Dear Samakee Community,
First of all, thank you to all parents who attended this week’s Orientation Meetings. It was a pleasure to see so many parents taking part in the events and a big thank you to the teaching staff for organising these meets.
Today, we submitted our school’s opening plan to the MOE and OPEC. The MOE and OPEC will review our plans and how we plan to keep our school community safe from COVID-19 infections, they will inspect our campus and then give the approval to open. Hopefully, very soon!
We are delighted that soon children will be able to enjoy face to face learning again with their friends and teachers. Nevertheless, the Online Learning Experience (OLE) will remain in place five days per week so that when we do open, families who wish their children to continue learning at home can do so.
Our proposal to reopen our school safely to children is based on:
- Reducing the number of children at school by 50% and creating small class sizes
- Keeping children in small, consistent groups (‘bubbles’)
- Good hygiene for everyone
- Face coverings at all times for all children and staff in school
- Strictly follow DMHT-RC protocols (distancing, masks, handwashing, testing, reducing and cleaning)
- Maintaining appropriate cleaning regimes
- Full vaccination rates for all our staff
- Regularly testing (ATK) all children and staff
- Thai Save Thai (TST) – all students and staff fill in the TST form before coming to school
- Thai Chana – staff Scan Thai Chana at the gate
- Keeping occupied spaces well ventilated and as appropriate learning outdoors
- Air purifiers in all teaching spaces
- The commitment to follow public health advice on testing, self-isolation and managing confirmed cases of COVID-19.
HYBRID MODEL
The Hybrid Model we have chosen to use at Samakee involves one group attending school on Monday and Tuesday and another group on Thursday and Friday. All Middle and Upper School children will do online learning from home on Wednesdays. Our youngest learners in EYFS will have the option to attend school five days per week, with Nursery and Kindergarten attending half days.
ATK TESTING
A crucial requirement of our opening plan is enacting an effective testing protocol that will keep our whole school community safe. We will test all school staff using the ATK kits on Mondays and Wednesdays of each week.
Similarly, we will ask all families to test their children with the ATK screening kits widely available from many shops and pharmacies during the initial opening weeks. As with school staff, we will ask for testing on Mondays and or Wednesdays before school, depending on your child’s attendance days. Parents should date the negative ATK test result with a felt tip pen before photographing it and sending it to school via a Google Form.
Parents must save this as evidence that their children were negative should it ever be required by the MoPH for tracking and tracing procedures.
All children and staff entering school must have negative ATK tests each Monday and or Wednesday. We will share details on how we will manage this with you later.
HEALTH DECLARATION AND VACCINATION SURVEY
Thank you to the families who have updated their information on the SAS Health Declaration Form from last week’s newsletter. As part of the school opening plan to be sent to MoPH, MOE and OPEC, every family must complete their SAS Health Declaration Form. If you have not yet completed this form, please do so as soon as possible. Other information that we must collect as part of our campus opening plan is the vaccination status of our school community.
Here is the SAS Declaration Form. SAS Health Declaration Form
ONLINE LEARNING HIGHLIGHTS THIS WEEKLOWER KEY STAGE 2 THAI SOCIAL
In Thai Social, Lower Key Stage 2 started this term with the topic of ‘Thailand History Timeline’. Our first focus was the Sukhothai Era, which is the first time that the Sukhothai script was invented by King Ramkamhaeng and later developed into the modern Thai script of today. After learning how to write the old Thai letters, children have had the opportunity to make an old paper and write the Sukhothai script themselves.
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MINI GOLF
Year 8 have been working hard during the DesignLab session on ideating and planning a Mini Golf challenge. The goal of this exercise is to incorporate a compelling theme, original obstacle designs, moving mechanics and electronics.
SEA TURTLES
Year 1 has been doing some fabulous artwork in our online art sessions. We learned about sea turtles and made our own sea turtle drawings. The children also used their shape knowledge from our Maths lessons to draw their pictures. It has been so great to see how enthusiastic and engaged the children have been with online learning, especially at such a young age. Well done,, Year 1!
YEAR 5 PE
Year 5 students have been consolidating Fundamental Movement Skills at home. They have looked at high-level movements from the Summer Olympic Games and perseverance during the Paralympics.
Thank you again for your ongoing support and we will inform you immediately the school has been inspected, and we have been given permission to open.
Kind regards,
Monica L Sudhirak
Head of School