Bloomsbury Newsletter, February 2021

NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 2021 Bloomsbury International School Hatyai

Principal's Welcome It is with great pride and excitement that I write this first Principal’s message at the end of my first term. I am honoured to be here at Bloomsbury International School, Hatyai. I have been asked to introduce myself for those who don’t know me. I have been a Principal of 7 different schools. Six of those schools have been in the UK with only one other being an International School. Some of the schools I have led have been big with over 700 pupils and some small with only 240 pupils. Recently, I have been employed by both London and Bristol councils as an expert in rapid school improvement. In my last post, I led two schools as an Executive Principal in London; each school having around 360 pupils. I have a wife who will be joining the school in August, one daughter and two grandchildren! I am originally from N. Ireland but have been living in Bristol since 1990. This term I have been warmly welcomed by the staff, pupils and parents in school. The staff have really gone out of their way to support my leadership. I would like to let the community know that we have a dedicated hard working staff team determined to do their best for the pupils in school. I have asked a lot of the team in a short period of time and they have responded brilliantly. This is a really great sign and points to a bright future for Bloomsbury. I cannot stress enough just how important an aspect of a school’s capacity for greatness a willing dedicated staff team is.

It is my belief that everything in school should be for the benefit of the pupils in our care. We at Bloomsbury will do everything we can to make your children happy as they learn. There is no doubt that the achievement of our students is built upon the partnership between students, parents and staff. It is through the quality of the teaching and learning, the student support and commitment to extra-curricular activities that we create the building blocks of success. We want this school to be the best there is. To begin to achieve that goal, we have employed two outstanding experts in their fields. One of these experts is due to start in April, as a primary class teacher and as the lead in student support. This role is often referred to as SENCO. Ms Poppy Wells has been the winner of the prestigious Newly Qualified Teacher award for London in 2019. She has also delivered a TED talk and is completing her Educational Masters Degree in Special and Inclusive Education. She was awarded a first class honours in her teaching degree at a London top class university. The second expert is a world renowned educator who will develop the teaching of English across the school, in all subjects. She leads training for Talk for Writing across the world and is well renowned for the expertise she brings to any school she works with. Her brief will be teaching and learning and parent liaison. She will join us in August. Finally, it is with pride that we announce that we will be hosting A Level classes next year. To do this we will be employing a specialist Physics teacher, who will also be able to offer triple credit science. Along with our expert English teachers, music specialist teachers and our arts teachers we have a great team dedicated to the best results and whole child development, no matter what your child is interested in. These are exciting times for Bloomsbury, we are so glad you will be here to enjoy the ride!

MEASURING UP In Bloomsbury we follow the extremely well thought of Singapore maths curriculum. We also make sure that children really understand maths so we make it meaningful too. Here you can see Year 2 estimating sizes and learning how long things really are. This conceptual understanding of number in different forms when children are young is vital to produce keen mathematicians in the future.

SAFETY FIRST At Bloomsbury International School Hatyai, we take the children’s safety extremely seriously. On Monday 8th February we conducted a fire drill safety inspection. It is with pleasure that we can report no major issues and the children knew exactly what to do in the event of an evacuation. Well done to the children and staff for managing this so calmly and to Ms Lizz for organising such an effective system.

GONG XI FA CAI กงสีฟาไฉ 恭喜发财 On Wednesday 10th February we celebrated Chinese New Year together as a whole school. We baked traditional Bao buns and made up stories for their chosen shapes. During the afternoon we watched and enjoyed a professional Lion Dance whilst listening to the drummers beat their rhythms. We set off fire crackers, (well balloons!) wore our Zodiac face masks, we danced in the hall and listened to stories. But most of all we were together as a school. We could only welcome a limited number of parents to watch because of Covid 19. Many thanks must go to our Mandarin teacher, Kru Khing for organising such a great day, but also to his helpers Ms Peng and Mr Tom. I think my favourite part were the dances performed by the students. It was interesting to see the different aspects of Thai culture that weaves so clearly through this most Chinese of traditions. This cultural exchange is exactly why we love International Education.

FOOD HOUSE After Easter, we will be using a new food company to deliver our lunches. The Food House are a well respected company with a good reputation for great food. The school have been paying for the dinners out of the teaching and learning budget, which is not right. We have opted to add the cost of dinners to the school bill. The quality of food will improve with this added cost. This is in line with every other international school in Thailand. The school will make no profit from this change. Visit www.foodhouse.co.th to learn more. We are excited about this massive improvement to our catering services.

SCIENCE This week the unfortunate students in Year 8 and in Year 10 had to do the dissection part of the biology curriculum. They had to cut up a heart in Year 8 and in Year 10 they also dissected the lungs. Students are allowed to withdraw, if they cannot face the dissection, but nearly all braved the test in the name of scientific learning. Well done. We wish to thank Ms Evans for organising this most dramatic but vital of lessons, and to Mr Chang for supporting.

ART We are proud of all our teachers and students here at Bloomsbury. But this term we are particularly proud of our Year 11 art students and Ms Duncan their inspirational teacher. Ms Dunn submitted their coursework and all students are on track for an A or above. In the background you can see why.

PARENT FORUM MEETING We held our first parent forum meeting in February. We were expecting 12 parents and ended up with 36! Thank you all for coming. We talked about lots of different items. One was the vision for the school. Parents said they want our pupils to be hardworking, warm, friendly, kind and great people. We have recently updated our vision and values for the school with the help of the student council, some parent representatives and the staff and SLT. We hope to be able to share with you what this looks like in the near future. During the meeting we discussed that some pupils wear non uniform items, such as hoodies. Parents said that this was because their children were cold. We looked at some examples of jumpers and cardigans and parents agreed that this would be a good addition to the uniform as long as they were non-statutory. Mr Strubelt is looking into this and we hope to have this ready for next academic year. We talked about the next meeting which will be for representatives for primary and representatives from Secondary. If you would like to be involved in one of these groups please let Khun Na know.

SHORT NEWS Council of International Schools Assessment Accreditation The primary department are to begin As you may be aware we are hoping to using new assessments next term. These achieve CIS accreditation this year. We will make the job of reporting back to were aiming for April to be inspected. parents clearer and easier to understand. However, I wish to inform you that due to Covid19 no physical inspections can occur One word of caution, these exams are until August. Also, they have changed the extremely tough. They are sat by the top assessment criteria this year so all the students in the UK in English, Maths, and teachers have to rewrite and then Grammar. But we want to compare resubmit the evidence for this prestigious ourselves to the best, to be the best. The award. We still feel confident of achieving exams will be three times a year. this award but we have had to put the time frame back a little. We will celebrate just that little bit harder when we gain our accreditation. English Say goodbye The expert EAL department have asked to It is with sadness that we must report that train all the teaching staff in EAL Ms Kate Adams leaves us at the end of this techniques next term. They want all staff, term. This was a decision based upon in every department, to be fully aware of being closer to home in the UK during how to provide the most effective method these difficult Covid 19 times. We wish her of English acquisition, regardless of the well on her next adventures and thank her lesson. We look forward to the results next for her hard work whilst here. We shall term. miss her both as a colleague and a friend. Her Year 6 post will be filled by Ms Elizabeth (Poppy) Wells.

TERM DATES Term 2 Dates Monday 18th January 2021 Friday 9th April 2021 First day of term Last day of term Monday 15th February 2021 Half Term Break, Term 2 Monday 22nd February 2021 School closes School re-opens Monday 19th April 2021 Friday 2nd July 2021 Term 3 Dates First day of term Last day of term Activities International Woman’s Day Songkran Celebration March 8th 2021 World Art Day April 1st 2021 Star Wars Day World Music Day & Bloomsfest 19th 2021 May 4th 2021 29th 2021