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Friday 14 January 2022 |
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I am delighted to report that despite a more cautious approach to the start of term and the temporary requirement for face coverings in classrooms for Senior pupils, there is still a buoyant feel to the school; it is hard to believe we have only been back for eight school days! Clubs are running again and attendance and enthusiasm for them remains high – particularly with the return of more after school sports clubs. The Year 11 pupils have approached their mock examinations calmly and with good humour. As the weather turns a little colder, we turn our thoughts to site safety and practicalities in the event of a heavy snowfall. We outsource our site gritting to a local company who use the Met Office data to guide their service. As a result, on any frosty and icy days they will have been around long before school opens and gritted the surfaces. As an SLT, we updated our snow procedures earlier this week; there was much reminiscing about ‘snow days’ from our own school years and the realisation that Covid and Guided Home Learning has changed the face of them forever! We have well practised procedures for communicating with everyone should there be a day when we wake up to snow, and here is a brief summary of how we will communicate with you: 1. If your daughter uses school transport to get to school, Vectare will communicate directly with you to confirm whether the route is running. 2. By 7am we will send all parents a text message via School Post, to let you know whether the school building is open or closed. If we cannot safely open, we will revert to Guided Home Learning and live lessons will run, wherever possible, via Google Classrooms. 3. Any updates will be communicated with parents in the same way. 4. If a pupil cannot get into school due to the weather, but the school has been able to open, they will be able to join lessons remotely via Google Classroom. 5. If the school opens as usual but a heavy snowfall during the day means we must close early, we will communicate with parents via School Post text/emails. We encourage parents not to telephone the school when it snows, nor for pupils to call their parents and ask to be collected. However, we are understanding of each family’s circumstances and if you feel that it is safer for your journey to collect early on such days, we authorise this to happen. 6. Snowball fights are definitely considered suitable sporting activities in lieu of Games lessons! Mrs O’ Doherty |
The week ahead |
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Monday 17 January Tuesday 18 January Wednesday 19 January |
Thursday 20 January Friday 21 January Saturday 22 January |
Creative Arts Spotlight |
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This week, the Creative Arts Spotlight has found Shruthi in GCSE Art. Shruthi has been exploring painting techniques with palette knives; mixing, scraping and stippling acrylics to learn about colour application. She is creating exciting and expressive surfaces for her portrait, as we work through the first 10-hour piece outside of sketchbooks for Year 10. Shruthi has shown excellent planning and preparation for this in her book and she should be proud of her achievements so far on the course. Well done, Shruthi! Mrs Beacroft |
'My Tennis Journey' by Eliza |
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Hi, I’m Eliza, a county tennis player. I started playing tennis at 7 years old and have continued enjoying and playing the sport ever since. I have represented the county at U14 level and am currently part of the U18 team where we are preparing to represent Northamptonshire at the County Cup. I am also part of the Ladies A team at Dallington Lawn Tennis Club. I did not start competing in tennis, however, until a few years later at age 11.
I originally started playing tennis at the club provided by the school; my coach advised me to find a club outside of school to develop my tennis further and that’s where I joined Kings Park Tennis Centre, where I stayed for a couple of years. In September 2016, I became a member at Dallington Lawn Tennis Club, where I still play to this day. Dallington is well known in the county for producing many county-level players, so I knew this was the place I wanted to be at. Ever since joining Dallington, my tennis has immensely improved and as a result has led to me achieving lots of results people originally thought would be hard to achieve. This was due to the fact I started competing later than most of my peers and my technique needed lots of improvement if I wanted to stand a chance of doing well in higher-level tournaments. I love embracing new challenges and I really wanted to prove to everyone that I could do it, so I started training four times a week. 2x performance squads 1x individual with my coach and practising on the weekends with my dad. The months passed by, and I was progressing further in tournaments reaching quarters, semis, and occasionally even finals. In 2019, I was a finalist at the Rothley Ivanhoe Junior Open, a Grade 4 tournament, which was my first singles final at county standard. |
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Later on that year, as part of the school tennis team, we won the Team Tennis Midlands Regionals Finals, which as a result led us to being eligible to play at Nationals in Bolton, where we finished 4th in the country. This was a massive achievement for me as I had never competed at national level before and had inspired me to work harder to improve my game. Ever since then I have gone on to do significantly better at tournaments, particularly last season where I reached 13 finals. My 2020/2021 tennis achievements:
I’d recommend tennis to anyone, regardless of how late you start, as long as you put the work in and love what you do, anything is possible! Eliza |
'The Stresses of Dance Lessons On Zoom!' - Kathryn |
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Not too long ago I did my Modern exam, which was the first dance exam I’d done in a while due to COVID. I was really stressed about the exam because I’d mostly had online dance lessons for this grade, and it also clashed with most of my school exams in the first term of the year. As a result of having dance lessons at home for so long, we discovered that spacing had become a bit of an issue, as we’d all been so used to dancing in our living rooms or kitchens. Returning back to studios and all the space has been so great, and I recently learned that I passed with distinction which I was so happy to hear about. Hopefully, we never have to go back to Zoom dance lessons! Kathryn |
Book of the Week |
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Marcus Rashford: You Are a Champion, how to be the best you can be ‘I want to show you how you can be a champion in almost anything you put your mind to.’ |
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Written with journalist Carl Anka, You Are a Champion is packed full of stories from Marcus’s own life, brilliant advice and top-tips from performance psychologist Katie Warriner. It will show you how to be the very BEST that you can be. Showing you how to: – Be comfortable with who you are – you can’t be a champion until you’re happy being you! Miss Buxton |
Parent Talks - Gender identity and young people |
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On Wednesday 2 February 2022, from 6pm to 7.30pm, we will be hosting in school an event for Senior School parents (however parents of Junior School pupils are most welcome to attend) on Gender identity and young people. Refreshments will be served from 5.30pm. In a society where young people are freer than ever to express their true selves, this session considers how the school deals with gender identity issues, how parents can support their children, and why gender identity is an important topic for us all today. There will also be opportunities to ask questions. To book your place, please click here. Should you wish to see the full details of our 2021/22 Parent Talks programme, please click here. Mrs O’Doherty |
Dining Room 'Weekly Specials' prove a hit! |
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Our new loaded flatbreads were a huge hit Thursday lunchtime in the Dining Room! New for this term, the Catering Team have introduced a weekly special, and this week’s choice of either a spicy harissa-marinated halloumi flatbread or a tomato and mozzarella flatbread went down a treat with students and staff! We can’t wait for next week! Mr Nash |
Music Theory Lessons |
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Our flute teacher, Mrs McInerney, is gauging interest in Music Theory lessons in school. If any students are interested in attending music theory lessons, please do contact Mrs McInerney at c.mcinerney@nhs.gdst.net Mr Campling |
Join Our Team - Minibus Drivers Wanted |
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At Northampton High, we are proud to have a pristine fleet of school minibuses, and we are very excited that this will be expanding in 2022. We are therefore looking to appoint several drivers for transporting pupils on morning and afternoon school runs, Monday to Friday. If you are interested in joining our team we would love to hear from you.
For more information and to apply please click here. Mr Nash |
School Blazer Sale |
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Term Dates 21/22 |
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Term Dates 22/23 |
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Northampton High School |
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