Foundation Stage & Key Stage 1: Loy, loy krathong

Students and teachers at St Andrews International School Bangkok will be wearing traditional Thai clothing for this Thursday’s Loy Krathong celebration...We’re down to the final round of Word Mania...Thanks to vaccinations last week we can expect a much lighter flu season in the upcoming year...Find out the steps being taken to deal with the recent uptick in air pollution...STEPS is offering a unique way to get the Christmas season rolling.

Loy Krathong

First a reminder that this year children and teachers will be once again dressing up in Thai Traditional Costumes to celebrate Loy Krathong together. The celebration will be held on Thursday 22 November. (Suitable costumes are available cheaply at the local markets.)

Our celebrations will begin with two assemblies in Primary School:

• 8.30 a.m. - 9.00 a.m. for Y1-Y3
• 9.15am. - 9.45am for Y4-Y6

Our youngest students will be learning about Loy Krathong in their lessons this week and making Krathongs with their parents - more details will be sent to you by the individual class teachers.

 The following message is from Khun Toon who is helping to coordinate the assemblies:

On behalf of the Thai Dance Club, I would like to invite you to watch the Thai performance for St Andrews International School Bangkok’s Loy Krathong Assembly. This year, we proudly present “The Khon Performance”: Episode of Jong Thanon (Building the Road).

The Khon Performance is a high class performance that is performed only on special occasions. Moreover, this is the first time ever for St Andrews’ students to be Khon performers so please to come along and support your child.

This performance will take place on Thursday 22 November in the assemblies at 8.30 - 9.00 and again from 9.15 - 9.45 a.m. in the Sports Hall.

Word Mania - A message from Ms Leanne

Congratulations to EVERY year group in Primary, as they have all made it to the final round of Word Mania. This is a super achievement, and the children should be proud of themselves. When I have spoken to students and teachers about this competition, they have said how much fun it has been, which is great to hear. It should really be helping to improve the children's literacy skills too. The final round continues until Friday 23 November, so please encourage your child to play Word Mania as much as possible.

Flu Vaccinations

On Friday afternoon we welcomed Samitivej Hospital into school as we held the second of our Annual Influenza Vaccination Drives. Children of all ages, along with parents, teachers and helpers came along, and in the end there were around 250 people vaccinated. Hopefully this will help to combat the severity of the flu season.

Reading Meeting

Thank you to all the teachers who supported the reading meeting last week and to all the parents who came along to find out more about how the teaching of reading is approached in FS3, Year 1 and Year 2. There was a good turn out and hopefully new parents, in particular, took away some advice on how to support their children at home.

Air Pollution

Many of you will be aware that the air pollution in Bangkok rose last week and, like us, have concerns about how this will impact the health and education of the children. Since the problems we had in the city last year we have added additional Filtrete 3M filter systems to all of the aircon units in school and have also installed 6 of our own air quality monitors across the campus in order to check hour-by-hour the exact pollution levels on our Primary site - which are often very different to the general averages from across the city.

When these levels are high we adapt our schedule for the day, maybe restricting younger students to inside areas, reducing play times, or having indoor play times on particularly bad days, changing PE venues or activities, cancelling swimming etc.

Fancy doing something a bit different?

The Vocational Training Centre STEPS, who run our wonderful Primary Cafe, is offering a different way for you and your family to start getting into the Christmas spirit. Join them on the next 4 Saturday mornings to Christmas Sing and Sign. No experience necessary and it is completely free of charge.

Dates for your Diary