Patana News Volume 19 Issue 25 by Bangkok Patana School

Patana

NEWS

Jazz and Blues Party The Importance of Home Languages / Reducing Plastic / The Roar Bangkok Patana is an IB World School, accredited by CIS and NEASC

t Bangkok Patana, we are privileged to have over 60 nationalities at our school, with almost as many languages as well. As a school, we recognise the importance of the languages that our community members speak and the cultures of which these languages are part. A recent IB study highlighted the fact that language is a key element of international-mindedness and global citizenship, and a “window into culture”. The UN also acknowledges that “... languages play a vital role in development, in ensuring cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue... in building inclusive knowledge societies and preserving cultural heritage...”

Here at Bangkok Patana, we define Global Citizenship as ‘Taking responsibility for positive and respectful contributions to communities and the environment, from local to global’. Under our Global Citizenship um-

brella, we include ‘intercultural understanding’ as a key strand of focus. Global Citizenship also underpins our school values and includes attributes such as being diverse and inclusive, being ethical and informed and being empowered by our interculturalism. Understanding the value and supporting the growth of Home Languages is a vital component of Intercultural Understanding and Global Citizenship as a whole.

The Home Languages (HOLA) programme is largely driven by the needs of our community, so this means that the selection of languages on offer is constantly evolving to meet community needs, with oversight from the school to ensure the quality of the provision and the adherence to our safeguarding procedures. In order to support our community in maintaining and developing their Home Languages, there are incurriculum HOLA options as well as a number of academic-focused HOLA ECAs, but we would like to see this grow even more to meet our ever-developing learning community needs.

At Bangkok Patana, we are always looking for practical and creative ways to meet the needs of our learners and are seeking feedback on the HOLA needs of the community. Currently, the main focus of our ECA HOLA is academic, but we would like to develop the idea of Home Language ECAs which have more social/creative focus and provide the opportunity for the learners to use and hear their home languages through a variety of contexts. In order to do this, we need your help. Because our HOLA programme is driven by your needs, we would love to hear from you about what languages we could possibly offer as part of the HOLA programme. The data that we gather will be used to feed into a larger whole school languages review set to take place next year, which will encompass EAL/MFL/Thai and HOLA.

Keeping your culture and language alive at home will reinforce in your children a sense of identity and will build their self-esteem. Children benefit from learning to value their roots and their culture. Children must be taught that we are all different and that differences must not only be accepted but also celebrated and that their culture and language is something they have to take pride in. Regardless of whether your child is part of the HOLA programme, here are five things that you can do to support the development of your Home Language: 

Use the Home Language at home



Read books and sing songs to your child in your Home Language



Find music in your Home Language that appeals to your child



Provide opportunities for your child to mix with other children who speak your language



Make regular opportunities to meet extended family (Skype/FaceTime etc. are marvellous!)

Ondine Ullman (Acting Assistant Principal for Learning and Curriculum; Leader of Learning for Language Acquisition - Primary School) and Jen Peppard (Head of World Languages - Secondary School)

roject Refill is a group within the Student Environmental Committee which has been formed in order to help Bangkok Patana reduce the amount of plastic it has been using, specifically for drinking bottles. Our aim is to raise awareness around this important issue. We believe this is a significant step in helping our students and staff to become more environmentally aware and to lessen our carbon and plastic footprints. Furthermore, we aim to inspire lifelong habits of refusing single-use plastic wherever possible, as well as reducing, reusing and recycling plastics.

Surveys of our students have shown that they overwhelmingly support initiatives to tackle the issue of disposable plastic and related issues. To this end, Project Refill have been looking at various ways to reduce the need for disposable plastic water bottles that have been sold in the school snack bars. It was felt that a feasible and realistic step in tackling this issue was to cease selling disposable plastic bottles for water as well as iced tea in the Primary and Secondary snack bars.

We felt as an environmentally aware school we should instead encourage our students and staff to bring in reusable water-bottles. Project Refill has also surveyed the campus to ensure that students and staff throughout of the school have readily accessible water-fountains. Students and staff are now actively being encouraged to bring their own reusable bottle into school on a daily basis.

Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to thank the Food Services Department for their amazing support with this initiative. We also would like to thank the community for your support as we take this very significant â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;small stepâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; towards reducing avoidable plastic waste.

s you all must be aware already, the temperature of the earth is increasing constantly because of global warming and climate change. One of the effects of this is the sea level is also increasing which could have a negative impact on several low lying coastal cities including Bangkok! This is just the tip of the iceberg and things will definitely become a lot worse if we don’t all make a conscious effort to make a change. Fortunately, there are various activities to raise awareness of these critical issues and one of the easiest ways to help is to join “Earth Hour”.

Well, Earth Hour is a campaign organised by the WWF and anyone in the world can join in to help make a difference. Your participation will help to raise awareness and could even change lives if governments around the world sit up and listen.

You can participate alone or, better still, you can spread the word to your friends and families about Earth Hour and invite them to join the global event on Saturday 25th March at 8:30pm. During the actual event, all you have to do is switch off all of your lights for one hour. Yes, it’s as simple as that! Over the past ten years, many organisations and millions of people have taken part annually and have made a very positive impact on the environment. Even though turning off your lights for one hour doesn’t stop global warming instantly, the point is that if all of us take the time to participate, we can definitely help raise awareness and encourage other people to reduce their daily activities that release a lot of harmful green house gases!

Be a proud Bangkok Patana global citizen and join us in switching off at 8:30pm tomorrow! For more information, please visit : https://www.earthhour.org/thailand https://www.earthhour.org/what-is-earth-hour

s we head into the hot summer months please be aware that Bangkok Patana has a Heat Management Policy in place which guides staff to take sensible precautions against heat exhaustion and dehydration. This might include indoor lunchtime activity options and extra water breaks during PE lessons. Occasionally it may get so hot we need to cancel and/or relocate a sporting event or activity indoors. If this happens we will communicate this with you through the appropriate channels and ask for your understanding and cooperation. To help our learners stay safe in the sun we recommend: 

  

Applying sunscreen at home before coming to school, bring sunscreen to reapply Encouraging your child to drink plenty of water at home and at school Ensuring your child has a named hat and water bottle in their bag They seek out shade and air conditioning between physical activity if possible

Sunburn and heat stroke are a very real risk in the coming months, so please look after yourselves.

What has been your best sporting memory at Bangkok Patana? FOBISIA Golf and Tennis in general. What is your favorite thing about sport? Learning new techniques and meeting new friends. If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be and why? Fruits because they are healthy and they taste good. Who is your biggest sporting idol? Roger Federer What is your favorite movie? X-men Day of Future Past

CANE PLAYED IN FOBISIA GOLF DURING THE WEEK AND THEN CAME SECOND IN THE C DRAW IN UNDER 15 BISAC TENNIS.

Tina- 3rd overall in Under 13, won Under 13 net Password- 2nd Under 15 boys net Kerryanne- 3rd Over 15 net Patana Tennis

GOOD LUCK TO BOTH BOYS AND GIRLS’ SOFTBALL AND BADMINTON TEAMS PLAYING AT SEASAC THIS WEEKEND. THE BADMINTON WILL BE HELD IN BANGKOK, AT NIST. OUR SENIOR GYMNASTS ARE ALSO HEADING OFF TO TANGLIN TO COMPETE IN SEASAC. GO TIGERS! Our athletes brought home lots of silverware after the BISAC Athletics last weekend. There were lots of amazing individual results, but the team results are as follows:

UNDER 11 GIRLS’ - CHAMPIONS UNDER 11 BOYS’ - CHAMPIONS UNDER 13 GIRLS’ - CHAMPIONS UNDER 13 BOYS’ - 4TH PLACE UNDER 15 GIRLS’ - CHAMPIONS UNDER 15 BOYS’ - CHAMPIONS Bangkok Patana School are hosting the annual SEASAC Softball this weekend, good luck to our Varsity players competing in it! Come along and support our teams in their matches over the weekend.

Follow our Instagram @ bps_athletics_council

GOOD LUCK TO THE UNDER 15 TENNIS PLAYERS PLAYING IN THE TEAM EVENT.

BPSSPORTS

BPSSports Tiger Sports Patana Tennis

University / College

Representative

Location

Date

Time

University of British Columbia

Jeff Kiyooka

Senior Studies, Second Floor

24.03.17