Nothampton High School
Junior News

Junior News 10 May 2019

Our week

Dear parents and girls

I had the pleasure of indulging my passion for Mathematics this week. Initially in Board Games Club, where we happened upon Junior Monopoly with its opportunities to discuss strategy, logic and financial calculation as well as life values and the perils of rapidly-changing fortunes (or, in my case, perpetually non-existent fortunes…). And, later in the week as I planned problem-solving lessons for KS2 pupils and joined other colleagues and consultant Ellen Hill to look at teaching resources and strategies for Early Years and KS1. Mrs Hill will make two further visits before the end of term, working in the classrooms and delivering a session to parents of all age groups on the afternoon of Monday 1 July – about which, more to follow.

I have written on the theme of Mathematics many times in the past and will no doubt continue to do so, but the phrase ‘in other news, the Junior School Hall became a BBC production studio this week’ is a first, and perhaps an only. There was great excitement as the team moved their equipment in and wider opportunities for Senior School pupils to meet with the technical and presenting team as ‘Question Time’ was filmed and broadcast from the Senior School Hall on Thursday; I do hope that you had the chance to see it.

A short message as I am unexpectedly out of school today, but just to wish Year 6 all the best for their trip to Osmington Bay and all of you a good weekend.

Caroline Petryszak
Interim Head of Junior School

Mrs Petryszak's availability

Mrs Petryszak’s days on site will vary over the coming weeks in order to align with school activities and events:

  • w/c 13 May: Monday/Tuesday/Friday
  • w/c 20 May: Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Friday
  • w/c 3 June: Monday/Tuesday/Friday
  • w/c 10 June: Monday/Tuesday/Friday
  • w/c 17 June: Tuesday/Wednesday/Friday
  • w/c 24 June: Monday/Tuesday/Friday
  • w/c 1 July: Monday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday
  • w/c 8 July: Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday

She is, however, contactable on c.petryszak@nhs.gdst.net or via the school office on any day of the working week.

Achievements

Each week in Friday’s assembly, girls are invited to share their achievements in activities outside of school. They are listed below for this week:

Horse Riding
Ellie H – jumping competitions (clear round and first timed round)

Ballet
Isobel S – grade 2 & 3 Distinction
Harriet S – Merit

Tap Dancing
Isobel S – grade 2 Distinction
Harriet S – Merit

Piano
Arna K – grade 2 Pass
Miraya S – grade 1 Distinction

Rhythmic Gym
Arna K – grade 3 Bronze
Eloise K – grade 1 Gold

Assemblies

Class Assemblies are held in the Junior School Hall at 8.35 am on Wednesdays and parents are most welcome to enjoy refreshments from 8.00 am. Here are the dates for the Summer Term:

Year 1N – 15 May

Year Reception – 22 May

Year 2N – 5 June

Year 3N – 12 June

Year 4N – 19 June

Year 5H – 26 June

Year 5N – 3 July

Year 6N – Thursday 11 July afternoon Leavers’ Assembly

Dates for the Diary

w/c Mon 13 May – Year 6 Osmington Bay Residential

Fri 17 May – Year 6 return

Thurs 23 May – Year 4 Egyptian Day

Fri 24 May – WWF Charity Day (£1 donation to wear animal themed clothing – no face paints)

Fri 24 May – break up for half term

Mon 3 June – return to school

Mon 3 June – Class Photographs (Summer uniform)

Tues 4 June – no teacher-led clubs

Weds 12 June – Year 4 trip to Brixworth Country Park

Weds 19 June – Author visit Pippa Goodhart

Thurs 20 June – Year 5 trip to Everdon

Fri 5 July – Welcome Day

Fri 12 July – End of Term

Charity

Year 4 Charity Event, Friday 24 May
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)

 

£1 to ‘Wear it Wild’ – any animal-inspired costume (no face paint)
50p for colouring and quiz sheets  (available throughout the week – closing date Wednesday 5 June)

Sports

SPORTS DAYS

Nursery
Wednesday 26 June – 2 pm to 3 pm

Reception to Year 2 
Monday 24 June – 2 pm to 3 pm

Year 3 to Year 6
Thursday 6 June – All day

SWIMMING GALAS

We would like to invite you to watch your daughter swim after half term; the dates and times for each year group are shown in the tables below.

For Reception, Years 1 and 2 this will take the form of a ‘watching week’, where family are able to attend and observe a typical lesson. For years 3 upwards the girls compete in a swimming gala with a variety of different races from the competitive strokes to the traditional High School float races. Each girl will take part in a number of races, representing her house in the hope of winning the swimming competition for her year group and overall in the Junior School. The viewing gallery will be open for spectators and there will be refreshments after each event.

We look forward to welcoming you next term.

Sonia Fraser
Head of Swimming

SWIMMING GALA OVERVIEW 2019

Year Date Start Time Approximate Finish Time
Three Monday 17 June 10.45 am 11.45 am
Four Monday 17 June 11.25 am 12:25 pm
Five Tuesday 18 June 9.10 am 10.15 am
Six Thursday 4 July 2:30 pm 3:10 pm

 

WATCHING WEEK OVERVIEW 2019 

Year Date Start Time Approximate Finish Time
Rec Thursday 13 June 9.15 am 10.15 am
One Thursday 13 June 10.50 am 11.45 am
Two Thursday 13 June 11.30 am 12.25 pm

 

Clubs


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Please note: Mrs Shaw’s Lego and Construction club will take place at lunch time on Wednesday 15 May (not after school).

Cancelled clubs:

Wednesday 15 May –   Lego and Construction Club for Reception and Year 1

Thursday 16 May – Young Journalist Club (Year 6 Osmington Bay)

Tuesday 4 June –  teacher-led clubs due to a staff meeting

Tuesday 2 July – Recorder Club

w/c Monday 8 July – teacher-led clubs in the last week of term

Nursery

Kipper Room
This week in the Kipper Room we have been drawing around 2D shapes, building towers and making comparisons between their size. We have also been cutting numbers to practice holding scissors. We have shared the book ‘Monkey Puzzle’ most days this week to help build the girls’ recall of well known stories. This is also helping the girls with their levels of concentration.

On Thursday we enjoyed a walk and discovered and observed lots of snails thanks to the damp weather.

Elmer Room
This week in Elmer Room the girls have enjoyed developing their number knowledge through play and participating in different activities. They have also had fun extending their knowledge of different occupations where they have had the opportunity to role play doctors and nurses, pretend to be builders in the garden, talk about the role of different occupations and develop their writing skills through colouring-in sheets. The girls have also had fun learning about the importance of road safety and what we should do when approaching and crossing the road.

Pre-School
This week the occupations we have been thinking about were the Fire Service and bakers.  The girls have pretended to put out fires and rescue animals. We have also made bread, a ‘nappy-cake’ for Miss Hillery and matched the correct number of decorations to put on a cake. The girls were also very interested in the story of ‘The Police’ and how finger prints were taken so we had a go!  For our sound of the week we have made umbrellas and played the ‘Silly Soup’ game recognising initial sounds of the ingredients.

Next week:
Our sound of the week is ‘b’.
We will be thinking about dentists and healthy foods.

See all photos

Reception

This week we have been learning about more and less by using a number line to count on or back. We have been looking at maps and atlases to find out where we live and have been following the travels of Barnaby Bear. Our phonic sounds have been ‘ee’ and ‘ea’ . With all the rain we have had, some of our seeds have started to germinate.

See all photos

Year 1

This week the class have been working on multiplication in Maths using arrays and repeated addition. They have also used software to design a hand puppet in DT and begun creating an e-book in Computing. In English we have focused on oracy and the class have learned a few Traditional Tales by heart, using song, script and active storytelling.

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Year 2

Although a shorter week in school this week, we have still managed to fit lots in! In English, we have started writing our own traditional tales thinking carefully about the story language we are using. In Maths we have been learning all about time including ordering the days of the week, months of the year and reading clock faces. In Art we have started looking at the work of Andy Goldsworthy.  We have been thinking about our own land art creations and what we might include when we come to make our masterpieces. In Science, the study of plants has led us to set up an exciting comparative experiment looking at what plants really need to grow – we are looking forward to seeing the results over the next few weeks.

“I enjoyed making my mood board for the Land Art.”  Ellie

“I enjoyed doing lazy eights in our handwriting session with Mrs Farrar.”  Avleen

“I have liked Science and setting up the experiment.”  Harini

“I have liked reading different stories and writing my own.”  Jessica

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Year 3

“I liked collecting data and making pictograms in groups in our Maths lessons.” Safiya

“I loved making our shoes with Mrs Purvey-Tyrer in our Humanities lesson.” Ellie

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Year 4

“I enjoyed athletics because we got to do the long jump and I got sand in my shoes.” Frankie

“I loved doing sounds in Science. It was fun when we played with the drum and rice because all of the rice kept jumping in the air.” Lily

“I liked writing the letter to Sid (the gardener) in English, because it was really fun thinking about what Sam would say about his journey with the duck.” Elizabeth

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Year 5

“I found ‘Mystery at Magpie Manor’ fun because there were lots of brilliant songs and funny dances like the Charleston. I liked the part when the magpies stomped at the end of each sentence because I like loud noises!” Lydia

“This week I have enjoyed doing word problems in Maths. Sometimes they are fun and sometimes they’re tricky, and when we did them everyone’s head was down and working. When we got to something tricky we could rely on our friends to help.” Poppy

“I really enjoyed doing ‘Deaf Awareness Week’ in our enrichment lesson because it showed us how other people have to live sometimes. We had to create a conversation without talking for the whole of the lesson. We made up a meeting and we were asking each other questions in sign language and then we wrote on our whiteboards what the signs meant.” Ammara

“In enrichment we were thinking about ‘Deaf Awareness Week’ and we had to be silent for the whole lesson. We had to do a play in sign language. We couldn’t talk to each other so we had to write on our whiteboards or try to lip read. I enjoyed it.” Dharmini

“In Swimming this week we were practising our underwater and our stroke technique. We were perfecting our freestyle and one other stroke of our choice. I chose backstroke because I think it’s my number one stroke.” Emily

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Year 6

This week Year 6 have had great fun shadowing the Kate Greenaway Award. We have also received our Osmington Bay hoodies and are really excited about going on our residential next week. To add to the excitement we have been invited to take part in the Senior School production of Cats.

The Kate Greenaway Award is awarded for the best illustrated book and we have been using the judges’ criteria to critically evaluate the following books, that have been shortlisted this year:

Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love
Your’re Safe with Me by ChitreoSoundor and Poonom Mistry
The Lost Words by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris
Suffragette: The Battle for Equality by David Roberts
The Day War Came by Nicola Davies and illustrated by Rebecca Cobb
Ocean Meets Sky by Eric Fan Finn
Beyond the Fence by Maria Gulemetova
The Wolf, The Duck and The Mouse by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Jon Klassen

We have focused on the artistic style, the format, synergy of illustration and text and the overall visual experience.

All of the books are of excellent quality and we have found it very hard to pick an overall winner!

By Charlotte E-H, Arna, Ella, Imogen, Gemma and Lola

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GAP Club

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England Hockey Player Pathway

Calling all budding Year 6 Hockey Players: Have you enjoyed hockey at your Club or School? Are you keen to find out if you can play for England?

Northamptonshire County Hockey are running Development Centres for boys and girls under 13 to under 17’s at Moulton College on 8, 15, 22 and 29 June 11.00 am – 12.30 pm.

During this four-week course you will receive excellent coaching from qualified coaches to develop your match skills and your ability to make fast, effective decisions, using the right skills at the right time at speed within games.

Ideally players need to be in school years 6 upwards.

(Strong year 5s are welcome but would need to compete with older players to advance to the county squads, however if they are not successful this year it would form a good foundation for next year).

If you are unsure please email to have a discussion. andrewdale1971@gmail.com

If you wish to join the course then you will need to book your place. The cost is £20 for 4 sessions, based at Moulton College gate 4. Please register that you will be attending on the following link and you will be sent a link to pay electronically.

http://www.saintshockey.org.uk/

Term Dates

Northampton High School
Newport Pagnell Road, Hardingstone Northampton NN4 6UU
T: 01604 765765 nhsadmin@nhs.Gdst.Net