With the brief snowfall, the girls from our very youngest to Year 6 thoroughly enjoyed seeing the snow decorating the trees and the feel of the snow in their hands. It is probably a good time to remind families that when we have the promise of snowy weather, our pupils are welcome to bring into school their wellies or warm boots (along with their school shoes) and plenty of layers so that if and when the snow arrives, girls can enjoy the outdoors if it is safe to do so.

We are grateful for your donations of bottles for our bottle tombola in return for our non-uniform day today. Thank you, too, for your donations for Children in Need last week. We raised as a school £1471 which beat event last year’s highest total so far. Sincere thanks for your generosity.

In our singing assembly and music lessons, pupils across the school are learning new songs and getting ready for their productions. Jasmine in Year 3 got us in the mood for singing on Monday morning in singing assembly by performing a beautiful piece with aplomb. Well done and thank you, Jasmine!  

The Christmas Fayre preparations are in full swing; Father Christmas is looking forward to meeting our pupils (please book here) and tokens to spend at the Fayre can be ordered here. Tokens will be on sale at the event too. A polite reminder to all parents that we will be running our wraparound club until 4.30pm only on Friday 29 November. Thank you for your understanding.

Industrious Christmas production preparations abound in Junior School; here is a reminder of the event dates, times and how to book: 

Christmas Nativity – Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 – Tuesday 3 December 9am-10.30am – Book your seats here
Christmas Sing-a-long and crafts – Nursery and Preschool – Tuesday 3 December 2pm-3.30pm – Please confirm here
Christmas Nativity – Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 – Wednesday 4 December 2pm-3.30pm – Book your seats here
Christmas Celebration – Year 1 to Year 6 – Tuesday 10 December 6pm refreshments 6.30pm start – Book your tickets
Christmas Carol Concert – Senior School Year 7 to Year 13 – Thursday 12 December 6.30pm refreshments 7pm start – Please book here

For our Christmas Celebration on Tuesday 10 December, pupils from Year 1 to Year 6 will be involved, and our Year 3 and 4 classes will take centre stage, bringing to life the story of Christmas.

We realise that this is a very busy term and that our pupils are involved in so many activities in the run up to Christmas. Please do let us know if you have any questions or concerns about the plans for the weeks ahead or if you need any clarity.

Thank you for your ongoing support and we look forward to sharing in the Christmas spirit with you over the next few weeks.

Mrs Amanda Wilmot 
Acting Head of Junior School 

This week in Nursery, we set up a Fish and Chip shop.  The reasoning behind this was to encourage communication and language as well as develop collaboration and role play.  The children have engaged really well with this and it has been a focus of their play all week.  We also froze some fish in water, which unbeknown to us, must have bought on the cold spell. 

On Tuesday we had to play in the snow and let the children discover all the joy that comes with that, we even bought some snow back into the tuff tray so the concept of solid to liquid could be explored further. 

This was then reinforced with ice and the first introduction of Christmas into the room with some Christmas figures in the ice for the girls to play with. These figures were soon hidden in a coffee pot!

This week in Preschool we have started to think ahead to Christmas. We have begun to learn and sing some of our Christmas songs and also start some Christmas crafts.

We had a lovely surprise of snow on Tuesday morning and playing outside in it was the highlight of the day. The girls explore the cold texture and began to use some very good descriptive language.

Our book of the week has been ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ by Julia Donaldson. These books seem very popular with the girls at the moment. Each week we choose a few words to go with the book and introduce them to the girls as we read. In time this will help the girls build up a wide range of vocabulary. This weeks words were squish, interesting, pantry and grateful. We used the 3 words squash, squeeze and squish to gently introduce what an alliteration is.

We have introduced the concept of subitising which is a skill we all naturally have. We started with the numbers 1,2,3 and the girls were simply asked how many they could see in the group. It is very important to start with a smaller number and make sure this is secure before moving onto larger amounts.

The girls have been continuing their learning of ‘Whatever Next!’ by Jill Murphy and have used their artistic skills to design and create junk model rocketships. We all worked as a team to create a large scale class rocket which has been used daily to blast off into space and enjoy an imaginary space adventure!

The girls have done a great job at remembering the ‘tricky’ letters, and have shown some beautiful pronunciation. This week we have been adding numbers and days of the week to our repertoire.

Year 2 have enjoyed diving into French culture while decorating their French book, as well as learning about sea animals and describing them using colours.

This half term, the girls have enjoyed number games, in preparation for our playground activity, based on ‘Quelle heure est-il Monsieur Le Loup?’ (What’s the time, Mr Wolf). 

In Year 3 we have been busy learning about “Boucle d’or et les 3 ours” (Goldilocks and the three bears) for the last few weeks, specifically practising reading the story in French and learning vocabulary for furniture.

We have been working on our listening skills and using cognates to decode the meaning of words. We practised our writing skills and the girls have enjoyed some speaking and listening games with our key terms!

In Year 4 we will be reading the book ‘Va-t’en grand monstre vert!’ (Go Away Big Green Monster!).

To prepare for this, the class has been revising colours and learning how to say different parts of the body. The girls remembered the vocabulary brilliantly, and we are now ready for the exciting part of the unit: creating and describing our own monsters!

We also practised our numbers up to 20, with Ivana and Eloise being our bingo champions!

In Year 5, we are learning about clothing and planning a fashion show for the end of term.

This week the girls impressed me with how confidently they could remember their colours, and we discussed how French adjectives come after the nouns – several girls correctly pointing out that this happens in Spanish too!

The class then showed good team work in our Quizlet competition.

Year 6 have already learned to say what they have and don’t have in their town, and this week we looked at how to form larger numbers in French so that we can talk about the history of our towns.

The girls have done a great job at working out larger numbers (as they do go a bit strange in French once you get to 70!), and have also produced some beautiful prep looking at famous French cities.

On Monday afternoon Years 4 to 7, along with two other schools, had a visit from the author Kiran Millwood Hargrave. She came to talk to us about her books and what gave her the ideas to write her stories.

Kiran uses a lot of facts about nature in her books, they were amazing facts! Miss Brandon-Jones was sitting next to us and we all had our mouths wide open.

Kiran said a lot about her book, Shadow of the Wolf Queen, a series of books she has been writing about a girl who desperately wants to be special. When her sister is kidnapped by the wolf queen she has to save her. She also mentioned that her favourite book was His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.

Overall we had great fun listening to all the interesting facts about her books. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.

Cristina and Avani, Year 6

On Friday the school took 4 teams to the annual Thornton Trail Cross Country event.

This is a lovely event organised by Thornton College and held in their beautiful grounds. The courses ranged from 1,000m for the year 3 and 4 to 2,000m for the year 5 and 6

Each year group participates as a team and the combined finishing positions would give the final team score against all of the other teams competing. It is meant to be a fun event and a great opportunity for the girls to experience a race and hopefully ignite a passion for running.

Each team received a medal for their first runner back.

Year 3
This was the first time Year 3 pupils have experienced this event and it was a fantastic introduction to racing. They competed against other Year 3’s and also Year 4’s.
Team: Sophia, Aleya, Isabelle and Anne
First runner back: Aleya

Year 4
Team: Rayna, Olivia, Siena-Louise and Dulcie
First runner back: Siena-Louise

Year 5
Team: Agnes, Olivia, Mayura and Alice
First runner back: Olivia

Year 6
Team: Eloise, Avani, Constance and Thea
First runner back: Avani

U10B
On a cold Wednesday afternoon the U10 hockey team captained by Alice, played Quinton House. The girls began the game positively, demonstrating some excellent attacking play and after several attempts at goal, Olivia and Isabella were unlucky not to score in the first half.

In the second half Caoimhe made some confident saves in goal and it was only a matter of time before Olivia scored her first goal, closely followed by a second.  The overall result was a 2 – 0 win for Northampton High School with Olivia being named player of the match by the opposition. Well done to all the girls!

U11B

On Wednesday the 20 of November, the U11B hockey team played against Quinton House. Everyone played well and showed great determination throughout the match.

Evette was awarded Player of the Match and saved some great goals, even in the bitter cold. Amber gave some fierce tackles that sent the ball flying up the pitch.

Even though we unfortunately lost against Quinton 0-5, no one gave up, and everyone kept on fighting and trying their best.  

The girls were permitted to complete a maximum of an hour a day on any game and their correct answers were converted to points.

As a school we finished 128th out of 4,493 schools in England and 22nd out of 566 schools in the West Midlands, with a student average of 1,390.

There was lots of excitement from the girls and staff on the last day, when we realised the year groups were very closely matched and first place changed hands numerous times during the day! However, Year 5 finished the victors with a class student average of 2,219 correct answers and a total score of 35,513. Well done, an excellent competition.

Other highlights included:

Top scorer at our school was Eve in Year 5 with a score of 8,006, 2nd Emily in Year 5 and 3rd Zara in Year 4
In Year 6 1st Annabel, 2nd Cristina and 3rd Constance
In Year 5 1st Eve, 2nd Emily and 3rd Mayura
In Year 4 1st Zara, 2nd Ivana and 3rd Siena-Louise
In Year 3 1st Jasmine, 2nd Aleya and 3rd Isabelle

Special mention should go to Jasmine, who came 12th overall in our school, a great achievement for someone in Year 3.

Look out for the next tournament and let’s see if we can do even better next time.

This competition is open to all students in Nursery to Year 6 and there are two categories for entry: EYFS (Nursery, Preschool and Reception) and KS1 (Years 1 and 2) and KS2 (Years 3 to 6).

The task is to create an A4 Christmas card design keeping in line with the Christmas theme, but the design is completely up to you!

Hand your design to your class teacher or key worker on or before Monday 25 November with your first name and year group written on the back.

The winning design will be chosen by our CEO Cheryl Giovannoni and the winning artists will be given a £50 gift voucher. The winning designs will be featured on the GDST website, and will also be chosen for our schools Christmas card design. Good luck!