Rugby School Thailand eNewsletter

Matters of Principal

This week Mr Grindlay talks about virtual reality and concludes that the computer is in no way superior to the human brain.

Whole School Reminders

PARENT SURVEY
We would really value your thoughts about what you like at RST and what we could do better.

Please complete the below survey link by Monday 9^th May so your thoughts can be added to those of the staff and the students to inform our plans going forward.

English version - Google Form Link
Thai Version - Google Form

Half Term Dates
Friday 13^th May: Half-Term Begins
Tuesday 17^th May: Boarders Return
Wednesday 18^th May: School Resumes

Whole School News

FOBISIA ACCREDITATION VISIT
We have been delighted to host the CEO of FOBISIA (Federation of British International Schools in Asia), John Gwyn Jones MBE and the Principal of St Andrew's Bangkok, Paul Schofield, at RST for our membership accreditation. We have enjoyed having them here and showing our wonderful School to them and await the next steps regarding our membership application.

COBIS 2022 STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
We are delighted to announce that two of our Senior students, Georgia and Rew, have been selected in the COBIS 2022 Student Achievement Awards. The award recognises outstanding individual achievements or contributions to an aspect of School or community life, and it is a fantastic accolade for two exemplary RST students. As a side note, we love the way that rather than producing awards, COBIS makes a charitable donation to Cool Earth on behalf of the nominated students. Cool Earth is a charity that works alongside rainforest communities to halt deforestation and its impact on climate change. This is a wonderful award to be part of, in every way!

WISDOM FIT
We are excited to announce that we have 52 members that have signed up to Wisdom Fit. If you are interested in joining, please head over to the gym where a member of the team will happily support you in achieving your fitness goals.

Senior News

Announcements

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS NETWORK BLOG
Mr Paul Woodward from the Senior D&T department has yet again been published in the 'International Schools Network' Blog.

His article looks at how 3D Art currently addresses elements of D&T (particularly in the UK) which is now causing a decline in the take up of D&T subjects. Mr Woodward argues that we value how ‘unique’ each subject is here at RST and that the creative skills involved in the respective subjects complement rather than compete with each other.

You can read the full article here.

NEW SENIOR LIBRARIAN APPOINTED
We are pleased to announce the appointment of our new Senior Librarian, Ms Sulindy Collacott. Many students will already know Ms Collacott, who has been ably assisting the secretarial team at the Senior Reception for the past few months. With this appointment, we look forward to making greater use of the library to encourage reading for both academic reasons and for pleasure. Students are encouraged to use the library during break and lunch times to ask Ms Collacott for recommendations for reading and to check out books.

THANK YOU TO THE OUTGOING HEADS OF SCHOOL
A huge thank you to our Heads of School, Cherry T and Alex F. They have been wonderful ambassadors for RST; it has been great to have them sensibly support School leadership. Their fine example to others has inspired and brought together the student body.

Cherry and Alex will focus on their examinations now and formally hand over to the new Heads of School, Pun J and Albert S, at our Speech Day / Graduation Ceremony on Saturday 18th June.

Reminders & Dates for your Diary

EXAMS: 2nd MAY - 24th JUNE
XX and D Block External Examinations

SCHOOL SPEECH DAY - SATURDAY 18th JUNE
Could parents please arrive by 10.45am at the latest. All senior students are required to attend in full School uniform (mandatory)

BATTLE OF THE BANDS
Senior Music presents “Battle of the Bands” which will be on the last day of term this year (23^rd June). The event promises to be a great celebration of music, with bands from across the School competing in an outdoor venue. Please scan the QR code for further details including highlights of 2020's event, rules, entry forms and song ideas.

Students interested in performing should speak to Mr. Costin or Mr. Furness and book rehearsal times for mentoring and support. The audition deadline is 3^rd June at the RST Recording Studio.

SATURDAY SPORT
Please see the below schedule for the Saturday sport on offer on 7th May:

Outgoing Levee

This week we had the opportunity to thank our outgoing Levee (Student Leadership), from left to right, Tan T, Alex R, Alex F, (Mr Grindlay, Principal), Cherry T, Mook O, Milly H.

The Levee have done a fantastic job leading their houses and modelling kindness, humility and inclusivity amongst the student body. We will get to say goodbye to them formally on Saturday 18th June at our annual Speech Day/Graduation Ceremony.

Final Assembly For XX

This week XX students attended their final assembly for the year. Congratulations to all the students who were presented with awards!

People's Choice Award for House Drama: School House

Senior Boys Basketball Winners: Sheriff House

Senior Girls Basketball Winners: Rupert Brooke

Senior Boys Cross Country Winners: Sheriff House

Senior Girls Cross Country Winners: Southfield House

Senior Boys Football Winners: School House

Senior Girls Football Winners: Tudor House

Senior Boys Sports Day Winners: School House

Senior Girls Sports Day Winners: Southfield House

Below is a short video of our Head Girl (Cherry) and Head Boy (Alex) addressing XX students for the final time:

Southfield Celebrations

Southfield House celebrated the achievements of their students this week after they won the Inter-house Cross Country event as well as the Girls Sports Day. Special thanks go to Victoria, their dedicated and hard-working Sports Sixth. Well done, Southfield!

Town House Celebrations

Town House were awarded the annual Senior Academic Challenge trophy following a barnstorming performance in the Challenge final, against runners-up, Southfields. Town House's four-person team included students in F-Block and E-Block, Xander and Andrei, to ensure a broad representation within the house. Team captain, Ohm, led the way in correctly answering the bulk of the 'starter for ten' questions. Louis added expert knowledge on the 'sports and games' questions. Southfields put up a spirited performance and were worthy runners up this year.

Piano Wins Award

It's wonderful to hear that Piano, one of our F Block boarders in Rupert Brooke, has been taking part in some singing competitions in her spare time and has achieved great things in them, too.

In the 9th 'HKYPAF' finals, Piano made it to the 3rd place and in another nationwide contest on Luk_Krung (Thai Urban Music), she achieved 6th place with gold medal distinction. Congratulations, Piano!

Learning

SCIENCES
D Block, LXX and XX students have been working hard over the past couple of weeks preparing for their upcoming exams, improving their exam techniques by attempting exam questions in class, and working through practice mock exams.

F block students have been continuing to improve their experimental and investigative skills, with students creating and testing their own experiments to represent various chemical reactions such as combustion, oxidation, displacement and decompositions.

There has been some excellent and outstanding digital design work submitted during the last week from our students:

Meme has designed an adjustable magnetic iPad stand:

Nicki has designed a children’s learning toy with one half a sketching pad with magnetic pen and the other half with a ball bearing game:

Lynne has designed a jewelry cleaning station for her mother’s friend, rendered in premium materials:

Bogdan has designed a space saving, modular home gym with detachable parts, and looked to use some premium materials to make it stand out. This project was devised because of the gym closures during Covid. The idea was to design something sleek that did not take up a lot of space in an apartment, with add-ons to allow for a wide range of workouts.

GEOGRAPHY - E BLOCK
Whilst listening to 80s music, E block students demonstrated their knowledge and creativity with annotated playdough waterfall diagrams.

Better than the normal textbook examples, these models included mermaids and bananas students can learn more deeply when- collaborating with others, being creative, and having unusual stimuli.

GEOGRAPHY - F BLOCK
This week, F Block students have been challenged to explore inequality. They have judged housing and used their evidence to discuss how it affects quality of life in different parts of the world. Students used Google Earth, maps and videos to look at different indicators of development in different locations.

LXX UNIVERSITY CHOICES
This week, LXX students presented their research on different countries and regions for university to the rest of the LXX cohort in the Science Lecture Theatre. They were working in groups according to their second-choice university interests, and presented on areas that included the USA/Canada, Europe, Asia, UK, Thailand and Gap Years.

Their task was to present different aspects of studying in these places that related to the cost of living, how much it costs to study there, some of the elite universities in these regions, etc. They did a great job as they begin to think about where or what they wish to do next year after their A level studies have been completed.

DRAMA
D Block IGCSE Drama students spent their last lesson before study leave completing a full mock exam and munching on brownies. We wish them the very best of luck in their forthcoming exams!

Tudor D Block Farewell

This week we wished Tudor D block students all the best for their exams by celebrating at Scrummy café with balloons, smoothies and brownies!

Prep News

Announcements & Reminders

SHREK COSTUMES
Thank you to those parents who have already brought in their child's Shrek costume. To ensure that we are ready for our performances on 25^th and 26^th May, can parents who have not yet brought in their child’s Shrek costume, do so by Monday’s deadline please?

If you have any questions, please contact Mrs Keane (akeane@rugbyschool.ac.th)

HATS AND SUNCREAM
A reminder that all students should apply sun cream before coming to School and they should also wear a hat when outdoors. Please ensure students have spare sun cream in their bags that they can reapply when necessary. We will also be monitoring hat wearing in the playground and on the sports field to prevent the children from burning in the sun.

JEWELLERY
A reminder that students should wear only one pair of stud earrings. No other jewellery is permitted.

PVGIM ARIA, ART SONG AND ENSEMBLE COMPETITION
Last weekend Rute, one of our weekly boarders in the Prep School, took part in the 'PVGIM Aria, Art Song and Ensemble Competition' organized by Princess Galayani Vadhana Institute of Music. Rute was one of the youngest of 28 finalists at the event, where he sang two songs (Che Farò Senza Euridice and Lascia Ch’io Pianga) live in front of the judges and was awarded the “Encouragement Award”. A brilliant achievement, congratulations Rute!

Dates for your Diary

SATURDAY, 30 APRIL - FOOTBALL FIXTURES
RST will be hosting the U12 boys and the U12 girls football tournament this weekend against NIST and Bangkok Patana.

TUESDAY, 3 MAY - INTERNATIONAL DAY
A reminder that we will be celebrating our global community on Tuesday 3 May. As part of this event, students are encouraged to wear clothes or colours that represent their country.

SATURDAY, 7 MAY (09:45 - 12:00)
Saturday Enrichment Programme - Please sign-up for SEP on Saturday 7 May 2022 before Tuesday. We will be offering:

Year 3-4 Snack Attack
Year 3-7 Nature Walk
Year 5-6 DIY Kite making
Year 5-7 Mountain Biking

SATURDAY, 7 MAY SHREK REHEARSAL (09:45 - 12:00)
A reminder that all Year 8s will be required to attend a rehearsal for their Shrek production.

SATURDAY, 7 MAY (09:00 - 10:00)
Author and illustrator, Peter H. Reynolds, will be live and online next Saturday to read one of his stories, give a tutorial on drawing, and answer your questions. This webinar has been arranged by Scholastic.

Click on this link to sign-up for free.

Talk and Type

This week has seen the launch of ‘Talk & Type’ within computing for Year 6 – 8. It’s a chance for our students to take a step back from the curriculum and really tackle some of the technology issues of our time, whilst learning how to debate face-to-face, and from behind a screen. Once-per-term, we will be looking at topics such as:

Is social media making us more bored?
What does AI have to do with racial bias?
Is Instagram making body image worse?
Is screen use more important than screen time?
What is Deepfake and why do we need to know?

In the “Talk” section of our lesson, relevant, poignant and key issues that are, can or possibly will, affect our students are given time for discussion and to set the stage for the “Type” section. Here, students are allowed time to put their points-of-view across on a blogging platform, whilst learning how to debate with each other from behind screens and ask questions about other’s perspectives.

E-Sport Competition

Last week, RST hosted its first ever collaborative house e-sport competition. Students of Beauclerc & Hardy battled against Arnold & Webb-Ellis to construct the most recognisable scene from the world of storytelling, in Minecraft.

After proving their talent during a free-build session to qualify, around 7 members of each house took to the Minecraft "Lost Library" arena where they were challenged with creating an object or scene from a movie, book, TV, theatre show etc. With just 10 minutes of discussion and planning time, and 15 minutes of build time, what they created was extraordinary!

Beauclerc & Hardy went with an impressive ice castle, complete with polar bears from the movie Frozen:

However, the winning houses of Arnold & Webb-Ellis produced us the famous Barad-dûr from the books and films, Lord of the Rings:

I hope you agree that the talent and creativity shown by our students, to produce such detailed 3D models, in 15 minutes, with no image of reference, is a credit to their imaginations and creativity.

Eco Team

This week our Eco Team visited the FOBISIA Environment Conference 2022 at Bangkok Prep. This was a KS3 event and some of our Y7 and 8 learners were fortunate enough to join the conference.

We learned all about sustainable agriculture as well as many important ways in which we can help care for our environment. The Eco Team enjoyed the various hands-on activities from making smoothies on a bicycle to finding out how to filter water using natural resources.

Eat Crunchy Critters People!

Poésiæ Languages Competition 2022

This term, students from the Prep-school took part in a poetry competition in French, Spanish and Mandarin. 250 Schools from across the globe took part with students learning and reciting a poem in the language of choice. A variety of different year groups took part and finalists were put forward for consideration by an independent panel of judges.

We were very proud of the entries and all enjoyed learning the poems and finding out about the poets. Only in its second year of inception, we look forward to continuing this in the future.

With great excitement, we can announce the following winners:

French
Year 6 – Mizuki (1^st Place)
Year 7 – Andrey (Highly Commended)

Mandarin
Year 3 Shirley and Coco
Year 6 Sieun and Kaofang

Well done to everybody!

Year 3 Roman Day

What better way to learn about a topic than to bring it to life! In Humanities Year 3 are learning about the Romans, so they immersed themselves in Ancient Rome for a day this week. Dressed to theme, the students enjoyed a carousel of activities, including Roman numeral bingo, olive wreath-making, mosaic creation and Roman ball games. It was great fun!

Yaya and Shinna visited the Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park, where they completed a conservation and research project with the Seub Nakhasathien Foundation to promote the protection and conservation of wildlife and forest land in Thailand. You can watch their video clip to see what they learnt about fishing cats:

They really enjoyed the experience, as well as learning how to use camera traps, filming, editing and scripting the video. YaYa and Shinna hope this project may inspire more people to save and protect animals. Well done to them both for their great work and for being so globally-minded.

Pre-Prep News

Dates for Your Diary

Tuesday 3^rd May
International Day
Parent Workshop: Maths Mastery

Bikes to School
Monday 2^nd May – Year 2
Monday 9^th May – Year 1
Monday 23^rd May – Reception

Year 1’s trips to the Elephant Sanctuary
Wednesday 4^th May – Friday 6^th May

Concentrating Crocodile

Here Mr Symmonds reminds us what it means to be a 'Concentrating Crocodile' (one of our Learner Profiles):

Fish Class

We're going on a bear hunt, we're going to catch a big one, what a beautiful day, we're not scared! The children in the Fish Class have absolutely adored learning all about our current story of 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'. We created a sensory walk in our garden this week for the children to retell the story while feeling it with their feet at the same time. This brought about lots of smiles and giggles along the way!

Reception Bears

The Reception Bears have been getting stuck into our final topic for this School year 'To Infinity and Beyond' by exploring Space! They have loved dressing up and making up their own stories in our role play, building their own rockets in our block play, making their own planets in our creative area and having a go at other space themed activities. We have also been reading and role playing our new topic book 'Whatever Next' and having a go at drawing our own story maps. What a busy start to Term 3!

Last Friday Year 1 held a fundraiser to sell their arts and crafts they had made to help the Elephants ahead of their visit to the local sanctuary next week. Altogether they raised 5,31THB!

Thank you to all of the families who came and showed their support. Here are some very proud Turtles selling their cards and bookmarks.

Pupa M, Tetsuo P and Eiji P made some delicious hot-dogs, which they sold on Saturday evening to raise money for RST MAD.

On Saturday night, boys in School House took part in a series of team challenges, including 'keepy-uppies', bottle flipping and 3-minute portrait drawing... some of the outcomes were very funny! Can you match the portrait to the boarder?!

On Sunday, Rupert Brooke and School House had a very fun afternoon baking cupcakes, cookies and a very special birthday cake for Lailie! It was fantastic to see the boys and girls working so well together and enjoying eating the treats they had made.

This week, some of the School House top year enjoyed a pre-Study Leave social in Mr Ennis-Billing's house:

School House XX enjoying lunch in Scrummy Cafe with their Tutor to celebrate their last Tutor session before beginning study leave.

Our Sixth Form boarders took a well-deserved break from revision to get some fresh air whilst playing charades outside on Thursday evening. Balancing studying with socialising is an important skill that we teach our boarders.

Enrichment and Sport

SATURDAY, 22nd APRIL FIXTURE RESULTS

Saturday saw an exciting morning of sport at RST:

the U18s fought hard in the roasting heat with the boys claiming the 3^rd place trophy and the girls just losing out on a prize by finishing 4^th following a heartbreaking golden goal after extra time;
the U12 girls won their first ever basketball game, beating St Andrews 26-12. Nadia and Rachel were our top scorers, scoring 10 and 8 points respectively;
the U13 boys had a much tougher morning against a much more experienced side, losing 28-56. However, they learnt a great deal along the way and will certainly come back stronger next time;
the U13 girls game was a real rollercoaster – they were initially down 12-24, they came back to 22-24, and then St Andrews were able to pull away again to win 22-32.

Thank you to all the teams who took part – we are proud of your achievements!