Our mission is to ensure that students of different nationalities grow to their full potential as independent learners in a caring British international community.
Patana
NEWS
Friday 6th June 2020
Volume 22 Issue 33
www.patana.ac.th
VIRTUAL CONTINUOUS PROFESSIONAL LEARNING Katherine Hume, Cross Campus Assistant Principal: Continued Professional Learning
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Also in this issue...
Who Won the 500 Challenge?/Lost Property Online/University Offers 05/06/2020
Bangkok Patana School News
Bangkok Patana is a not-for-profit IB World School accredited by CIS
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Academic Continuous Professional Learning (CPL) Day Katherine Hume, Cross Campus Assistant Principal: Continued Professional Learning
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he first of May 2020 will go down in Bangkok Patana history as being the very first “Virtual Professional Learning Day’, for academic staff. As you can imagine, due to the current COVID-19 situation, the day looked a little different to normal, but we were still aiming to use and value the time as best we could to ensure this was a valuable opportunity for teachers to come together - to learn, reflect and collaborate.
During the day, staff used both Firefly, our established school learning platform, and Microsoft Teams, to share information and connect with colleagues. The day included a mixture of optional and essential CPL elements, and within this structure there were opportunities for independent and collaborative teacher learning.
We began the day by sharing the new school Well-being Policy with staff and giving everyone an opportunity to Each year we schedule into the calendar five CPL days familiarise and reflect on this. This then led into our annual across the academic school year. The teacher Continuous safeguarding refresher training. All academic staff underProfessional Learning (CPL) days in October and May took ‘Mental Well-being for Young People’, an accredgive us the opportunity to focus on developing teachers’ ited, online course, provided by the UK based EduCare pedagogy, often with an external educational expert who organisation. To deepen staff's understanding of the trainwill deliver CPL during those days. We also schedule in ing, a discussion and reflection session, virtually through time for teachers to undertake mandatory training around MS Teams, took place following this. Questions within the students safeguarding, as well as having time to collabo- discussion were structured to ensure understanding of the rate in faculties and teams, working towards whole school, content and to encourage thinking about how this new team and individual professional learning objectives. The knowledge fits within our international context here at time dedicated to these days is so important to student Bangkok Patana with our students. learning as it enables us as educators to develop the A very successful element of the day took place across knowledge and skills we need to address students’ learnthe Primary School. Staff came together in small groups ing challenges. with colleagues from all areas of the Primary School, to “We take what we learn from these days share their learning journeys of Continuing Student Learnstraight to work back in the classroom.” ing and MS Teams. This enriched discussion gave teachers the opportunity to reflect on the current CSL provision, The recent CPL day was originally planned to link to what is working well, what could be even better, and our whole school objective of ‘Promoting, valuing and how could this continue to evolve so we are best meeting nurturing Well-being in our community to support student the students’ needs, both with regards to well-being and learning’, and Natasha Devon, a Well-being expert from learning. Teachers particularly valued the opportunity to the UK, was due to join us as our keynote speaker for the connect with colleagues outside of their team and hear day (Natasha has kindly agreed to reschedule her visit for about and learn from each other's personal professional October 2020, if the situation allows). We revised and learning and growth over the last few months, and the imsimplified the structure of the day, whilst keeping with the pact this has had on their students. main Well-being theme.
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Within the Secondary School and the Cross Campus Academy teams, colleagues had the opportunity to select an aspect of self-directed learning. This ranged from upskilling themselves further with MS Teams, or other technology programmes that enhances teaching and learning, such as Padlet and Flipgrid, or exploring exam.net. To round off the day, colleagues from across the school had the opportunity to explore and delve deeper into specific Well-being CPL. MS Teams gave us the structure to provide and share a whole library of CPL resources linked to Well-being. These range from podcasts, webinars, professional reading articles and online courses, facilitated and delivered by educational experts from across the globe. We're now looking forward to our next CPL days in October when we will be welcoming Natasha Devon (Well-being) and Tom Sherrington (Learning) to Bangkok Patana to share their expertise with our teachers. Some of the feedback we received from staff... ‘I really appreciated the opportunity to meet and talk with colleagues that I never talked with before. I really liked the pace of MS. I think working with small groups like we’ve done today, in a virtual space, helps to deepen the discussion, there is an increased respect for listening to each other.’ ‘This day was for me a real joy to reconnect with colleagues and Patana ‘s Spirit, I miss this so much!’ ‘A fantastic CPL day today. I appreciated the chance to stop and think about wellbeing before moving forward with the next piece of CSL planning – it helps remind us of our top priorities. I also really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with colleagues outside of my department - it was great to be reminded that we’re still working as part of a big family, living this strange experience together! I feel really refreshed after the day’ ‘It was a really great approach and balance of independent study and team time. It gave us the opportunity to share our thoughts and experience in CSL and Well-being, which sometimes in a large school feels really difficult to do. I for one really appreciated the chance to feedback and make a possible contribution.’’ ‘All very well organised – great job. Useful mix of independent learning and team talk, and it was particularly nice to mix with colleagues from across the school and see some different faces.’ And finally, the model we implemented for the CPL day continues to be used by teams across the school. ‘Just to let you know that we got so much good feedback from the opportunity for small groups to chat on the CPL day that we decided to try it for FS team meetings. We did it for the first time last week and the team REALLY enjoyed it. This really helps us to get a broad picture of different aspects of our CSL provision across the team and to develop it accordingly. We were certainly inspired by the CPL day model.
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Term 3 Lost Property Display is now available online! M
issing something? Be sure and claim your items now - pickup available starting 8th June. Send an email to lostproperty@patana.ac.th. All remaining items that are not claimed by 26th June will be donated so be sure and check for your lost items now.
CHECK FOR YOUR LOST ITEMS HERE
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A Poem by Vanchai (Gavo) Phromvanich, 3H
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Breaking 500 Challenge Secondary Physical Education Curriculum Department
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fter seven days of tough, closely fought competition between Year groups and the Houses, the BPS Breaking 500 Challenge finally ended on Sunday at 8.00pm. With over 440 entries including, students, staff and family members we managed to cover a combined total distance of 1,446 miles. To put that distance into context we could have walked from Bangkok Patana School to Kuala Lumpur and almost all the way back! Unfortunately, no House managed to complete the 500 mile challenge, Samui and family members came very close to reaching that target with 486 and 401 miles covered respectively. However, the fact we did not manage to break the 500 mile barrier should in no way be deemed, or thought of, as a failure. The whole idea and motivation behind this challenge was to get everyone physically active and for our Patana community to experience the joy of some healthy, fun competition (something we have missed for a while now)! In this regard, any miles covered would have been a success and worthwhile, let alone the 1446 we managed! The other, longer-term aim of this challenge was to get the community interested in, and, if possible develop a passion for walking and/or running. If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it is that it is vitally important for us to keep our bodies as healthy as possible. Movement can help greatly with this and a good target for everyone is to move around 10,000 steps per day. By moving regularly, we are able to maintain healthy body weight and in general live longer, healthier lives (particularly when coupled with good nutrition). Not only will regular movement help us physically but also walking or running is great for our well-being. Going for a walk can help reduce stress and can even be an antidote to mild depression. If your mood is down, try a brisk walk or run to clear the grey clouds and maintain your mental health.
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At the Physical Education Department, we are so grateful to everyone who took part in the Challenge and we really appreciate the enthusiasm and competitive spirit shown by you all. We really hope that you enjoyed taking part in the competition and that some of you have picked up a newfound passion for walking or running which you continue to carry on in the future. Please read below a short analysis of the event by our Year 10 GCSE student Bianca Bertoli. One thing that I found very interesting from analysing the data by Year groups is that the number of miles decrease in a negative correlation - with the Year 7 students running the most (284 miles, which in fact is more than Phuket did as a whole) and the Year 13s running the least with 14 miles. This same negative correlation is also the case with the data showing participation with Year 7 students accounting for 20.9 percent of entries, whilst the Year 13 students made up 1.6% of the entries. Furthermore, approximately 59 percent of those who took part were females and the other 41 percent were males. From looking at the data I thought it would be nice to give some special mentions to some people that put in particularly large amounts of effort. Ms Chatterton submitted one score of 18.95 miles. Ms Thew submitted a score of 12.4 miles and Ella in Year 11 (Samui) submitted a distance of 9.32 miles. Some more special mentions go to Anna (Year 11) who submitted eight entries totalling a distance of 13.74 miles; Clara (Year 12) who submitted six entries totally a distance of 17.9 mile and Leti (Year 7) who submitted six entries totalling a whopping 28.14 miles. Overall, this challenge was very interesting to see how the data corresponds to the different categories like Year group and gender and additionally it was very fun to partake in. Hopefully next time we can achieve even more.
Invoices for school fees for Term 1 2020/21 were emailed to families/companies on Wednesday 13th May 2020. If you have not received your invoice please contact the Accounting Department accounts@patana.ac.th. Please note that the due date for settlement is on Tuesday 30th June. 05/06/2020
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UNI OFFERS... Gabriel Mattei, Year 13 Congratulations on offers from
• The Royal Veterinary College of London • University of Edinburgh • University of Bristol To study Veterinary Medicine
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abriel, well known throughout the school for his reptile presentations to Foundation Stage, has received offers from three different universities to study Veterinary Medicine; The Royal Veterinary College of London, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Bristol. He plans to attend the Royal Veterinary College of London. “My first choice is the Royal Veterinary College as I went to the summer school they host and loved it. The university has also always been highly ranked and well known in the world of veterinary medicine. I’ve been caring and keeping reptiles since I was six years old and it has always been a dream of mine to become a veterinarian.”
IN THE SPOTLIGHT... University of York Located in the historic and charming city of York in Yorkshire, this member of the one of the Russell Group was established in 1963 and has more than 30 departments and centres covering a broad range of subjects. York has a college system with students in one of nine colleges, offering a tight knit community feeling. The original campus is well-known for its stunning lake with a large population of waterfowl, the southern end of the lake is a bird sanctuary. York has an impressive reputation for research and has produced such notable computer scientists as Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood. The school is also well-known for the quality of Arts, with such notable alumni as Jung Cheng, author of Wild Swans, writer Ian Bailey and journalist Peter Hitchens. A large number of alumni who have been active in politics, including at least fifteen Members of the United Kingdom Parliament, five members of the House of Lords, two Members of the Scottish Parliament, one Member of the European Parliament and several ministers of other governments around the world.
2020/21 CALENDAR BOOKMARK NEXT YEAR’S CALENDAR
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#156: Jigsaws Anyone?
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erhaps you’ve completed all of your analoue jigsaws in your household? If so, then you’ll find hundreds more here: https://www.jigsawplanet.com/ If you sign up for free you can even upload your own photos and send to friends or family to compete with them online. Have a great weekend. Brian Taylor Assistant Principal, Campus Curriculum Technology Integration
05/06/2020
Bangkok Patana School News
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Desert Island Discs With David Larking Curriculum Leader, Instrumental Music
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his column follows in the style of the famed BBC podcast which features a celebrity every week – here we feature our own Bangkok Patana celebrities! What eight songs, one luxury item and one book would you take with you if you were stuck on a desert island? Today David Larking, Curriculum Leader of Instrumental Music is stuck on a desert island. MR LARKING, IF YOU WERE STUCK ON A DESERT ISLAND WHAT EIGHT PIECES OF MUSIC WOULD YOU WANT TO HAVE WITH YOU? Miles Davis – So What Harry Connick Jr. – Red Light, Blue Light (Someone’s There) Stevie Wonder – Sir Duke Al Green – Love and Happiness Cubanismo – Descarga De Hoy Stevie Ray Vaughn – The Sky is Crying
Listen to Mr Larking’s playlist here
Gustav Mahler – Symphony box set Gregory Porter – It’s Probably Me PICK ONE LUXURY ITEM YOU WOULD WANT TO HAVE WITH YOU. THIS ITEM MUST BE INANIMATE AND OF NO USE IN ESCAPING THE ISLAND OR ALLOWING COMMUNICATION FROM OUTSIDE. My tried and tested 30+ year old trumpet! WHICH ONE BOOK WOULD YOU WANT TO HAVE WITH YOU? Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse Catch the real Desert Island Discs on BBC. Now that you are stuck at home, what are you listening to? Have a list of your own? Let us know! Contact SHKN with your favourites.
Click Here For Updates and Information on the School’s COVID-19 Procedures 10
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Student Well-being Tips POSTER BY PRAEWA TAYLOR, 10B
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POSTER BY JESSICA (JESS) BASTIN, 10L
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