The achievements of our pupils in their lessons are truly impressive. It is a pleasure to celebrate their hard work and growth, and I hope you find as much joy in reading their reports as I did.

On Wednesday, Year 3 delivered a fantastic class assembly focused on teamwork and collaboration. Their thoughtful presentation highlighted effective strategies for working together, an essential skill that will serve them well not only throughout their time at Northampton High School but also in their future lives. Mr Rickman was thoroughly impressed by the class’s effort, praising how well prepared the girls were, and how clearly and confidently they communicated their ideas. A heartfelt thank you to Year 3, Miss Taylor, and everyone who attended to support the assembly.

In this week’s Junior News, you will discover more about the exciting work happening in our Humanities lessons. Pupils have had the opportunity to engage with visitors from other parts of the school, create games, sample diverse foods, listen to insightful teacher accounts, and research inspirational women who have shaped history. It has been wonderful to expand our pupils’ understanding of History and Geography, and highlighting the ways the world around us has been influenced by these people and events.

As we mark Children’s Mental Health Week, we are also fortunate to have a thought-provoking blog from Mrs Giordano in this week’s Junior News. She explores how children’s understanding of their emotions can help them navigate the complexities of mental health, offering valuable insights and practical tips to support our pupils now and in the future. 

Mrs Saunders-Wall
Interim Director of Junior School Liaison

To know ourselves in an honest, non-judgemental way can help us to navigate the medley of emotions we all experience and can be key to our personal development. Knowing the signs and signals our body emits when emotions are rising, gives us the opportunity to work with those emotions, either enhancing them, or calming them, in order to move forwards and respond, rather than react. Using emotional intelligence as their inspiration, the children’s mental health charity Place2Be, teamed up with their charity partners at Here4You this week, to host Children’s Mental Health Week 2025, with the theme ‘Know Yourself, Grow Yourself’. Supported by The Walt Disney Company and the ‘Inside Out 2’ endearing characters, they are encouraging children to grow their self-awareness through understanding their emotions.

The underlying message expertly weaved into the ‘Inside Out’ films is that all of our emotions have a purpose, which combined together, form our core belief system and ultimately our sense of self. The main character, teenage girl Riley, finds that fear and anxiety help to keep her safe, anger helps her to speak out when something feels unjust, joy and sadness help her to process disappointment and then realise what true happiness feels like. As Brianna Wiest writes in her poem on the purpose of emotions, ‘“Your feelings aren’t random, they are messengers. And if you want to get anywhere, you need to let them speak to you and tell you what you really need.”

But how do we befriend our emotions? The Irish language uses a beautiful way of describing emotions, instead of saying, ‘I am sad’, they say ‘tá brón orm’, which when translated means, ‘sadness is on me’. In a similar context, the Latin expression of emotion is ‘emovere’, which means ‘to move out’. These translations point to emotions as transient, they move and change, they do not define and consume our identity, they are a sensation we feel in our body for a while, before making space for other emotions to arrive.

The connection between our body and our emotions has long been a point of scientific research. Darwin’s interest in the development of species, also sparked his lesser-known research into emotions, in his work titled, ‘The expression of the emotions, in man and animals’. Darwin wrote about the similarities in how humans and animals express emotions via muscle movements in our body and facial expressions as a way of communication and survival, a common language used across continents and species. In his groundbreaking book, ‘The Body Keeps the Score’, Bessel Van Der Kolk clearly demonstrates the importance of tuning into and working with our emotions via physical sensations in our body. He writes, “We do not truly know ourselves unless we can feel and interpret our physical sensations…while numbing may make life tolerable, the price you pay is that you lose awareness of what is going on inside your body, and with that, the sense of being fully, sensually alive.” Van Der Kolk describes how trauma can remain in our body, but with support, we can learn how to move this energy towards both emotional and physical healing. Whilst some emotions can generate a sense of unease within us, turning away from emotions may limit our capacity to live a truly fulfilled life. Mindfulness practices teach us to turn towards discomfort with gentle curiosity and compassion for ourselves, as noted by the renowned Mindfulness teacher, Jon Kabat-Zinn and his ‘9 Mindfulness Attitudes’. 

To read more, please click here.

Mrs Giordano
Wellbeing Practitioner

‘Is there room on the broom for a cat like me?’ This week we are reading and acting out the story ‘Room on the broom’.

In the outside area, we have heard witches cackles as we have “flown” around the garden, picking up our friends as we travel. Inside we have been painting with spaghetti broomsticks, making potions in the water tray and painting a giant witches hat.

We have learnt new vocabulary whilst reading the book and we have heard these words in interactions during play.

This week in Preschool we have been reading the story ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’. Whilst reading and acting out the story we have been incorporating propositional language and directions.

In PE we acted out the story by making a bridge out of climbing equipment and climbing under it and over it.

During the week the girls also played with a car maze where they had to follow directions such as left, right, forward and backwards. The arrows in the maze helped to navigate the car into the parking space. This was very popular and we got lots of practice with our sense of direction when turning left and right.

Whilst playing outside, the balance seats were turned upside down transforming them into stepping stones, a very clever idea! More were added and the girls had a go at stepping across the ‘river’. Some great balancing skills were shown as well as some super helping in the form of support while our friends crossed the river. Great team work and problem solving girls!

Reception have had a very busy week learning all about ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’.

The girls have enjoyed investigating bridges and building their own structures from a range of materials.

Each week in our ‘Understanding the World’ sessions we focus in depth on a different material, with this week’s lesson being all about metal. Everyone created wonderfully artistic pictures using metal and loose parts or tin foil.

The girls also used the metal detectors to find metal in and around the school grounds, which they recorded independently.

Year 1 are learning about the history of toys from Victorian times to the current day.

We began by exploring toys and games that we play with now and completed a research homework finding out about toys played with by our parents and grandparents.

We have compared modern toys including Crayola crayons, Meccano and a teddy bear with versions from the early 20th century and talked about what was the same and what was different. We have looked at a range of toys from the past and present and organised them along a timeline.

Great fun was had making a thaumatrope – a spinning toy played with by Victorian children.

Year 2 had a wonderful time learning about Lunar New Year as part of our China topic.

We found out all about the celebrations that take place at Lunar New Year, and enjoyed making lanterns and sampling some Chinese food. The highlight was a visit from Dr Lee, who told us about she celebrates Lunar New Year with her family.

We also enjoyed taking part in a drama activity based on The Great Race, which influenced which animals form the Chinese Zodac.

Year 3 have enjoyed using maps, atlases and a globe to find out about the physical and human geography of India.

A selection of short video clips allowed them to get a feel for life in the city of Mumbai and find out about the work of dabbahwallahs.

The girls were fascinated by the idea of mothers cooking hot food at home in the morning and putting it in tiffin boxes to be transported to school for their children to eat at lunchtime, especially as no names or addresses are used and boxes rarely go missing!

This term, our Year 4 pupils have dived headfirst into the fascinating world of the Ancient Egyptians, using the incredible story of Tutankhamun as their guide! Our young historians have discovered what it was like to live as an Egyptian royal child, learning about the grandeur and challenges of that unique lifestyle.

Not stopping there, they put their creativity to the test by designing their very own Egyptian gods based on ancient beliefs and a lot of imagination.

The highlight? Becoming trainee embalmers using tomatoes! They washed, mushed, scooped, and salted their tomatoes, eagerly waiting 70 days to see if their creations make it to the Afterlife! Our budding Egyptologists also decoded funny riddles and jokes through hieroglyphics, reveling in the fun of no spaces or punctuation. They even penned their own secret messages!

“In Year 5 we have started learning about the Anglo-Saxons, and how they lived and stuff like that. We made a diagram of how we think their settlements would be.” Caoimhe

“We worked in a group to draw and label our Anglo-Saxon village. We knew what they might look like because Miss Brandon-Jones showed us pictures of her visit to West Stow… I thought it looked very interesting.” Amariah

“What surprised me about West Stow was how they had made the oldest house. The roof was on the ground and the actual house had been dug out of the earth.” Olivia

“My favourite bit so far was finding out information about different Anglo-Saxon rulers. They have very interesting names! There was Cnute and Hathacnute (and Cortacnute… only joking)!! I worked with my friends to write about Alfred the Great.” Rhoda

“We are also learning about Anglo-Saxon legends, and read Beowulf in English. It is my favourite book this year. It is about mythical monsters and legendary leaders. Now, we are writing our own story and I’m loving it!” Olivia

Year 6 have been learning about inspirational women in Humanities this half term. We have collaborated to produce Google Slides about the nine women displayed in our school corridor, two of which are alumnae of our school. They have then started to learn about how the role of women has changed through history.

When the girls discovered some of the social etiquette rules that Victorian ladies had to live by they were quite horrified and disgusted, especially when they compared them to the way the men lived!

Next we will be discussing the suffrage movement and the brave ladies who fought for a woman’s right to vote and finally a look at how women used to be portrayed in adverts in the 1950s and 1960s.

I am sure this will amaze and astound them as much as the etiquette rules! Hopefully inspiring them to develop into independent, free-thinking, educated women who believe they can do whatever they set out to achieve, as there are no obstacles other than their own self-belief and determination.

The GDST Festival of Sport was held on Thursday 30 January and saw the Northern Schools of the GDST; Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Shrewsbury travel to Northampton.

The conditions were perfect, with the sun shining and temperatures were a balmy 7 degrees! This inspired the team and despite losing the first game they went onto win 4 and draw 2. Meaning that the team came 3rd out of 8.

Players of the matches were Eloise, Olivia T, Elizabeth and Olivia H.

U9A
Our U9A team had a fantastic match against Broughton Manor. They were fast, controlled and accurate in their passing and their team work was superb. We came away with a 6-0 win and Zara was awarded Player of the Match – Well done girls. 

U9B
The U9B team had a fantastic game against Broughton Manor and really tried hard for the 4 quarters. They were able to pass and move into space and communicated well with one another. Amelia started the scoring off with the first goal and this was followed with goals from Ella, Aleya and Charlotte.

We are very excited to share the news of our brand new girls-only toddler group starting this month!

Girls aged 1-3 and their parents, grandparents and guardians are all welcome to come along and delve into a wide variety of toys, crafts and ‘surprise play stations’ created to spark imagination and fun times. Always remember ‘dress to get messy!’.

This toddler group will be held fortnightly on Tuesdays, 9.15am – 10am, a full list of dates and the online booking form can be found on the school website https://www.northamptonhigh.co.uk/admissions/open-events/

Please feel free to share this with any friends who may be interested, and come and join us with your little ones too. Our next session is, Tuesday 25 February. The Spring Term sessions are free of charge.