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Junior News – 1 December 2023 |
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Advent in schools is often marked by a sense of anticipation and reflection as students engage in various activities, such as themed assemblies, decorations, and charitable initiatives, fostering a spirit of unity and mindfulness during the holiday season. We too have a busy December schedule at Northampton High Junior School, with our Christmas Fayre today marking the start of our 11 day festive period together. We will be enjoying a Christmas craft workshop with guests, Christmas jumper day, Christmas celebration evening, two nativity performances, Christmas lunch, Christmas café and craft workshop for Nursery and Preschool, a Forest School Christmas Community Session and a festive schedule of holiday club activities. Our countdown to Christmas together will be packed full of lessons and learning experiences and punctuated with festive activities that will bring us together to celebrate. This year, at Northampton High Junior School we are choosing to engage in a reverse advent calendar as a school community. Our advent calendar will have the theme of kindness. Instead of traditional chocolates or gifts, each day leading up to Christmas will involve performing an act of kindness. Our school council have skillfully chosen our daily acts of kindness. It encourages spreading goodwill and fostering a sense of community during the festive season. The girls are excited to see what each day holds for us and I’m grateful that during a busy period (that often leads to tiredness along with the excitement!) we will have moments to pause and direct our thoughts and actions to kindness. We thoroughly enjoyed decorating our trees with baubles made by each pupil. I hope you can find a moment to pop in and admire their work. I look forward to seeing you at the various events in the countdown to the Christmas break where we can celebrate the festive season together with the girls. Miss Hair |
Christmas Events for Next Week |
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Events for Week Commencing 11 December |
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Christmas Jumper Day |
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Next Friday, we are supporting Save the Children by taking part in Christmas jumper day! We invite you to send your child into school wearing non uniform on this day, including a Christmas jumper. To make your donation, please click this link. Thank you for your continued support |
New Event: Christmas Craft Workshop |
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Chemis-tree Christmas Show |
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We are delighted to share that our Chemis-tree Christmas Spectacular is returning to Northampton High School! Join Mrs Hodgetts-Tate on Wednesday 6 December for an evening of festivity, fun and fabulous science experiments, focused around this year’s theme ‘Guess the movie’. This special science show is a High School tradition and is always popular with our school community! We are delighted to invite pupils from our Junior and Senior School to enjoy this wonderful event and hope to welcome as many pupils as possible! |
The World Challenge Project |
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In July 2024, 15 Northampton High School A Level students will be participating in The World Challenge Project. We will be going on a two week expedition to Vietnam, where we will be volunteering and trekking as well as learning many new skills and engaging in new experiences. To support this expedition, the World Challenge team will be holding a Christmas movie night in the Senior Hall on 13 December, showing the animated film ‘Grinch’ (2018). The tickets for this event will be £4.50 and food and drinks will be available to purchase including popcorn, sweets and more. Please be aware that we can only take card payments and for this reason, we are offering a snack bag which can be purchased with the film ticket online. The film will start at 3.55pm and finish at 5.20pm, and the late bus will still be available for those who require it. Junior School students will need to be collected from the Junior School reception after the event. Tickets for this event can be purchased here. Thank you in advance for your support. The World Challenge Team |
Clubs |
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Please note the following clubs will not be running in the last week of term due to the Christmas activities: Tuesday Wednesday Thursday |
News from our classrooms: Nursery and Preschool |
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This week in Nursery, we braved the rain at Forest School. We searched around for different items in small groups, as well as spending free time exploring. The classroom has started to look a little bit Christmassy which caused some excitement. We have been continuing with our Christmas crafts and singing our Christmas songs! In cooking, we made some crumpet based pizzas, choosing the toppings we liked the look of. We have also been using pattern blocks to create pictures from various shapes. |
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This week in Preschool, we have been sharing the story of the ‘Gingerbread Man’. We are seeing if the children can re-tell the story, and to help this we have set up a small world scene with the characters and have also provided the children with ginger scented play dough. We have been busy practising our Christmas songs with Reception class and making our classroom festive with our own pictures and decorations. In Maths, we have been ordering items by size – including gingerbread men! |
Reception |
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This week we were full of excitement as our Christmas tree arrived in school! We have been busy making decorations for this, and it generated lots of discussion about other things we could create in our workshop. We have been learning to recognise, write and blend with the sounds j,v and w this week. Many enjoyed making ‘j for jellyfish’ and we practised writing sentences to include these letter sounds – ‘The vet is in the van’ and ‘The jam is red’ for example. |
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In our topic work, we explored shadows and enjoyed using the torches in our Dark Den. We have been practising hard for our forthcoming production of ‘The Landlord’s Cat’ which we will be performing next week to family and friends. Our book text is the ‘Stickman’, and we have been thinking about this character and the setting for this story. |
Year 1 English Focus |
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Year 1 are getting very excited about performing ‘The Landlord’s Cat’ to parents next week! They have been busy learning song words from memory and thinking about how to develop their character in the play through actions and expressions. Alongside our rehearsals, we are enjoying exploring more about the ‘Deep Dark Wood’ story and learning how to recognise and sequence events. |
Year 2 English Focus |
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Year 2 have been extremely busy rehearsing for our Christmas performance, ‘The Landlord’s Cat’. As you can imagine, lots of English skills are required, including reading, speaking and listening. We are very proud of what we have achieved and can’t wait to share it with you. Alongside this, in our English lessons we have been reading the fantastic information book, ‘The Street Beneath My Feet’, by Charlotte Guillain and Yuval Zommer. Filled with fascinating facts and detailed illustrations, this book has really captured our attention and we have enjoyed using it as a stimulus to practise our reading comprehension and non-fiction writing skills. |
Year 3 English Focus |
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Year 3 have worked incredibly hard over the last few weeks in English lessons. We have looked at the book ‘Escape From Pompeii’, and used it as a basis for our understanding of descriptive recounts. We sequenced the main events of the story, and then wrote a newspaper report using the facts from the story – along with a little imagination! This has helped the girls to prepare for the next piece of learning around punctuating speech. |
Year 4 English Focus |
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This week, Year 4 have been working on writing multiclause sentences using coordinating conjunctions. After lots of practise of identifying independent clauses and the coordinating conjunctions, they used their skills to write a Roman God Fact File. The girls choose a god and researched them before creating both single clause and multi clause sentences. As a class, we are reading ‘The Queen of Darkness’, by Tony Bradman, which tells the story of Boudica’s rebellion. The girls have enjoyed writing character descriptions of Rhianna and Boudica using expanded noun phrases. |
Year 5 English Focus |
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This week, Year 5 have started a new book in English – ‘Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race’ by Margot Lee Shetterly. The girls have, quite rightly, been staggered by some of the discrimination faced by black men and women in the past, and have had some wonderfully interesting discussions about the implications of pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo. |
Year 6 English Focus |
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The world of fiction allows us all to explore the world from different perspectives and escape reality. During our weekly Senior Library sessions with Year 6, we encourage the girls to read on a regular basis and from a variety of genre. This helps them to further their understanding of the world around them, as well as helping to improve reading and writing skills. There is no doubt the world of fiction has changed for our children, and the opportunities they have to read a wide variety of good quality fiction is almost limitless. So, please encourage your children to share their reading with you on a regular basis, and be prepared to be amazed as you enter an array of fascinating worlds! |
News from outside of the classroom: Hestia House Spotlight |
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We are so excited to be your House and Vice Captain, let us tell you more about us. Our job is to lead events and help people with teamwork. If you have any problems, we are the people to go to! If you see anybody with a red badge that says House Captain or Deputy House – that’s us! Every year, we do all sorts of House events such as House swimming (our House competes in a series of swimming strokes) and Sports Day (we take part in lots of fun races). We also do lots more sports events such as netball, hockey and cricket. On these days, we have loads of fun and we hope you do too! Fun Facts – Did you know that our House god, Hestia, was the kindest Greek god? She also never married or had children. Hestia is the Greek word for hearth. The hearth is the floor of the fireplace. She is the goddess of protection, family and the state in general. Her siblings are Zeus the god of all gods and goddesses, Hera who is the queen of gods and goddesses as she was married to Zeus even though they were brother and sister, Poseidon the god of sea and earthquakes, Demeter who is the god of harvest, Hades who is the god of the underworld and the dead. Remember, we are always here to help you so don’t be afraid to ask for help! |
News from outside of the classroom: Head's Commendation Award |
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A huge congratulations to Avani, who received a Head’s Commendation this week! Avani was nominated by Mr Rickman for “her excellent captaining and goalkeeping at the Croydon Rally. She had to deal with quite an emotional rollercoaster but showed great leadership and positivity even when things were not going to plan!” To celebrate this special achievement, Avani was invited to decorate the Senior School Christmas tree with Dr Lee. This festive activity proved very popular with students (and staff!) and was the perfect way to reward Avani for her hard work! Well done Avani! |
News from outside of the classroom: Hockey v Bedford School Match Report |
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On Friday, the Year 3 and 4 mixed teams travelled to Bedford to play 7-a-side hockey. My team started really well and in the first half Rhoda scored 2 goals. At half time, the score was 2-1 to us. We had a half time team talk from Mrs Wright, and took to the pitch super excited! Unfortunately, Bedford scored another goal, but our Player of the Match, Rhoda, also scored another goal. Iman also scored a great goal for us. Unfortunately, Bedford scored a few more in the second half and the final score was Bedford 6 NHS 4. Overall, we had fun and even though we lost, we fully enjoyed the match. Caoimhe H-T |
Weekly Awards |
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Star Learners of the Week – Elodie K, Isabelle L, Aleya L, Olivia C, Agnes R, Shanaya S, Holly G-S, Thea S, Zoe Z, Diya B, Hazel G, Amelie N, Sakinah S External Achievements: Luna D – took the Rainbow Promise |
Birthdays This Week |
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This week, we wish a very Happy Birthday to the following members of our Junior School family: Poppy P and Amelia K |
Christmas Community Session |
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Hockey Taster Sessions |
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Term Dates |
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Northampton High School |
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