Patana News Volume 19 Issue 21

Patana

NEWS Head of School’s Monthly Blog Page 2 Including SEASAC Tennis

Ready for Fun Day? / Science Takes Sri Down Under / Fun in the Swiss Alps Bangkok Patana is an IB World School, accredited by CIS and NEASC

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow.

Learn as if you were to live forever.”

Mahatma Gandhi

A very warm welcome back after a week’s holiday over the half-term break! It was great to have all of the Bangkok Patana family back in school on Monday and observing our hard-working students get straight back into their important studies. This is a busy time of the year especially for our Year 11 and Year 13 students, as their external exams loom ever closer as they diligently revise and focus on their learning.

The Varsity boys’ travelled to Singapore to compete in the SEASAC Championships at the beginning of half term. Every year brings its own little story and this year was no exception. With Leo Vithoontien playing in his eighth and final event, motivation to send him out with a final title was high. The boys had a good first day defeating their two closest rivals CDNIS and UWCD in close matches 3-2 and comfortably beating TTS 5-0.

Day Two could not have gone better with easy wins against BSJ and NIST to win the group and set up a semi-final with NIST who again we dispatched with ease. The final day saw the Patana Tigers play CDNIS who had come through a tense match with UWCD and with the three singles boys’ Leo, Donald and Jonah, on first, we could really press home our advantage and put the match out of their reach.

The boys could not have played better with Donald winning 8-2 and Jonah 8-5 leaving Leo to deliver the deciding win 8-6 and to win the title. Mark and Amery also won their doubles and although Denis and Julien narrowly lost 7-8, we won 4-1 overall to reclaim the trophy we won in 2015. A great win and a fitting tribute to Leo who in his 8 years has lost only a few matches and won 34 of his last 35 at SEASAC.

A reminder that we have our 5-year CIS/NEASC accreditation visit at our school next week. Mark Stapleton from NEASC and Bill Parker from CIS will be visiting us from February 27th to March 1st. They are here to observe our school in action, review a very detailed self-study that the school has compiled and confirm what we are doing well and what areas we can still focus on. Many thanks to our Cross Campus Principal James Penstone who spent hours compiling our 5-year report.

Our wonderful PTG are busy planning and organising our upcoming annual Fun Day scheduled for Saturday March 4th. It is truly a school community day and the students always have so much fun with the wide array of rides and games that are on offer. Make sure you do come along and have a great day out for the whole family. In honour of our 60th Anniversary (which you can read about below), this year entry to Fun Day is free for students (who will be issued a wristband) and family members who present their valid Patana card.

I am very excited that we are celebrating 60 years of Bangkok Patana School at the 60 th Anniversary Jazz and Blues Party on Wednesday March 22nd from 5:00pm to 8:00pm in the Sports Hall. We have almost 400 students performing in choirs and bands plus some individual performances. There will be food vendors plus a large birthday cake as we all get together as a community to celebrate 60 amazing years. Make sure you have this important school date in your diary as this is going to be an unmissable evening as we say Happy Birthday Bangkok Patana School!

Once again, the quality of candidates wanting to come and teach at Bangkok Patana School was very high indeed. We interviewed and have hired some outstanding teachers from the UK in January who will be joining us in early August. Jason Cooper, Mick Smith and Jackie Houghton will join me in the UK for a final week of interviews in early April as we hope to fill our remaining teacher vacancies for the next academic year.

I came across this excellent Sydney Morning “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

Herald article on new The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” research stating that Dr Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! encouraging our young learners to read not only helps boost their academic prowess but it also helps them emotionally. I remember fondly being stuck in an airport lounge in Dubai recently and observed a family of five all sitting down reading books and could not help but think what a powerful role modeling experience it was. So please encourage your children to read any time, anywhere and don’t forget to praise them when you see them reading of their own free will. Reading is so important!

Enjoy your weekend.

Matt Mills, Head of School

Please remember NO NUTS and please reduce your packaging if possible in line with our Greener Fun Day theme. Cakes can be dropped off on Friday 3rd March at the Bus Entrance of Year 3/4 or at the front of school. Alternatively, cakes can be brought up to the tearoom on the Saturday.

Please drop off any unwanted clothes and bric-a-brac in the donation boxes at the front of school. Only clean, saleable items and please ensure that any toys/puzzles/games are complete. Thank you!

As part of the PTG and SEC’s drive to make Fun Day greener, there will be no plastic bags available. So if you’re planning on visiting ’Shopping Street’ please bring your own reusable bag.

In keeping with the school's green ethos and driven by the amazing Student Environmental Committee (SEC), there will be no disposable bottles of water available for sale at Fun Day. There will be water stations where you can refill your reusable water bottle, so don’t forget to bring one with you!

A laser tag experience where you compete with others in a simulated arena that makes you feel like you’ve fallen into the world of SCI-FI. Get your adrenaline going with awesome entertainment and excitement featuring fully modernized and the best Laser Games equipment by Lasermaxx.

While the kids play, take time to enjoy some cool refreshments beside the stage and listen to some great music. This year performers include The Threads, Carey, Pom Pom Cheer, Eclipse and many more!

Come and enjoy a home baked cake and a cup of tea in the wonderful air-conditioned Tea Room.

There will also be the live auction from the Interact and Rise CAT Clubs.

Could you spare some time to help the PTG as a Fun Day Volunteer?

If the answer is yes, please email ptgvolunteer@gmail.com

Fun Day has some great food vendors including‌. Olive, The Accidental Butcher, Hot Dogs & Buns, Tipper, Absolute Food, Belaire Catering, Sunrise Tacos, Coldstone Creamery. Papa’s Kitchen, Masala Art, Seafood Parade and lots more!

D

uring the February half-term break, 30 intrepid Bangkok Patana skiers and snowboarders flew to Geneva in Switzerland and on to the resort of Verbier for seven days of fun filled adventure .

Students stayed in two traditional style Swiss chalets, where they were treated to local delicacies such as cheese fondue and crêpes au chocolat, also consuming plenty of well-deserved hot chocolate. After an initial assessment, students were divided into ski/ snowboard groups according to their ability and were certainly challenged both physically and mentally on the 412km of groomed, snow-packed ski runs which make up the Four Vallées ski area, the largest lift domain in Switzerland. With blue skies for most of the week and fresh snow having recently fallen, conditions could only be described as ‘perfect’. Whilst taking a rest on the ski lifts up the mountain, Ms Maguire marvelled at the snow (having never seen snow before this trip) whilst the rest of us enjoyed the clear views of Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.

Après-ski formed a big part of the holiday with everybody involving themselves in activities such as ice-skating, disco night and the music quiz.

En route back to Geneva airport, students visited the Château de Chillon and the Olympic Museum.

Most memorably, the group paid their deepest respects to His Majesty King Bhumibol at the Temple Thailandais d’Ouchy, on the banks of Lake Geneva. Rama IX donated the temple in appreciation of the years he spent studying in Lausanne.

The students were an absolute credit to themselves and the name of Bangkok Patana School. A trip they will never forget.

Mr Haughton, Mr Summers and Ms Maguire

R

ecently I had the privilege to travel to Melbourne, Australia and spend a week there partaking in a special programme held at RMIT University as part of my prize from a Science essay competition organised by RMIT. To enter the competition I had to write an essay addressing ‘How your home city could benefit from the application of Science and Technology’. For my essay I wrote about how the local khlongs in Bangkok could be cleaned up, not only decreasing the vast amount of water pollution but opening up new transportation systems and decreasing congestion problems in and around Bangkok.

In Australia, I had a taste of university life by participating in university level experiments and having various tours of science research rooms. I also had the opportunity to explore Melbourne as we took tours of the city, Yarra Bend Park and the Great Ocean road.

To read Sri’s winning essay, click here.

University / College

Representative

Location

Date

Time

King's College London Information Day

Novotel Bangkok on Siam Square

25.02.17 14:00

Dublin City University

-

Senior Studies, Second Floor

27.02.17 12:15

Vanderbilt Alumni

-

Senior Studies, Second Floor

28.02.17 12:15

Siam Technology College

-

Senior Studies, Second Floor

01.03.17 12:15

The London School of Economics (LSE) and Political Science

Yohei Guy

Senior Studies, Second Floor

08.03.17 09:15

LSE Public Information Session

-

Pathumwan Princess Hotel, Bangkok

08.03.17 19:00

#52 Do you use removal of technology from your child as a punishment?

A

s a parent I often have to stop myself from making threats to remove technology as a form of punishment. In this great advice from Center on Media and Child Health, Dr Michael Rich explains why it’s not healthy to use this threat with your child(ren).

Click here to read more.

Make media part of a balanced healthy diet of experience and less of a “forbidden fruit”.

Have a great weekend, Brian Taylor Assistant Principal, Campus Curriculum Technology Integration

W

orld Food Project (WFP) is a club in support of the UN organisation called World Food Programme that aims to fight against world hunger. Hunger is the single most dangerous ‘disease’ today, killing more people every year than AIDS, Malaria and TB combined. As a club, our aim is to raise awareness and funds to help combat hunger in impoverished areas.

Back in January, World Food Project held our campaign days in the hope of raising lots of awareness about our club within the school community, as well as, more importantly, the cause we support. We held a number of fun and competitive activities such as ‘Guess the amount of rice in the jar’, ‘The Blindfolded Dig’, and numerous interactive chalkboard activities. Behind each of our games hid a subtle but strong message about the cause we are supporting, such as The Blindfolded Dig in which students were asked to find a piece of plastic fruit amongst a number of plastic balls whilst blindfolded and under timed conditions. In this game we intended to highlight the difficulty of simply finding enough food to eat each day; a problem that so many millions of people around the world face in their day-to-day lives. The chalkboard boosted our display, attracting people towards our stall and then giving us the opportunity to explain exactly why we were there. As well as our informative and interactive games, we also handed out custom-designed stickers and pamphlets to efficiently and effectively raise awareness in our school community of our club, our aims and the cause we support, and decorated our display boards using informative recycled posters, infographics, statistics and powerful images.

As a club, we think the days were a huge success and we hope we were able to raise cognisance in our school community about our club, what we support and our main aim ‘to fight against world hunger’.

The annual food drive received an awesome amount of support so thank you!

W

e are delighted to announce the final total of money raised from the annual Bangkok Patana Fun Run held back in September 2016, an incredible 137,833 THB. The money will go to Secondary CAT clubs, Habitat for Humanity, Operation Smile and Interact and assist in their charitable endeavours.

Thank you to everyone who participated, we hope to see you at the Bangkok Patana Fun Run 2017 which is on Sunday 24th Sept so save the date now!

Congratulations to our FOBISIA Swimming team and to our Varsity Tennis players!

The Varsity Tennis, Rugby, Touch and Basketball teams did outstandingly well at SEASAC recently. It was a great weekend of sport for all athletes. Thank you to the coaches who have led their teams to such an amazing standard! There were some great individual performances with a special mention to the athletes who received the MVP for their team.

Boys Basketball- Silver MVPs: Alex, Louise and Tom

Girls Basketball- Bronze MVPs: Julie and Serri

Girls Tennis- Silver MVPs: Balloon, Moniqa, Savannah, Zahra, Rhea, Clara and Tess

Girls Touch- Div II Champions MVPs: Sophie, Reesha, Ela and Emily

The BPS Level 3 Juniors competed in the Dragons Den Invitational Gymnastics competition!

Boys Rugby- 5th place MVP: Nicky

Boys Tennis- Champions MVPs: Reo, Donald, Jonah and Denis

to the Swimming team who swam at Bootcamp over half term in preparation for SEASAC.

Follow our Instagram @ bps_athletics_council

BPSSPORTS

BPSSports Tiger Sports Patana Tennis

M

y experience in Under 13 Badminton was very unique. I learnt to persevere and work with my team. We didn’t have very high hopes in the beginning, because we thought all the other schools were better than we were. Nevertheless, we fought and did our very best. In the end, all the hard work paid off and we got to share the success of BISAC Under 13 Girls Badminton Champions. Many of us look forward to challenging ourselves by trying out for Under 15 Badminton next year.

T

he Varsity Tennis teams travelled to Singapore to compete in Division 1 of SEASAC. The season had gone well with Leo and Balloon winning the Under 19 BISAC singles championships and both Boys’ and Girls’ teams had won the BISAC league and cup events.

Both teams had special reason to perform well this year with the Girls going for a record 7th successive title and the Boys celebrating Leo's 8th and final year in the team.

Day One went well with the girls defeating GIS, RIS and NIST without dropping a match whilst the boys opened up with a comfortable win over TTS before narrowly beating both our closest rivals UWCD and CDNIS 3-2 to guarantee both teams would qualify for the semi-finals.

Day Two couldn't have gone better with the boys destroying BSJ in their first match before defeating local rivals NIST to win the group and qualify for the semi-final top of the group where once again we faced NIST who again we comfortably beat to set up a final with

CDNIS. The girls also won their opening match with UWCE easily before managing to overcome UWCD in a titanic battle 3-2 after trailing 1-2 after the singles, the girls also topped the group and dispatched GIS 5-0 to set up a final with UWCD.

Finals day saw both teams scheduled to play at the same time and with all six singles matches starting at the same time the coaching staff had plenty of work to do getting onto court at change of ends to discuss tactics and ease a few nerves.

The three boys Leo, Donald and Jonah all went about their business very professionally, and fittingly it was Leo who secured the decisive victory to put us 3-0 up and

crowned champions. The doubles pairs also contributed to the success of the team and although Denis and Julien narrowly lost 7-8 Mark and Amery won their match for us to finish 4-1 winners.

The girls as expected were once again involved in a monumental scrap with the host school, Balloon reversed her loss of the previous day, Moniqa again won her match to put the girls 2-0 up and with Rhea and her opponent neck and neck things were looking good! Rhea however could not quite win her match going down 7-8 for the second day running leaving us needing one of the two doubles matches to win. Unfortunately sport has a mind of its own and try as hard as all four girls did, the breaks didn't quite go our way and with Sav and Zahra losing 5-8 it was down to the rookies Tess and Clara to not only try and get the better of their opponents but also a very vocal and supportive crowd. Alas it was not to be as they lost 6-8 but it was an amazing match and the girls should all be proud of their efforts.

T

he Under 13 Girls’ Football teams run for the BISAC championship started with a 4-0 win, in our opening game against ICS, at our home pitch on February 2nd.

The BISAC tournament, hosted by RIS, was held on February 4th. Our first match of the day (out of four) was against ISB, a team we beat quite comfortably 5-0 in the regular season. Attacks by our strikers and midfielders were rapid, with balls fired at ISB’s goalie, our first goal scored by Anika, followed by Anna, then two from Praewa. Solid defense and constant pressure on the opposing team resulted in a 4-0 margin by the end of the first half. The second half started off quickly with a quick goal from Teal, which was neatly passed into the goal, and a free-kick from Janelle. Throughout the whole game, we maintained the majority of possession. The final whistle blew, resulting in the Tigers first BISAC match win of 6-0.

Our second match of the day was against NIST. Highlights of the first half was a goal from Praewa and a well placed free-kick from Lihi. The Tigers were ecstatic by the early lead against NIST, although our work rate did not drop and we still played to the best of our abilities. Great passes were made resulting in numerous attempts on goal. Free kicks, which were situated mid-pitch, were awarded to us, both taken by Janelle, adding two goals to our early lead. Teamwork and communication were displayed throughout the game and our opponents fought equally hard against

us. The game ended with us leaving the pitch as the winning team with a score of 6-0.

Our third match, our semi-finals game, was against the Harrow Lions, a team we beat 4-1 in the regular season. At this point of the day, we were beginning to tire and the heat was not helping; some of the girls were visiting Alpacas being exhibited at the RIS’ family day and chilling in the playground and were a bit surprised as the hosts moved up our game to an earlier time! The match started with many good attempts on goal and solid defense. On the field, the Tigers kept on supporting each other, whether it was to get open to receive a pass or just a few words of encouragement.

As soon as the first goal was scored, more goals came rolling in and we managed to get back some of our energy. The Tigers won 4-1 leaving us to set our sights to the finals and the NIST Falcons once again.

Our last and final match for the season was against NIST. Even though we won against them in our second BISAC game, we weren’t planning on being complacent. The game started with our normal tactics, pressing our opponents and keeping possession of the ball.

Unfortunately, NIST scored a lucky first goal. Some of our heads went down; however, after some kind and encouraging words, all the Tigers came back roaring and were hungry for more goals. The equaliser was shot by Praewa, with Lihi following with another closing the half with us in the lead, 2-1. Even though we were winning, we wanted to secure the lead with more goals. The second half was opened lots of attempts on goal from our midfielders and attackers.

The third goal was scored later in the game by Janelle, who dribbled up to the right side of the goal, taking the score to 3-1. Unfortunately, the Falcons were awarded two penalties, one hit the cross-bar and the other did not make the back of the net thanks to Parima’s good save. The match ended with the Patana Tigers happy and crowned BISAC Champions 2016/17.

Throughout the whole season and BISAC tournament, every single girl in the team demonstrated great sportsmanship and teamwork. Thanks to this season, the whole team can take away some great memories, skills and newly made friendships. It has been my pleasure to captain and guide the team to be BISAC’s new Under 13 Girls’ Football Champions.

Good luck to all the Year 7s next year and go for the repeat!

The course is designed for non -Thai speakers who have acquired some vocabulary and basic Thai conversational skills. Students acquire a range of vocabulary and a variety of conversational and grammatical patterns. Students will learn about greeting others and introduction themselves, food and drinks, going shopping, places and directions, time and date, daily life and Thai Culture.

Date: Days offered: Time: Taught by: Cost: Venue: Places:

27/02/17 – 07/04/17 (Block 3) Tuesday (Beginner) 8:00-10:00 am Kru Nittaya 3,300 Baht (6 sessions) FHC 208 4–6

Interested parents can enroll by emailing Khun Tip in the Thai Department at jaar@patana.ac.th http://www.patana.ac.th/Gateway/Forms/ThaiCourse/LV1-2Tue.asp

Registration is open now until 01/03/17 If you have any problems with registration please contact Khun Tip (Thai Department) at jaar@patana.ac.th

Block 3 ECAs commence on Monday 27th February. Parents can check the new bus number for their child on Sunday evening after 6pm. Please help your child and Transport by informing them of their bus number in advance – it may be a different bus number each day!  Please also check that your child’s ECA schedule is correct.  Bus numbers relate to the finish time of the ECA. MK/MT – 1:50pm bus HK/HT – 2:30pm bus A – 3:45pm bus D – 4:30pm bus C – Bus Cancelled If you notice anything is incorrect please contact Transport. 



Please remember to make any changes to your child's transport before 11:00am daily. More notice is preferred if possible.



Please be reminded that Transport will not call parents or ring doorbells in the morning if a student does not come to the bus. Please ensure your child is ready when the bus arrives.

Secondary Students  Students are expected to get to their buses on time in the afternoon. Please do not delay the buses departure and if you are late it will not wait for you.

Contact Us The Transport Department’s direct phone number is 02 785 2470. The office is staffed from 6:00am - 6:00pm Monday to Friday. You can also contact us via email at transport@patana.ac.th

Our Lost Property gallery is now live in the Community pages on Firefly, so why not take a look and see if your lost property is there.

Click here for LOST PROPERTY

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643 Lasalle Road (Sukhumvit 105) Bangna, Bangkok 10260. THAILAND Tel: +66 (0) 2785 2200 Fax: +66 (0) 2785 2399 www.patana.ac.th Email: reception@patana.ac.th