Nothampton High School
Junior News

Junior News 19 November 2021

This blog has been written by the Northampton High School Current Affairs Team at the culmination of COP26 to express our thoughts on it’s achievements and likelihood of its success.

COP26 For Dummies (What is it and why is it so important?)

COP stands for Conference of the Parties and they are the governing body of an international agreement; in this case, in the context of the global response to climate change. Other COP’s exist, such as for the Convention on Biological Diversity, another issue of huge environmental importance.

COP26, hosted by the UK in Glasgow this month, has been seen as incredibly important, as countries have been asked to produce their plans to cut carbon emissions by 2030, in order to keep global warming below the 2 degree threshold; this threshold has been identified by scientists as representing more dangerous, potentially runaway, climate change.

In the run up to the conference, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is the UN body responsible for assessing the most reliable science related to climate change, released its sixth impact report, highlighting the urgency of taking immediate action; a press release summarising their findings can be found here.

To read the full blog entry, please click here.

Mr Earp
Head of Humanities Faculty

Achievements

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

Matilda took part in a Remembrance Sunday Parade with the Sea Cadets
Isabella Rainbow Promise
Grace B moved up to Alligators in swimming
Darcy Rugby dance competition Ballet 3rd place
Rianna archery beginners course
Sakinah Level 3 and 4 Gymnastics and 1st place in a drawing competition
Annabelle swimming 800 metres
Amelia N violin – orchestral concert
Emily F took part in a Remembrance Sunday Parade
Emilly Grade 1 Music Theory distinction

 

Playground Stars:

Year 3 – Eloise R and Leah helped get the toys out and then helped put them back again before their lunch
Year 3 – Thea, Cristina and Holly helped put the toys back into the box before lunch
Year 3 – Kinara organised the girls to take turns at the shed, so that no one got hurt
Year 4 – Thea reminded Mrs Long that cold makes things expand and heat makes them contract
Year 4 – Zara volunteered to take an injured girl to the medical room
Year 4 – Angelie tidied games away before lunch
Year 4 – Priscilla offered to help to try and mend some broken toys
Year 4 – Luisa, Diya and Annabelle organised a fun limbo game
Year 4 – Angelie and Poppy supervised putting toys and games away and made a great job of organising them
Year 5 and Year 6 – Jessica and Lydia helped on the infant playground and organised games for the younger girls
Year 6 – Rianna, Mollie and Vivienne helped tidy up and sort games and equipment in the shed
Year 6 – Adn volunteered to take an injured friend for a drink of water

 

Head's Commendations: Friday 19 November

Varnikaa 10S: Varnikaa is helping out at Classics Club, but also randomly appeared throughout Open Morning and, given she only joined in Year 8 and did fast-track Latin, did an absolutely sterling job in ‘selling’ the department and school to parents.

Evie 8H: I’d like to nominate Evie for her kindness and support for two new members of Year 8. She is helpful and positive and doesn’t hesitate to put others before herself, giving up her time to help them find their feet and moving her seating in the class to be near them.

Mahi 12D: Mahi is helping with both Greek Club and Classics Club in her spare time, and has been to speak to Year 11 about studying Classics at A Level.

Ogohgoh 11N: Ogohgoh wrote a scene for the group’s devised performance that was extremely well researched and included verbatim aspects. The script was a really important step as her group had hit a barrier and were struggling to create. This gave them all a new focused energy and enthusiasm for their idea. Amazing work and a fantastic team player.

Yilin 4N: Yilin has been working very hard and has learnt all her lines for the school assembly.

Esther 10S: Esther is nominated based on how helpful she is to staff. For example, this week she wrote a profile on GCSE options for the school to use and she also planned my tutor time with a lovely quiz, which I will share with the rest of the tutor team.

Book Fair

 

 

 

Thank you so much for supporting our Book Fair.

With your support we now have £379.24 to spend on books for our Nursery, Lower and Upper School Libraries.

Karen Fordham

Messages for parents

Clubs

Please note the following teacher-led clubs are cancelled next week:

Tuesday 23 November – P4C Club for Years 4 and 5
Tuesday 23 November – Maths Club for Year 3
Wednesday 24 November –  KS1 Art Club (girls will be able to go to GAP club if needed)

Dates for your Diary

Wednesday 1 December Reception Class visit to West Lodge Farm
Monday 6 December Flu Immunisation
Tuesday 7 December Nursery Nativity 2pm-3pm
Wednesday 8 December Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 Christmas Play 10.30am -11.15am
Thursday 9 December Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 Christmas Play 2.15pm – 3pm
Friday 10 December Christmas Jumper Day
Tuesday 14 December Years 3 to Year 6 Christmas Performance 6pm – 8pm
Friday 17 December Christmas parties
Friday 17 December End of Autumn Term
Tuesday 4 January INSET day
Wednesday 5 January Start of Spring Term

 

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

We are pleased to welcome back parents and grandparents to our Wednesday Class Assemblies, 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.

Wednesday 24 November 1N
Wednesday 1 December 3N

Nursery - Kipper Room and Elmer Room

This week in Nursery the girls have been exploring the yellow area and the different shades of yellow we can find.

We have been practising our cutting skills, chopping different patterns, and sticking these onto paper to make a collage. “Snip snip, I’m cutting!” said Danaya.

Painting has been a popular activity this week with the girls, where they have been mixing colours in both the paint pots and on paper.

We have also begun to think about Christmas in our investigation area, displaying a Nativity scene and practising some Christmas songs.

See all photos

Nursery - Pre School

In Pre School this week the girls have enjoyed continuing our transport theme focusing on trains and boats. They have made various transport vehicles out of playdough. We have also been making boats using junk modeling items and are going to sail them on the lake at Forest School to see if they sink or float.

In the garden, we explored the pirate ship area and sailed on the pirate ship, and then navigated our way around on the road using bikes, scooters, and cars.

Our book of the week is ‘All Change’; this has proved popular and has started conversations about what transport we like to go on, and what we have been on.

With Christmas fast approaching we have started to practise our songs for our Christmas performance, which the girls are getting very excited about.

See all photos

What the girls have said:

“I like them all.” Annabel.
“I went on a train to Disney.” Iris.

Reception

This week we have been fortunate to have a real telescope in the classroom to look at. We have also had a Space Den to investigate with different lights to explore.

Our text ‘Look Up!’ by Nathan Bryon is about Rocket who is obsessed with space travel and all things space: it’s her dream to be ‘the greatest astronaut, star-catcher and space-traveller ever’. This led us to think about what our dream would be and what we would like to be one day! Look out for lots of princesses ruling the world in the future.

It has been a week of new words, two of these being ‘Nocturnal’ and ‘Diurnal’. After researching various animals, the girls had to decide which animals were awake in the day and which were awake at night.

See all photos

We are continuing to practise the songs for our Christmas performance and the class is doing very well at remembering all of the words; there is great excitement in the air!

 

Year 1

It is difficult to believe that we have only four weeks left of the autumn term but also how far the class has come since September. They are so excited to be part of the House Singing competition and pride themselves on walking independently with the other members of their House to the Thursday practice in classrooms along the Upper Key Stage 2 corridor. We have begun to get to grips with our Christmas play this week and, as I write, are about to start thinking about where we will be standing and how we will act and move about the stage.

The girls are also very excited to be presenting their first-ever Class Assembly to you on Wednesday, when we will be thinking about how we are the same and how we are different. I do hope you can join us at 8.35am – refreshments will be served beforehand in the Community Room.

See all photos

What the girls have said:

“I really enjoyed swimming because we can go in the deep end.” Millie.
“I like practising for the Christmas play because I like all the songs.” Amari.

Next week:

• rehearsals continue
• counting back and finding the difference
• to join clauses using ‘and’, ‘but’ or ‘so’
• to use capital letters for names

Have a lovely weekend – Year 1 are certainly ready for a rest!

Year 2

This week in English we have been looking at the past and present tense and writing informal letters.

In Maths, we have started our new topic on money and I have been most impressed with how the girls have correctly identified the various coins and notes and put them in order of value.

Our Science lesson involved predicting which balls would roll the longest and shortest distances and explaining our choices. We will find out next week if our predictions are correct.

See all photos

What the girls have said:

“I have enjoyed practising the school play.” Rhoda.
“I enjoyed sawing wood at Forest School.” Elouise.

Next week:

English – we will be working on joining our handwriting more consistently and finding out about our new book
Maths – continuing work on money
Science – completing our ball rolling investigation and evaluating our results

Please continue to help your daughters to learn their song and play words, we are trying to act without scripts from Wednesday next week!

Year 3

This week in Maths, we have been recapping our multiplication skills including using the multiplication symbol, arrays and making equal groups.

In English, we have been exploring characters’ feelings using interesting adjectives and thinking about how their feelings change throughout the story depending on the events.

In Computing this week we have continued to explore our own Google Drives and we have started to look at creating a Google document, practising our typing skills as well as adjusting the font style, size, and position.

In Humanities, we studied the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull which famously created the ash cloud back in 2010. We looked at the damage it caused and the effect it had on many local people.

See all photos

What the girls have said:

“I have enjoyed practising for our assembly.” Thea.
“I liked changing the fonts on the computer.” Amber.
“I liked learning facts and labelling parts of a volcano.” Avani.

Looking ahead:

Maths – multiplication and division
English – Class Assembly practise
Art and Design – clay work

Year 4

Highlights:

In Maths, we looked at calculating the perimeter of different shapes and investigated how many different pentominoes we could find.

In English, we looked at the rules for adding the ‘-ly’ suffix and used dictionaries to find adjectives to change to adverbs. We are working on our speaking and listening skills during rehearsals.

In Science, we looked at the functions of parts of the digestive system.

See all photos

What the girls have said:

“I have really enjoyed Humanities this week. It was really fun looking at the maps and trying to find places.” Hester.
“I loved creating our creatures in English. Mine was a Snake-Crab-Deer Monster and then we wrote our non-chronological report about it.” Lily.
“I have liked learning about the body parts in Science.” Priscilla.
“I really enjoyed coding during our Computer Club with Mrs Shaw.” Angelie.

Looking ahead to next week:

English – introducing our new text FaRTHER, looking at the setting and making predictions about characters. Spellings: complete disappear experiment increase learn often promise regular thought different.
Maths – multiplying and dividing by 10 and 100.
Science – identifying the different types of teeth in humans and their simple functions.

Dates for your diary:

Wednesday 1 December – Forest School
Tuesday 14 December 7pm – Christmas performance

Year 5

This week we finished reading ‘Robot Girl’ – the girls were on the edge of their seats and the twist towards the end of the book caught everyone by surprise. Their subsequent book reviews were fantastic.

It has also been an interesting week for new vocabulary, including ‘favela’, ‘diurnal’ and ‘concatenation’ as well as some fun Maths involving prime, square and cubed numbers.

See all photos

What the girls said:

“I enjoyed the ending of ‘Robot Girl’ – it was so surprising! We can’t tell you anything about it because we don’t want to spoil it, but yesterday we wrote a book review and every single girl in the class would definitely recommend it!” Shreya.
“Last week some of us missed our DT lesson because we were at the Football Rally, so today we went to the Art and DT Room and we learned how to cut pieces of wood with a saw. We cut them in centimetres from 1cm up to 10cm and we made a little staircase. We had to sand them and we had to glue them onto a piece of paper, before we drew little people going up the stairs.” Maya.
“My favourite lesson was Humanities because we were learning about children in Brazil and comparing our lives to theirs. The picture that I can remember most is of the houses…they were really squished together, made of concrete, and surrounded by a big metal fence. The children didn’t have a garden so they had to play on the roof of the building.” Aliza.

Dates for your Diary:

Wednesday 24 November – Forest School (come to school in Forest School clothes, bring PE kit to change into, no uniform needed)

Year 6

Year 6 have continued to work hard this week and have impressed us with their determination to overcome difficulties, using a variety of strategies.

In Maths, they have been cementing their knowledge and understanding of fractions.

In English, their powers of persuasion and ability to communicate effectively with an audience.

Humanities has opened their eyes to the fascinating world of biomes and the need to protect these precious natural resources.

in Science, we have enjoyed exploring the effect of exercise on our breathing rate and linking this closely to the circulatory system.

See all photos

Highlights of the week include:

“I really enjoyed learning about biomes because I didn’t know what they were before the lesson. My favourite biome is the marine biome because it is so varied. I think it is really important that everyone understands the importance of biomes and how we need to look after these precious resources.” Safiya.
“Science was really interesting because the result I obtained for our investigation on the effect of exercise on our breathing rate gave me some strange results. I expected to breathe more after exercise to replenish my oxygen levels, but I actually took fewer breaths. I think this could have been because I was taking deeper, longer breaths after exercise to take in more oxygen.” Florence.
“My highlight of the week was doing Science because I thought it was really interesting learning about your pulse, lungs, and breathing.” Emily.

Next week we look forward to developing further mastery of our understanding of fractions, exploring the power of poetry in English, carrying out experiments to explore the effect of exercise on our pulse rate, and much more.

Wishing you all a restful weekend.

Karen Fordham and Nicola Taylor

GAP Club

This week we have started to create our new winter role play and a winter scene complete with Polar Express and penguins. The girls have learnt how to make pom poms using a fork with Mrs Shah and created Pudsey ears for Children in Need.

See all photos

What the girls have said:

“Eating pizza.” Ellie J-M Year 5.
“Making pom poms with Mrs Shah, it was really fun.” Avleen Year 5.

Treekly

Treekly is an amazing free app that tracks your steps. A tree is planted for every 5 days that you complete 5000 steps each day (within a week). Planting trees is one way we can help to tackle climate change as growing trees absorb carbon.

It would be great if you could get Treekly too (click here). We would like it if you could tell us if the app is successful or not. 

Lydia, 6N (on behalf of the Eco Team)  

Raise Her Up – Starting Career Conversations

Many young people don’t know what they want to do for a career, and parents are often the ones to initiate conversations around this; parents who themselves come from a very different work experience, and bring their own anxieties about an uncertain future to the table.

The work landscape has changed, and the pandemic has left us with a weakened economy, and the prospect of some tough times to come. Covid has also accelerated some changes that were already emerging in the workplace: flexible working; digital nomads; and the concept of having the same job for life feeling increasingly outdated.

As we frequently tell our students at the GDST, we need to help prepare them for jobs that don’t even necessarily exist yet, through developing transferable skills that will serve them well regardless of the career direction they take.

In this week’s episode of the GDST #RaiseHerUp podcast we speak to Erica Sosna, a GDST alumna and careers consultant for several large firms, the author of the recently published book ‘The Career Equation’, a 2 x TEDx Speaker and an authority on the subject of careers and the future of work.

In this discussion, Erica offers some context and practical guidance for adults and young people alike on how to think about careers in a way to leave you feeling empowered, motivated, and reassured.

Find the episode here, or download from wherever you get your podcasts.

Mr Nash
Marketing & Communications Officer

Christmas Concert

Flu Vaccination consent

On Wednesday at 4pm, parents of students in Reception class to Year 11 will have received a letter regarding the annual flu vaccination. Can I please remind parents that you only have 72 hours from the receipt of that letter to register your consent? All the details regarding how to accept are in the letter, and we, unfortunately, cannot accept consent any other way.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Mrs Dunkley
School Nurse

Term Dates 21/22

Term Dates 22/23

Northampton High School
Newport Pagnell Road, Hardingstone Northampton NN4 6UU
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