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Junior News 2 July 2021 |
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As we approach the school holidays, and head towards the end of another school year – and what a year it has been for us all, in so many ways – we also reflect on what we have experienced. It has certainly been a test of resilience for our pupils, staff, and for you and your families. It is heartening that we have come through this challenging year together. As we reflect, the memory of Mr Bailey will be at the forefront of our minds. His warmth and passion for the holistic education of our girls at Northampton High School remains firmly embedded in our school, as is his kind heart and gentle spirit. On Tuesday afternoon (6 July), pupils and staff will come together to remember Mr Bailey; we will share our own stories as we reflect on all he did for our school, and we will celebrate his life. We will gather outside in our bubbles, will sing some special songs that he taught us, in honour of his love for singing. |
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We are planning to plant a tree in Mr Bailey’s name, and will talk to the pupils about how we will be able to watch it develop. We hope that this will be a positive reminder of Mr Bailey’s contribution to the life of the school, and we will enjoy watching it grow and flourish. We will treasure the special times we shared with Mr Bailey. If you hear resounding song on Tuesday afternoon at collection time, you will know it is from our hearts, to the unique and very special Mr Bailey. Marissa Davis |
Clubs information |
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Please be aware that there are no teacher-led clubs during the last week of term, week commencing Monday 12 July with the exception of:
External clubs will go ahead as per the information sent out by the external clubs provider (please contact them for any further information). |
Achievements |
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Each week in our virtual assembly, girls are invited to share their achievements in activities outside of school. They are listed below for this week: Darcy – has achieved a high distinction in Grade 1 Ballet, with an incredible score of 89! Darcy now wants to try bigger and better things and plans to take up Modern Dance too next term! Jemima – has received her ballet exam result today and she’s delighted with her result: ISTD Grade 1 Classical Ballet – high distinction with 90 marks. Lucy – has gained her blue belt at Karate. Phoebe – successfully completed the American Ballet Theatre virtual summer intensive program. She achieved a Grade A in her Ballet Boost annual training assessment at Rambert and is thrilled to have received a double class promotion. Phoebe will train in theatre, television and film with the Stagebox company members in London and Birmingham. |
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Dates for your diary |
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Friday 9 July – Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 Sports Morning (unfortunately no spectators are allowed due to our Covid risk assessment) Monday 12 July – Friday 16 July – No teacher-led clubs (please see note above) Thursday 15 July – Year 6 Valedictory Event Friday 16 July 12.00 noon – End of term |
From Northampton to San Diego... |
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It seems fair to say that this year has been littered with difficulties that none of us could have predicted, and all of us have been affected by in a profound way. Although this has been a challenging time in the history of our planet, there have been many positive outcomes, and our newly formed friendship with the pupils at Our Lady of Peace Academy, in San Diego, is just one example of the positivity that we can create, even in the most challenging of times. The warmth and care that our students were welcomed with, by the students at O.P.A, during their virtual meetings, was heartwarming and this project has now been established as an important part of our transition programme at Northampton High School. Testimonials: “It was fantastic to talk to the students in San Diego. They gave great advice for transition, and I enjoyed listening to their opinions about different things!” Sophia “It was great to be able to go to the breakout rooms and play games and talk about things that were different about where we lived. During one meeting it was snowing here and some of the O.A.P students had never seen snow – they were so excited!” Florence “Creating our Living Libraries was such a good way for the students in San Diego to get to know us and we really enjoyed listening to their recordings about themselves. It really helped to break the ice when we met then for the first time!” Amelie “Hopping Across the Pond has been a blast! Everyone was so welcoming and always had something positive to contribute. It has really helped to boost our confidence and help us to think positively about the transition from Junior School to Senior School.” Isla H “Thank you so much to everyone in San Diego. The pandemic has made life difficult for us all, but this has been a real highlight of our year! Stay in touch!” Year 6 We look forward to continuing to strengthen this bond between our two schools next year and wish everyone involved a relaxing summer break. Karen Fordham |
Northampton High School hosts a week long Virtual Arts Festival |
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During week commencing 21 June, our school community was delighted to celebrate one of our marquee annual events, taking it to the virtual world to ensure a week long celebration that will live long in the memory. We love holding our Arts Festival each year, as the school opens its doors to give students an unforgettable experience. In previous years, the school has welcomed guests such as authors Pippa Goodhart and Ross Welford into school to help mark the occasion, in a week-long celebration of all things artistic! The event will usually culminate with an Arts Invitational, an event which welcomes parents and guests into the school to highlights the vast array of work completed by students across all areas in an art gallery-style format; a truly fitting way to close the festivities.
However, current restrictions dictated the event couldn’t go ahead as intended, but with true artistic flair ‘the show must go on’ and thus, the Virtual Arts Festival was born. Spanning the course of a week, social media was taken over by the hashtag #VirtualArtsFestival2021, with work from the world of Art, Fashion, Textiles, Food, Film, English and Music, flooding the digital world to commemorate the special event. Visitors to the school’s channels were wowed by the level of work completed by students of all ages – from pupils aged 2 in the Nursery, all the way up to 18 in the Sixth Form – as we proudly celebrated our students’ achievements. In traditional fashion, the festival concluded with its Invitational, which also took place as a virtual event. Being premiered on YouTube, the 90 minute feature-length production took a further dive into the creative world, and in a show that featured Drama performances, artistic designs, musical numbers, cookery creations and everything in between, the enthralled guests who tuned in left proceedings feeling in awe of the fantastic work produced by the student body. In a week filled with imagination and skill, the students of Northampton High School continue to raise the bar with their unmatched creativity and exceptional talents. Despite a period of uncertainty, the pupils remain inspired and motivated to be the best they can be, and this celebration of the Arts is a testament to their amazing hard work and dedication. To view our virtual Arts Invitational, please click here. Mr Nash |
Welcome Alex Hume, Director of Finance and Operations! |
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We are delighted to welcome our new Director of Finance and Operations to Northampton High, Mr Alex Hume! Alex joins us from the retail sector, and we know you will join us in giving him a warm welcome to our school community. Alex has spent time over the last week getting to know the school, and was delighted to join the Catering Team this morning to help serve breakfast! Mr Nash |
Nursery - Kipper Room and Elmer Room |
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The girls have been very active this week, especially in our PE lessons and when playing outside. In PE, we practised our listening skills by playing the traffic light game. The girls had to listen to what colour was said, which then related to the movement they had to do, i.e. run, walk or stop. “Freeze!” Danaya shouted. We also experimented with some rackets and soft balls; most of the girls were able to hit the ball and they seemed excited when the ball travelled along the hall. The girls were able to copy most of what the adults were doing and did very well. Then some soft rugby shaped balls were given to the girls and they were able to throw them a good distance and they noticed how they rolled slightly differently, “Look!” exclaimed Annabel. Whilst playing outside the girls have made lots of obstacle courses and walkways with different materials. They have used stools, big blocks and cushions that they found in the garden. They also tried different ways to get across the walkways they had created such as jumping, walking, running and marching. We have been talking about how the weather is changing as we have officially entered summer. Penelope asked “Where’s the sunshine gone?” and Annabel asked, “Why is it raining?”. We discussed that even though it’s summer it can still rain. |
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At the end of the week we talked about what we could see on the way to and from Forest School such as different flowers, leaves and animals. The girls are starting to show care and concern for living things. We talked about being careful as insects are very small and we are much bigger! “It’s so small!” Sahana informed us. Have a lovely weekend; we look forward to seeing you next week. |
Nursery - Pre School |
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Some of the girls have shown an interest in the solar system so this week we have explored this further and our story has been ‘Come to Tea on Planet Zum Zee’. In the story all the aliens bring food from their own planets, which are all unusual, and the idea is to encourage the girls to try different foods. The story has sparked lots of imagination in the exploration area where the girls have made some interesting spaceships and aliens. This creativity also extended to the large blocks where an alien space craft was built. |
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Then on Thursday the girls ‘invaded’ Forest School, where they created more aliens using clay. We watched a rocket launch on the big screen which was really loud and we learnt some very catchy new songs. Why not ask your daughter to sing you ‘Zoom, Zoom, Zoom’ or ‘Akin Drum’ who lived on the Moon?
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Reception |
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We have been continuing to use the story ‘So Much’ as a stimulus for writing and have been thinking about how the baby might feel in the different situations in the book. We went on to discuss a ‘doing word ‘and a ‘family member’ and used the sentence frame ‘I like to cook … with my … daddy … so much! ‘ to record ideas. Our Mathematics this week has been some problem-solving games using cuisinere rods, pattern, and addition. Some great thinking and working together to find the solutions! |
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The class is becoming much more independent and focussed on activities of their own choosing, being able to discuss with others to decide a plan, negotiate, and carry it out with a great degree of satisfaction. Well done, it is lovely to see how all these skills have developed. |
Year 1 |
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This week in English we have had the chance to further explore ‘Where The Wild Things Are’, using story mapping. We then created our own ‘wild things’ and thought about what would happen if we were in the story, instead of Max. We thought about what we would want our room to turn into and began to plot our own versions of the story. Next week, we will be writing our own creative versions of ‘Where The Wild Things Are’. In Maths this week we have finished our work on money. We have been adding coins together to make different totals, counting the total of the coins and notes and using our 2s, 5s, and 10s times tables to help us. We have started our work on time, which is our final topic to cover this year. We have looked at the language used to talk about time, such as first, next, then and we have also focused on dates. In our Science this week, we looked at how weather affects different places around the world. We looked at rainforests and deserts and thought about how different the weather is in these places. In DT this week, we have had great fun designing our own fruit salads. We thought about where our food comes from and the impact it can have on the environment. |
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What the girls have said: “I liked designing our fruit salad.” Isabella, Emily and Rhoda. Looking ahead: Maths – time |
Year 2 |
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This week in Maths we have been exploring temperature. We have discussed what temperature means and we have been learning to read and to use thermometers. We have compared different temperatures, played games to support our learning, and we have measured the temperature of different substances. In English we are working towards writing our own version of ‘Where the Wild Things Are.’ We have chosen our own fantasy setting and we have created our very own ‘Wild Thing,’ thinking carefully about its characteristics. We are linking our English work to our computing work, and we have started to create an ebook of our story. We had lots of fun creating the front cover this week. In DT we have been busy designing a fruit salad and we have been lucky enough to bring our design to life this week. We have been practising how to cut different fruits safely and we had to evaluate our product, thinking about what we liked best about it and what we would perhaps change for next time. |
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What the girls have said: “We liked computing and making an ebook.” Amber and Holly. Looking Ahead: |
Year 3 |
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This week in Maths we have learnt the difference between capacity and volume and how to read a scale. In English, we have consolidated our learning of grammar and punctuation and remembered how to use inverted commas and apostrophes. We have found out about the life cycle of a plant and written data files about prehistoric animals. |
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What the girls have said: “I’ve really enjoyed learning to print my work at home. I have enjoyed Guided Home Learning but would rather be in school.” Lily. Looking ahead: Well done to all the girls for working so hard during Guided Home Learning. I’m sure they are looking forward to being back in school next week. Have a good weekend. |
Year 4 |
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Year 4 have coped amazingly well with Guided Home Learning this week. They have been enthusiastic and motivated and really encouraged each other. I am extremely proud of them all. In Maths we finished our unit on the properties of shape by creating symmetric figures on squared paper. We then moved on to plotting coordinates on a grid. In English we looked at words with the –ous suffix, answered comprehension questions about Queen Cleopatra and had great fun retelling the story of ‘Osiris’. We are loving reading our class book ‘Malamander’ and this week there was a big reveal about one of the characters. In Science we learnt about the Kelvin scale and ‘absolute zero’. The girls made models to represent how the movement of particles changes as the temperature falls. In Humanities we learnt about lines of longitude and latitude. |
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What the girls have said: “I really enjoyed English because we have been doing myths from Ancient Egypt. The myth we did was about Osiris, Isis and Seth. I liked ordering the pictures to show a timeline of what happened.” Ellie. Looking ahead to next week: |
Year 5 |
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It is always wonderful reading or listening to a story for the first time, and the reactions I got from the Year 5 girls this week as we finished off ‘Origami Yoda’ were priceless. The gasps of incredulous outrage that echoed down the corridor, the ‘will he, won’t he’ anticipation with eyes wide and hands covering mouths, and the little squeaks of delight when we reached the conclusion. Brilliant! In other news, we started our new Humanities topic on Islam by finding out what the girls already knew, and ended up having a very interesting discussion about discrimination, the Crusades and how sensible it was to have mass religious gatherings during the pandemic. Lots of excellent points and it was fabulous to see how far the girls have come with their oracy skills. |
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What the girls have said: “I have enjoyed Art because we have been doing lots of seaside ink printing with lots of beautiful colours. We made a block the week before out of polystyrene, and I made a dolphin. I really enjoyed this lesson and I would really like to do it again!” Rianna. “I really enjoyed finishing ‘The Strange Case of Origami Yoda’ because it was so much fun to listen to and the whole class found it amazing. I also liked doing the 4 paragraphs of my balanced argument for and against Yoda being real, and it was also a little bit tricky because the last lesson we had to write in a really informal style because we were writing a diary entry, and this lesson we had to be really formal.” Safiya. “I really enjoyed doing Maths this week because it was fun trying to reflect a pattern correctly on a grid and seeing how far away it was from the line of symmetry. I learned how to translate a shape using coordinates and drawing all the different points.” Emily F Dates for your Diary: |
Year 6 |
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This week has been action-packed and Year 6 have risen enthusiastically to the challenges they have faced. They have analysed the synergy of text and images with great insight during their shadowing of the Kate Greenaway Award, continued to approach their learning about their developing bodies with maturity in Science and PSHE, enjoyed their final visit to our friends in San Diego as part of our ‘Hopping Across the Pond’ initiative and started their final stage of transition to Senior School with great positivity. It is also worth mentioning the action-packed Swimming Gala that took place on Tuesday – great fun was had by all and the PE staff were delighted by the great camaraderie displayed – well done! We are, as always, so proud of everything they have achieved this week! |
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Highlights of the week include: “This year’s Swimming Gala, despite having no audience, was as lively as ever and the competition fierce! All races were competitive and showed how much all of us had improved in our techniques over the year. Everyone deserved to win on effort but as we know there always has to be a winner on points and this year the winners were Hestia! Well done to everyone for trying their best and competing and supporting each other in such a positive way.” Isla Howard. “My highlight was ‘Hopping Across the Pond’ because I really enjoyed seeing the girls in San Diego, California again. We were divided into breakout rooms, and it was nice to listen to their views about moving up to Senior School. We also chatted about funny things like our favourite animals and junk food!” Georgia. “Over the last few days Year 6 have been deciding in groups which book should win the Kate Greenaway Award this year. We have read all the shortlisted picture books and chosen one to create a slide and a speech about. We are going to present our decisions to Miss Buxton, the Senior School librarian, before finding out the actual winner.” Emily. Next week we look forward to presenting our winners for the Kate Greenaway Award to Miss Buxton, creating burglar alarms to stop Mrs Fordham and Miss Taylor from stealing chocolate bars, having the opportunity to find out more from Year 7 about life in Senior School and so much more! Have a lovely weekend! Karen Fordham and Nicola Taylor |
School Communications – SchoolPost |
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You may have already noticed that the school email communications now have a new look. We have moved from the School Comms platform to the new School Post platform. There are many benefits of this new platform for parents, including automatically consolidating messages into summaries, so that it is easy for parents to refer back to communications over time. There will also be options to respond to the school with replies and consent forms. We will be providing further information about School Post and parent communications in due course, but in the meantime we hope that School Post already offers a fresher, cleaner way to receive letters from school. We would ask you to regularly check your ‘clutter’ or ‘junk’ folders, to ensure that these communications are directed to your inbox, and are not caught in your email filters. Mrs Wilmot |
Term Dates 20/21 |
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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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