Year 6 to Year 7 transition days

Thur 20

Year 12 ToK Presentation Day

Secondary School Music, Art, Drama and Dance afternoon (1315 - 1520)

Thur 20

Year 8 Charity Fashion Show (1245)

Thur 20

Community Service visit to the Hand to Hand Foundation

Tues 25

Secondary School Academic Achieve ment Awards (1400 - 1520)

June 2-7 Mon 3 4-7 Wed 5

Thur 6 Thur 6

Community Service visit to Baan Chaak Maak School

Fri 7

Year 9 and Year 10 French Trip

10 - 14

Year 10 Work Experience week

Tues 25

End of year reports sent home

Tues 11

Year 7 and Year 8 French Trip

Fri 28

Last day of the school year

Thur 13

Year 12 Trip to Ford