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Junior News 04 March 2022 |
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Today, the thoughts of the whole school have been with the people of Ukraine and also Russia. We had a superb turn out for the mufti day, with carefully chosen outfits giving a nod to the colours of the Ukrainian flag. Thank you for your generous donations to our JustGiving appeal which is raising money for the Ukrainian Crisis Relief fund organised by Global Giving. Today’s assembly for Year 6 and above was naturally about Ukraine. Sticking to the geographical and historical facts of the regions, rather than the political, I trust the pupils found the information of interest. With reference to Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography we considered the mountains, rivers and sea routes around the Ukrainian territory and the role these land features could play in the invasion by Vladimir Putin. The swathes of flat landmass across most of Russia leave it potentially vulnerable to attack from other areas of Europe where there are no geographical barriers. Of course, the size and climate of Russia have proved to be in its favour in the past, making it near impossible for supplies of food and equipment to reach progressing armies as they move through freezing, snowy conditions of the huge country. Tim Marshall suggests that Russia’s response to the possible threat of invasion is to move troops forward until they reach the natural land barriers – such as the Carpathian Mountains on the Western border of Ukraine. As we considered the historical perspective, the legacy of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO, we noted Russia’s feeling that perhaps she is only taking back what belongs to her. I recommended Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook’s podcast ‘The Rest is History’ to the pupils as a method of understanding more about the history of this part of the world. As we ended the assembly, we spent some time in silence listening to the Carol of the Bells whose tune will be familiar to most, being played across the world over the Christmas and New Year period. It is a Ukrainian folk song played at the Ukrainian new year to herald the onset of spring. I thought this was a fitting end to our reflections. A Roundup of the Week Year 3 and 4 have been to Burwell House for their residential trip this week and we look forward to hearing all about it when they return. Elsewhere in school we have had a productive and busy week including 6N’s Class Assembly, voting for the next Head Girl Team, a range of lessons which, although largely not in their usual format, have settled into a good rhythm and are allowing pupils to continue their courses. Year 13 Mock Examinations end today and no doubt the feedback they will receive will lead them to a good place for their final exams in the summer. A reminder that the rescheduled Year 11 Parents’ Evening takes place on Monday 7 March via School Cloud where teachers will be available to discuss progress and targets in the run up to GCSE exams. If you have any problems with booking appointments please contact the senior school office. On an entirely different note, please find a link to updated parent FAQs from GDST regarding the industrial action in GDST schools. Mrs O’Doherty |
Achievements |
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Each week in our assembly, girls are invited to share their achievements in activities outside of school. They are listed below for this week: Siéna-Louise – awarded a shield for Best Junior Trio at a Milton Keynes competition (picture in the Flickr album linked below). Aurelia – achieved a Rainbow Badge Bronze Award. Millicent – awarded a rosette for trotting while holding water. Isabella – awarded 5 Rainbow Badges. Grace B – achieved a ‘Making Pancakes’ Badge at Scouts. Annie – came 4th in a gymnastics competition. Grace P – won the U12 Ladies Kenning Competition in Archery. Zoe, Jessica and Maya – achieved a Level 1 in gymnastics. |
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Playground Stars |
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This week, Year 5 super-skilled stilts Ambulance Club was formed! Aurelia – well done for spotting some litter on the playground and doing the right thing by putting it into the bin. Poppy – thank you for getting out the toys and games for the other girls and for putting out the cones. Lucy and Kinara – thank you for making a good job of tidying the toys and games away. At morning break can I remind everyone that they should not be moving around or playing games whilst they are eating their snacks. |
Dates for your Diary |
Just as a reminder, the GAP Club phone number is 07816 751456; please do keep this number handy so that you have direct access to the GAP team should you need it. |
Class Assemblies |
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We are pleased to welcome back parents and grandparents/family members to our Wednesday Class Assemblies at 8.35am-8.55am. Refreshments will be served in the Community Room from 8.15am. We do hope you will be able to join us.
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New Arrival! |
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Everybody at Northampton High School would like to send a huge congratulations to Miss Lindsay Hillery, on the safe arrival of her beautiful daughter Olivia Rae Hillery-Fisher, born on the 17.02.2022. Congratulations! We are all so happy for you! |
How to support your daughter in Maths for Year 6 parents |
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We are delighted to invite you to a webinar by Rebecca Brown, GDST Maths Consultant Teacher and Teacher of Maths at Wimbledon High School, on how to support your daughter in their mathematical journey. Exploring mindset, misconceptions and mastery, how you can help to instil a love of Maths as they transition into senior school. Open to our Year 6 parents, this event will take place on Tuesday 15 March 2022 at 7pm via Zoom. Tickets can be booked here where you will receive email confirmation with the Zoom link. With best wishes, Mrs O’Doherty |
High Sports: IAPS U11 Netball Tournament |
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The netball tournament was a really amazing experience as it was our first school tournament. We had so much fun, and for some of us, it got to show us what the netball trip to Condover hall was going to be like. There were 4 pools (groups) of 5 teams. You play each team in your pool and the top 4 in each pool go to the next round. I can’t remember the score for every game, but I knew that we drew one and lost the other 3. |
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Every player did really well and you could tell that we improved as a team throughout the tournament. Everybody got into space and made some amazing passes and interceptions! After the matches we went and had some food. (We were lucky enough to have a chocolate bar and some hot chocolate as well!). Unfortunately, we came 5th in our pool, but we arranged another game with another team that came 5th in their pool. It was really fun because we didn’t have the pressure of feeling that we had to do well because we wanted to make it to the next round. The netball tournament was so much fun for all of us; although we did not advance to the next round, it clearly showed how we could work together and encourage each other to do the best that we can. All in all, it was a great learning activity and it was super fun and enjoyable! Safiya C |
Nursery - Kipper Room and Elmer Room |
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Highlights: Following the girl’s interest in animals, where they have been self-selecting from the Duplo jungle, we have created our very own jungle; their imaginative skills have come to life by using the animals as props to create their own individual stories. Paint pens have proved a popular choice with many girls developing their mark-making skills to create their own animals. The girls have displayed different movements of animals during their PE lesson, listening and following the movements and music of the ‘Animal Boogie’ story. We then continued this in the classroom where we created our own unique poses for animal yoga. We celebrated Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) by listening to a story about pancakes and the ingredients we need to make them. We then tried some for ourselves after lunch. These seemed to go down very well; I think the chocolate sauce topping as a treat helped! |
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Focus time has started in our new Focus Room. A focus has been improving our number skills through the child’s interest in talking about numbers and being observant of her numbers in the environment. A focus group got the opportunity to play a lucky duck game to improve their number recognition, listening skills, sharing resources and waiting patiently for their turn. The girls were very impressive and sat beautifully, listening to the instructions of the aim of the game, whilst also participating. They showed their kindness through helping each other out if they got a little stuck – it was lovely to see. |
Nursery - Pre School |
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Highlights: This week in Pre School we have continued to look at the ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ story as it has captured the girl’s interest. It has been lovely to see you sharing updates on the cress pots that you have been cultivating at home and we have tried tasting the fresh cress growing in class. “It’s spicy”, said Iris. Using props as a prompt, the girls have been retelling the story to us, in detail. The “Fe fi fo fum!” and ‘thunderous footsteps’ being delivered with appropriate menace! We have been expanding our knowledge of the ‘b’ sound; thinking of new words that start with a ‘b’. We have also practised writing the letter in coloured sand as well as on paper. |
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At Forest School, there was a lot of balancing on and bouncing off branches…even backwards! “Boing! That’s ‘b’!” exclaimed Annabel. Looking forward to next week, we will be talking about our favourite stories in preparation for our celebration of World Book Day on Friday. |
Reception |
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Highlights: This week we have started a new story ‘Super Milly and the Super School Day’ as a focus for our work. The girls have loved designing their own capes, masks and headdresses. They have thought about their superpowers, badges of honour and superhero sound splats! In Maths, we have been investigating the composition of numbers 9 and 10, counting back from 10 and comparing numbers using the language ‘more’ and ‘fewer’. We played number bingo and created some number works of art. Our phonic sound was ‘ir’ – whirl and twirl – and we all made a ‘whirl and twirl’ wand. |
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On Tuesday the class made some yellow play dough and enjoyed some Shrove Tuesday activities, the highlight being flipping a pancake and trying to catch it again! Have a lovely weekend. |
Year 1 |
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Highlights: Our role play ‘naughty bus’ has been busy this week with the addition of coins, tickets and a timetable. We all wrote letters to the naughty bus explaining why it is important to follow the rules. Forest School on Thursday was a highlight, with tree climbing, house building and an awful lot of water play. Apologies for the very damp and muddy clothing! Hopefully you have seen the letter with details of our trip to Rockingham Castle which is coming up soon. It will be lovely to have another special day out together – hopefully the sun will shine so that we can enjoy exploring the grounds. |
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What the girls have said: “At Forest School I was building a house. I put bamboo against a tree.” Rosie “I love Maths. We do take aways. I like using part whole models best.” Millicent Next week: English – thinking about adjectives and story settings. Maths – place value to 50, starting with counting forwards and backwards to 50. Have a great weekend. |
Year 2 |
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Highlights: This week we have finished reading the Owl and the Pussycat poem, and focused on capital letters for proper nouns, the start of sentences and the personal pronoun, I, as well as commas in lists. The girls also enjoyed role playing conversations between Owl and Pussycat. A particular thank you to Mrs Shah for making the great masks to help us get into character. In Maths, we have identified 2-D shapes, made them on geoboards with elastic bands and used our resilience to draw them on squared paper. We had to persevere hard to get the shapes right and use a ruler to draw the straight lines. We practised using a ruler in art, where we had to draw straight lines crossing each other and then colour in the patterns made, without going over the lines and making sure no two colours touched each other. |
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What the girls have said: “I enjoyed making lists of things for the Owl and the Pussycat to take on their trip. I used commas in my list.” Elouise “I enjoyed English when we were finding capital letters in the Owl and the Pussycat poem.” Isabella “I liked Maths when we made shapes on the geoboards and then drew them on squared paper.” Pixie Next week: Maths – looking at 3-D shapes and their properties. English – starting our next book, learning how to use apostrophes for possession and writing a simple explanation. Science – looking at how materials can be changed by squashing, bending, twisting and stretching. Dates for diary: Friday 11 March – dressing up as a book character. Tuesday 15 March – Year 1 and 2 trip to Rockingham Castle. |
Year 3 & 4 - Burwell House Residential |
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Year 5 |
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Highlights: This week the girls have had a great time coming to the end of ‘The Lost Thing’ by Shaun Tam – they have written information leaflets on how to care for lost things, informal letters filled with emotional adjectives, and scripted and filmed their own adverts for the Department of Odds and Ends. I am really looking forward to reading their own ‘Lost Thing’ stories which they are currently planning. |
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What the girls have said: “On Tuesday morning we went to the Community Room and a man called Brian came and taught us First Aid. One of the things we learned was CPR, when we had to look at a person who has fainted and decide what to do. We learnt DR ABC which means: check the area for Danger, see if the person is Responding, lift their head up to clear their Airways, count for 10 seconds to see if they are Breathing, and if they are not, you have to pump their blood round by doing chest compressions to give them Circulation. It was really fun!” Maya “My favourite lesson this week was making the advert for the Lost Things Department. I really liked writing the script as you could put basically whatever you wanted. When we were performing, I liked our ending when we changed the picture to a more aggressive one, to try and scare the audience.” Harriet “I really liked learning about what the Viking’s lives were like, and I learned some new things, like what vegetables they grew to put in their stew. On Sunday, some of us went to the Northampton Museum because there’s a Viking exhibition there at the moment from Jorvik, and we did a quiz on things that were there. It was awesome!” Ishani Dates for your diary: Monday 7 March – Trip to Bletchley Park. Girls should be in uniform and must have their school coat. Please consider doing a LFT on Sunday just to be on the safe side. |
Year 6 |
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Highlights: This week the girls have revised their knowledge of percentages in Maths. We have continued studying the suffragette movement and written a letter to Prime Minister William Gladstone asking for voting rights for women. We have also enjoyed learning about essential first aid techniques including DR ABC. Well done to 6N for their fantastic assembly on kindness and we look forward to 6H’s assembly next Monday. |
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What the girls have said: “I enjoyed doing the map skills in Geography because it was fun trying to find the answers in the atlases.” Bethany “I enjoyed doing coding in Maths and we persevered on the difficult questions. We had to work out sentences using Morse code.” Lottie “My highlight was learning a special dance showing the paparazzi versus famous people. We showed moves to each other and there was a dance battle but we were friends in the end!” Felicity “I really liked learning First Aid because it is an important life skill. It was difficult to do CPR on a baby compared to an adult because they are so small.” Flo Next Week: Next week we look forward to continuing our study of Suffragette: The Battle for Equality, investigating the relationship between fractions, decimals and percentages in Maths, and constructing series and parallel circuits in Science. We wish you all a good weekend! |
GAP Club |
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Highlights: We began the week by using Papier Mache to start making a sheep for our role play farm. We later named our sheep Gary Baaarlow, a friend for Percy the pig. On Tuesday we made lemon-scented yellow play dough in preparation for making play dough pancakes. We have continued our farm theme by making horses using lolly pop sticks, and we also created a barn for the animals. |
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What the girls have said: “I enjoyed colouring and drawing and making a sheep.” Nellie, Year One. “Making Gary” Miya, Year One. |
Open Morning - Friday 4 March |
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It was wonderful to meet so many lovely families at our whole school Open Morning today. If you were unable to join us today but would like to visit us, we invite you to book in for our next Open Event on Friday 6 May or for a personal tour. Alternatively, you can click the following links to view our virtual Open Day experience or our 360 school tour. Have a lovely weekend! Mrs Wilmot |
Autism Awareness Coffee Morning |
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We are pleased to be hosting an event to support Autism Awareness later this term. On Friday 1 April from 9am until 10am, Lesley Lock from East Midlands Autism will be hosting a coffee morning exclusively for the parents of Northampton High School pupils. Parents will have the opportunity to meet with Lesley and hear about how the charity supports young people and their families. Lesley has told us a little about what she does for this charity: “I run 3 autism family support hubs, which are open to children under 11 with or without an ASD diagnosis, and their parents/carers and siblings. These are located in Northampton, Leicester and Loughborough. As part of this service, I also chat to parents/carers about ASD and where to find support, how to manage behaviour they find difficult, how best to fill out benefits forms, and any other ASD related topic that comes up! I also manage our Northamptonshire Children and Young People’s Service, which runs trips, holiday and youth clubs for ages 8-18 and who must have a diagnosis, as this is the criteria set by our funders. These are for the young people to attend without a parent carer, and my fabulous team and I do our best to make sure that the young people have a wonderful time when they are with us, and can access the same age appropriate activities that their neurotypical peers can. In the last year we have been paddleboarding and raft building, visited theme parks, LEGOLAND, and the Think Tank museum, taken part in a Laser Maze evening, and solved some escape rooms!” If you would like to attend this event, please would you complete the form here. We look forward to an informative and supportive event. Mrs Beezley |
Science Week: Growth |
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Junior Bake Off 2022 |
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Saturday Track Club |
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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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