A strong parent-school relationship helps shape a child’s academic success. St. Andrews International School Sukhumvit S107 recognises the power of such a partnership. By working closely with parents, we help create an engaging learning environment that extends to our learners’ homes.

For that reason, parental involvement goes beyond academic support. Parents have a role in creating a culture and community that brightens a child’s school experience. From attending school events to attending workshops, there are many ways for parents to participate in their child’s academic journey.

St. Andrews Sukhumvit provides a space for families to grow together. We believe collaboration between our parents, teachers, and school leaders is the best approach to delivering holistic education. Witnessing these interactions allows children to see learning as a shared experience.

The First Steps: Understanding Your Child’s School Environment

A study published in 2019 highlights the benefits of parental involvement in a child’s schooling experience. The results show higher academic engagement, motivation, and success for learners whose parents are actively involved.

The best way for parents to become more active is to familiarise themselves with their child’s school. S107 encourages parents like you to communicate openly with our teachers. Our support will help you understand our values and curriculum. You can then use what you learn from us to align home support with classroom learning.

Open communication will also give you a clear idea of your child’s progress. That means you can promptly help your child overcome academic challenges.

Understanding the roles of our counsellors, administrators, and support staff is equally vital. This knowledge will help you navigate St. Andrews’s educational landscape with ease. As a parent, you’ll know who to approach best when you need support addressing a particular roadblock in your child’s learning.

These approaches lay the foundation for creating a seamless school-to-home learning environment.

More than Spectators: How Parents Shape S107 School Events

St. Andrews Sukhumvit, as an institution for holistic learning, organises several school events in which parents can take part.

For big events, we usually tap our Parent Support Group volunteers. Parents inclined toward sports are encouraged to join games for our Sports Day.

All families are even invited to donate food for events like Songkran and Christmas. Meanwhile, International Day gives families the chance to represent their home countries. Such events provide a space where everyone can have rich cultural exchanges.

At home, you may use these experiences for meaningful conversations. This ongoing dialogue will spark your child’s interest in cultures and traditions that are different from theirs. Encouraging them to reflect on these school events fosters a deeper appreciation for inclusivity.

Enhancing Open Communication from the Classroom to the Living Room

St. Andrews Sukhumvit appreciates parents who regularly check their child’s progress. We expect all parents to uphold the responsibility of staying informed about their child’s challenges and milestones.

There are many ways to maintain open communication, whether through informal conversations or meetings. One of the best approaches is engaging in school-led initiatives. Attending events and workshops helps you stay connected to the S107 community.

By expressing your interest and involvement, your actions help reinforce the value of education. In most cases, being proactive will inspire your child to take a more active role in shaping their learning experience.

Another way to stay informed is to check our email updates. The St. Andrews Sukhumvit website also offers a seamless communication channel for contacting the school. These online platforms bridge the gap between home and school, especially in the digital age.

But perhaps one of the most impactful ways to foster open dialogue remains to be attending parent-teacher meetings. These discussions allow parents to discuss academic progress, suggestions for future initiatives, and other concerns that may affect a child’s overall development.

To make the most out of these meetings, we encourage parents to prepare their enquiries in advance. Being open to constructive feedback from the teachers is of equal weight. Consistent communication is the cornerstone that bridges classroom learning to the home.

Crafting a Home Environment that Nurtures a Love for Learning Beyond Class Hours

A young learner’s home should be an extension of their classroom. This means an ideal home is conducive to fostering curiosity and intellectual growth.

It is important for children to view education as a continuous and enjoyable process. One of the best ways you can reinforce this mindset at home is to dedicate a study area. This space should be spacious enough with learning resources that encourage your child to deepen the learnings they acquired from school.

St. Andrews Sukhumvit believes a nurturing home environment should not focus solely on grades and performance. Instead, it should also promote better problem-solving skills through a stress-free environment.

While structured study time can be an impactful approach, considering extracurricular activities is also essential.

To start, it’s best to know your child’s interests. If they have a passion for music, give them time to practise with their preferred instrument or with their singing. Activities like these will help prevent academic burnout while cultivating diverse skills.

The home offers many learning opportunities. Simple chores like cooking or gardening can provide valuable experiences. By showing your enthusiasm for personal growth, your child will start to view learning as a pursuit that goes beyond their school walls.

How to Overcome a Common Hindrance in Parent-School Collaboration

Many parents find it challenging to be actively involved in their children’s schooling due to their busy schedules. Some even juggle work demands with household responsibilities.

However, being proactive doesn’t necessarily require large time commitments. Small, consistent efforts, such as checking emails or conversing with your child about their school day, are enough to be impactful.

It’s also best to align flexible engagement opportunities with your schedule. Attending virtual meetings and volunteering for short-term initiatives can lead to stronger bonds without the need for frequent in-person presence.

For busy parents, involvement can be invested in more manageable engagements.

Partner with St. Andrews Sukhumvit to Create a Seamless School-to-Home Learning Environment!

St. Andrews International School Sukhumvit S107 is the school local and expat families trust to deliver quality, holistic education. Hence, we repay this trust by being readily available to collaborate with parents to promote their child’s success.

One of our primary goals is to produce globally competitive graduates. For S107, 21st-century learners should be sociable, self-aware, and independent. We believe these values are best instilled not only in the classroom but also at home.

St. Andrews Sukhumvit also conducts workshops throughout the school year. Participating in these workshops offers enriching opportunities to improve your parenting approach and support your child better with their academics.

To learn more about how our international school in Thailand supports both learners and their parents, kindly fill out our enquiry form. S107 is home to dedicated professionals ready to assist you in your endeavours with us. You may also schedule a personalised campus tour. Having your child explore our facilities first-hand will help them become more comfortable on campus. Alternatively, we also offer virtual tours for families who are unable to visit us in person. Whichever you choose, you can always trust us to deliver world-class service and dedication.

Here at St. Andrews International School Sukhumvit S107, our instructors do their best in integrating critical thinking and problem-solving skills into the youth as part of the holistic learning system of the school.

This assists in preparing the primary and secondary schoolchildren for their future endeavours in college or university studies. It should also affect their adult careers as part of the global or national workforce.

Critical thinking promotes independent and self-sufficient knowledge-seeking and solution creation that even extends to their careers. But this all starts with foundational training at school.

Our teachers believe in our holistic approach to learning and how that helps the children become self-dependent and critical thinkers who aren’t easily swayed by misinformation.

We’ll train these young minds to think for themselves and become independent researchers in their own right. Their critical thinking skill development should also help foster the right knowledge, attitude and skills needed to reach their full potential.

The Importance of Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Explained

In other academic settings, children tend to pick up critical thinking skills much later in life and instead learn about basic arithmetic, literacy, and the value of rote memorisation, and the like.

However, it is possible to give foundational training to children on the values of critical thinking and problem solving that extend beyond solving math problems without it being multiple choice or doing creative writing essays on deep subjects.

St. Andrews Sukhumvit has a myriad of strategies for teaching critical thinking skills to youngsters that can benefit them in their school and work careers.

First, what is critical thinking? Simply put, it’s thinking “critically” or questioning the things you learn to better understand such concepts. Educators at St. Andrews teach their children such skills and how they apply to academics, languages, the creative arts, sports, and daily life.

Our instructors appreciate the importance of critical-thinking skills and how ubiquitous they are in every discipline, from academics to beyond that.

These young minds will find it advantageous to learn how to think critically early on to manage different aspects of their lives and to also get more out of their education.

Problem solving and critical thinking separates machines and robots from the sentience of mankind, with it leading to innovation, knowledge application, and so forth.

The teachers are here to open the children’s eyes to experimentation, reason, and logic.

Developing the Critical Thinking Skills of St. Andrews Sukhumvit Children

It’s important for young learners to know how to put the pieces of a puzzle together on their own, from literal puzzles they solve to amuse themselves to more abstract and proverbial puzzles that they could apply to their school or daily life.

It is the goal of St. Andrews Sukhumvit to teach these good pupils the value of critical thinking when involving their decision-making.

This will help them in choosing careers in the future or even money management or voting for the leaders of their nation. Instilling such skills allows your child to act on new information in an informed and critical manner with minimal bias.

They become more analytical and less biased, making them more adaptable to a changing world. Critical thinkers are also more proactive than reactive to the changes around them.

There’s no better way to prepare a child than through holistic learning that also includes how to think critically, which means doing your research and viewing a concept or problem through multiple perspectives.

Teach How Logic and Reason Work

Instead of learning only by regret and hindsight, a child could also apply the lessons from past mistakes to future success. Use past experiences to shape better future outcomes and mitigate future mistakes.

Critical thinking is also about planning, research, development of ideas, and (of course) criticising answers to test their mettle and see if they’re the solution to a given problem.

The school is able to teach children how to solve problems through critical thinking by activities such as discussions, making hypotheses, coming up with theories, and doing experimentation or figuring out practical applications of the things they do.

The school also makes sure that the ideas of the children aren’t wholly dependent on rote memorisation, reciting answers from recent memory, and random (not intelligent) guesswork of multiple-choice answers on their tests, quizzes, and exams.

Analysis of problems to solve them involves the understanding that sometimes there can be more than one answer and that some answers are better than others.

There are also times, like in the case of numbers, mathematics, and arithmetic where there is only one correct answer so figuring out the formula is the key to unlocking such objective problems.

Make Time and Room for Reflection

Having time to reflect on the meaning behind what’s being taught to them allows our children to gain a deeper understanding of such concepts and ideas.

A child willing to push back on preconceived notions and question assumptions is a child that can think for himself. He should have time and room to reflect on every answer he comes up with.

Instead of having children who only memorise the answers that are spoon-fed to them, such that they soon forget such answers when no longer relevant to them, our holistic platform will encourage discussions behind the meaning and reason behind terms and formulas.

A critical-thinking child won’t be able to pass our examinations by merely having the answer key on hand or doing an open-book test. They should also show their work and explain their answers.

Their critical thinking training won’t just involve philosophy and nebulous theories on the meaning of life. They can apply their thinking to reality as well, so they can be both the architects and engineers of their fate.

They should be able to communicate to the teacher and their classmates that they’ve arrived at their conclusion instead of jumping to conclusions or being too book-dependent without any critical or independent thought.

Asking Open-Ended Questions for More Consideration

Our teachers also pose open-ended questions to our students to give room for discussions that include diverse or even opposing ideas, thus there’s a critical lens to every concept instead of blind acceptance to spoon-fed lessons.

We hone our young learners’ critical-thinking skills through gathering evidence, lots of reading for research, applying things to real-life experience, letting answers arrive at their logical conclusions, and making credible explanations for every answer.

We encourage our children to express themselves instead of just reciting textbook facts by having them take positions on open-ended questions and explain the meaning behind the facts and figures they’ve gathered.

Finally, we encourage these young ones to come up with creative solutions to problems that require thinking out of the box while still applying logic to their proposal.

To a child, the concept of critical thinking might seem too nebulous to teach at first, but we here at St. Andrews have found multiple intuitive and applicable ways to show, not tell them how to think critically and practise active learning.

A School Devoted to Developing Your Child’s Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills

At St. Andrews Sukhumvit, we teach the youth entrusted to our international school’s care that it’s okay to think before they act. We also teach them to analyse even their own intuition to make informed decisions. All of these are part of their training to eventually grow into holistically-developed adults with strong leadership skills.

St. Andrews International School Sukhumvit S107 belongs to the Cognita school group, which in turn is a global organisation that owns and operates schools across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

We encourage you to learn more about the St. Andrews campus by filling out our online form and booking a school tour. You may also watch our school’s personalised interactive virtual campus tour.