Spotlight on Secondary Spotlight on Secondary
St. Andrews International School Green Valley
February 2019
8th Annual Science Fair The 8th St Andrews Green Valley Science Fair went off with a bang on Thursday January 31 as 160 students from across the Eastern Seaboard and Bangkok gathered to compete in the areas largest academic event. In teams of four, students battled through a variety of challenges earning points to become ‘Science Fair’ champions. Head scratching quizzes, baffling breakouts and awesome engineering projects kept students on their toes throughout the day. Although everybody had fun, the highlight of the day was undoubtedly the ‘Catapult’ challenge that saw a Year 6 team from ISC launch a tennis ball over 100m! Thanks to everybody that came along, our kind sponsors (COGNITA & PTG) and of course the awesome maintenance team that makes putting on an event like this possible. See you next year!
Chinese New Year Celebration A huge thank you to our Mandarin department and to our wonderful parents for organising some amazing activities as part of our Chinese New Year celebrations on Friday February 1. It was a very enjoyable day for all those who took part!
Year 11 Science Goes Aquatic Our Green Valley campus provides us with terrific natural teaching resources, which allows us to embrace the outdoors. This includes our own school pond together with resident ducks! Year 11 have started their new unit on Ecology and have been investigating the biodiversity of our school pond. They used nets, buckets, trays and keys to sample the pond and measured abundance and species richness. Year 11 then constructed food webs and assigned each organism a trophic level after analyzing their data. They applied the biodiversity index and considered abiotic and biotic factors to establish that the school pond is a stable healthy ecosystem with numerous habitats, communities and populations.
Year 13: University Offers Roll In! Exciting times for Year 13 students as University applications have been submitted for the UK, US and Europe and offers of places for August 2019 are now flooding in. Below you can see the wide range of Universities from the UK, Europe and the US that have already made offers to our talented students.
Year 7 - 9 Enrichment Day We had our first ever 'Enrichment Day' for Years 7, 8 and 9 on November 29, the day was inspired by the TV show 'Lost'. They were separated into tribes, in their Island Communities, and each took on four challenges to ensure their survival. This included how to identify dangerous animals and save tribe members from them, how to build a fire, creating a tribal song as a way to communicate peacefully with the indigenous tribe, and decoding ancient languages to find hidden treasure. The day was a great success! Students responded enthusiastically to every challenge thrown at them, and collaborated incredibly effectively in their tribes. Congratulations to all who took part and a huge thank you to all the teachers involved in preparing and running the day.
Year 7 - 9 Exceptional Learners Day Exceptional Learners Day! On Friday December 7, twenty of our students from Years 7, 8 and 9 travelled to Brighton College, Bangkok to take part in the Exceptional Learners Day. Our students participated in workshops involving creating Art Installations, Aerodynamics, Creative Writing, Animation, Building an ROV, Typography, Microbit and small group Breakout Challenges. It was great to see the students being taken out of their comfort zone, engaging in open ended tasks, working in a friendly environment with students from other schools. A fun and challenging day was enjoyed by everyone.
Dutch Trip to Katoen Natie On Wednesday January 30 our Dutch and Belgian students from Year 3 to Year 10 went on a school trip to Katoen Natie in Rayong. Katoen Natie is a famous Belgian logistics company with a great history that dates back to 1854. Over the last 50 years the company grew into a well renowned multinational with over 13,000 employees. Thanks to Anton Colpaert, CEO of the Map Ta Phut branch and father of Lotta, Helena and Flore, our students got a deeper insight into the industrial process and safety and environmental issues that come with it. Some students even got to sit in a forklift truck weighing over two tonnes! A great trip overall and we would like to thank Anton again for this unique opportunity
Learner Profile Award Our Learner Profile Award this week goes to Morgane. She was nominated by Mr Mark for her outstanding Open-Minded approach in Mandarin where she is keen to learn about other cultures and also help new students as they begin their studies in this subject here at St Andrews. Congratulations to Morgane and thank you to Mr Mark for the nomination.
Up-Cycling with Year 8 This term Year 8 art students are upcycling single use plastic containers in order to make them attractive and useful enough to sell. Our new and improved containers are inspired by the work of graffiti artist Banksy and environmental artists such as Angela Haseltine Pozzi and Hundertwasser. Students plan to hold an online or silent auction of these containers to raise money for an Island Community charity.
Year 8 Learns about Coastal Erosion Recently Year 8 Geography took to the outdoors to demonstrate their understanding of coastal erosion GV style with salt dough and fresh air inspiration!
Year 12 IB Artists: A Gifted Group Our IB Visual Arts students in Year 12 are starting to produce some truly outstanding sketchbook pages for their investigation of the word Metamorphosis On this page you can see some examples of their stunning work. For more artwork from St Andrews International School, Green Valley students go to our Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/St-AndrewsInternational-School-Green-Valley-Art-and-Design360509267406691/ Mrs. Castle (Art Teacher)
Still Life Art by Year 7 Year 7 have finished their first large scale artwork! Students have used a range of mediums including charcoal, chalk, pen and torn paper. Pablo Picasso and the style of cubism have been their inspiration and the focus has been on observation skills. Students have created large cubist style compositions with expressive lines and different tones to capture the light falling on objects. To see more artwork from St Andrews International School, Green Valley students go to our Facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/St-Andrews-InternationalSchool-Green-Valley-Art-and-Design-
Art Alumni and Year 10 Art Work The Secondary art department says goodbye and thank you to ex-student and art volunteer Bella. She has made many fabulous displays around school and helped at events from Halloween to Carols by Candlelight. We wish her good luck at university in Australia. Ex-students Jackie and Michelle are art alumni having graduated from the IB Visual Arts course in 2016. They have been visiting to talk with Year 12 art students about life at Mahidol University in Bangkok. We thank them for sharing their experience with us.
Year 10 IGCSE art students are coming to the end of unit one. They have explored the theme of All About Me. Here are some interesting final pieces by Chogoon and Tyler.
Year 8 Trip to Koh Chang Our Year 8 students have recently had a wonderful trip to Koh Chang to study the coastal environment, erosion and weathering, tourism and how humans affect the area. As usual with this trip, the students learned a lot and also had a wonderful time.
Pattaya Family Bike Day Thank you to the team for organising another fabulous Pattaya Family Bike Day on Saturday January 26. It was brilliant to see so many TeamGV cyclists from our community and well done to our CAS students who supported the organisation of the event on the day.
Carols By Candlelight The festive season was in full swing on Wednesday December 12 as the Green Valley community came together for our famous 'Carols by Candlelight' evening. There were some sparkling performances on the stage and everyone joined in with the Christmas spirit! Thank you to everyone who took part and to Ms Cat and Mr Ramsay for organising the amazing line up of musical performances. There will be more photos to follow. Enjoy the rest of the festive season!
Island Community Charities On Thursday January 24 we visited one of our Island Community charities - Baan Chak Mak school. Seven students from TeamGV’s charity activity participated and led games with students from the primary and secondary school. Everyone had fun and got to know one another. This term we move in to the second phase of our charity projects. We will be donating our time and begin working on larger projects. We may need to continue to raise funds throughout the term so these great initiatives can take place. All in all a very rewarding experience for all involved!
Military Training (Ror Dor) Last week the Year 13 students completed their Ror Dor training in Chonburi. To find out more about the Ror Dor programme offered at St Andrews please click here: https://issuu.com/standrewsschool…/…/ror_dor_e08a61a7446301
Year 10 - 13 Mandarin Trip During the recent Mandarin trip students had a great opportunity to extend their learning. They visited Viharn Sien where they had a chance to see the Terracotta Warrior statues, a model of the Great Wall, and statues of Confucius etc. For lunch students made dumplings by themselves and also tried some of the delicious authentic Chinese food. At the end we visited our Kungfu teacher's martial hall and practised for one and half hours with our Kung fu Master.
Learner Profile Awards At St Andrews, we like to regularly celebrate our students who demonstrate outstanding IB Learner Profile attributes. The second half of Term One was very busy, so we completed the term by celebrating two students and their achievements. Eve was nominated as 'Balanced' by Ms Mustovic, for her discussion, computing and cooking skills. Yeonyi was nominated as a 'Risk taker' by Mr McGee for being prepared to go it alone in her debate in PSHE - and winning the debate. Congratulations Eve and Yeonyi!
FOBISIA Swimming Gala On the first weekend back to school in January, St Andrews Panthers fastest swimmers made their way to Bangkok to contest the FOBISIA Swimming Gala. The top swimmers from almost 50 FOBISIA school were at the event so the competition was fierce in every event. Over the course of the 3 day event all of the Panthers swimmers swam PB’s in one or more events - a fantastic achievement. There were also some great individual moments individual moments including Poomjai in Y6 winning GOLD in 100 FR in a field of 55 swimmers, SILVER In 50m BR and BRONZE in 200 BR; and several top 12 placings for James, Stephan, Ella, Victor and Ben. On an incredible final day for Poomjai put on another display of fantastic swimming, winning GOLD in 100 BR and 50 FR and SILVER in the 200 IM, which meant he claimed 2ND OVERALL in the 11/12 category. Ella, James and Victor claimed more top 12 places and our 13/14 boys finished the day winning SILVER in the 200 Freestyle relay in a great display of teamwork. Well done to all our swimmers, not only for your great results but for your team spirit and fantastic sportsmanship!
One Day, One Goal Our annual One Day, One Goal charity football event was another fantastic day and we managed to again raise a huge amount of money for our local charities. The football was a great success for Green Valley with us winning 5 of the 10 competitions and finishing with 5 golds, 2 silvers and 4 bronze medals! It was particularly rewarding to see the two charity teams picking up 3 bronze medals! Thanks to all our sponsors: Cognita, United Football, PTG, Ramayana, Holiday Inn, Taxi Services BanChang, Paddys Palms, Mountain Coffee and many more for supporting us. A big hand to everyone else who also helped out on the day - it was amazing to have so much support.
Kane Resident racing driver Kane from Year 13, took a short time off from revision over the Christmas / New Year holidays for testing in the Asian F3 series car in Sepang. Malaysia. Kane, currently Asian F4 Vice –Champion, was immediately on the pace with the seasoned F3 drivers and after a short break for exams, will hope to compete in the coming season with races in Malaysia, Thailand, Japan and China, subject to completion of sponsorship deals.
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 7
Rodgers And Hammerstein Musical at GV (activity time)
Fri 8
IB Thai students trip to Bangkok
Secondary School Sports Day starting at 10am
Fri 8
KPIS Music Competition
Sat 9
MUN at GIS
16 - 24
Mid Term Break
Tues 12
Little Lunchtime Music Concert
Mon 25
Staff Training Day: no school for students
Wed 13
Wed 27
FOBISIA Drama Students Depart
IGCSE Information Meeting for Year 9 Students and Parents
Thur 28
U13 FOBISIA Games Students Depart
Thur 14
World Pi (Maths) Day
14 - 17
Phuket 3 on 3 Basketball Competition in Phuket
Fri 15
Term 2 Report Cards sent home
Tues 19
IB Art Exhibition Opening
Wed 20
Parent Teacher Meeting Day
26 - 27
IGCSE Art Exam
Tues 26
ESAC Dance Competition at GV
February Tues 12 Thur 14
Parent Information Session on our new Careers Website Unifrog.
March Sat 2
FOBISIA Drama Students Return
Sun 3
Tournament of the Minds competition in Bangkok
Mon 4
U13 FOBISIA Games Students Return
5-8
Year 9 Camping Trip to Khao Yai National Park