It has been an exciting week for our Junior School pupils, with residential trips, World Book Day celebrations, and a fantastic class assembly delivered by Year 1.

Residential trips offer a unique opportunity for pupils to bond with their peers while developing essential skills such as independence, collaboration, and risk taking. For teachers, it is also a valuable chance to connect with pupils in a different setting. This week, I had the pleasure of attending two residential trips, where I witnessed our Year 3, 4, and 6 pupils stepping out of their comfort zones, growing in confidence and resilience, and thoroughly enjoying every moment of the experience!

I will not give too much away, as you can read more about the Year 6 Condover Hall trip later in this week’s Junior News, and the Year 3 and 4 trip to Beaumanor Hall in Leicestershire will be covered in next week’s edition. However, I must take this opportunity to congratulate all the pupils on such successful residentials. We are incredibly proud of how they demonstrated impeccable behaviour, fully engaged in all activities, and embraced a host of new experiences with a positive, can-do attitude.

Mr Rickman enjoyed the Year 1 Class assembly which was also attended by the families and Dr Lee. Mrs Purvey-Tyrer had organised an absolutely fantastic world book day review and the girls spoke passionately about what they enjoy reading. As an added bonus they had all illustrated a character from their favourite books – what a treat for us all.

We hope you enjoy this edition of Junior News.

Mrs Saunders-Wall
Interim Director of Junior School Liaison

What a difference the sunshine makes.  The girls have been able to stay outside for so much longer and have enjoyed letting off steam in the outside area, whether it be playing on the bikes, playing in the sand or role-playing shops. 

The ‘Three Little Pigs’ is the story of the week and by mid week, many of the girls could retell the story with visual prompts.  This shows amazing comprehension from our youngest members of the school. 

To reinforce the story we have had a variety of sensory and fine motor activities for the girls to engage in. This included gluing cardboard bricks onto a house, making our own pigs and using the sensory tray filled with straw and sticks.

This week in Preschool we have been exploring the different patterns and marks when using kitchen utensils. We discovered that each tool makes its own unique pattern and some lovely pieces of art work have been created.

In the water tray we have had used our senses when playing with cornflour, observing it change from a solid lump when picked up to a a liquid, dribbling through our fingers.

At Forest School we collected twigs, leaves and other natural objects; which we used to make a nest for a gigantic egg. It then hatched, and out came Qwerk, a special travelling teddy.

We have a very exciting visit from the local police station who brought in a police car and police van for us to explore and learn about. It was exciting exploring all the areas of these vehicles.

Books have been very popular with the girls this week and on Thursday we enjoyed coming into Preschool wearing a mixture of book character costumes or our pyjamas. We spent most of the day sharing some rather funny stories and we even explained to each other what book is our favourite to read.

Reception have had a fun filled week full of trips and visitors for our theme ‘People Who Help Us’.

First, the girls toured the school, meeting several members of staff to find out all about their roles and responsibilities.

Next, we met our wonderful School Nurse and learnt all about how she helps everyone in school. We asked her lots of questions and learnt all about the role of a nurse in school and in the community.

Next, we visited Waitrose to find out about the different roles within the store. The highlight of the trip was a visit to the fish counter to see all the different types of fish and also then a visit to the bakery, where we got to select our own cookie to bake and bring home!

Finally, we had a visit from two police officers who told the girls all about their role by reading a short story. The girls then got to look at the officers uniform, dress up and role play being a police officer and also got to explore the police van.

All of the children had brilliant behaviour and super manners when speaking to our guests and during our visit- well done Reception.

The focus in English for Year 1 this half term has been their class assembly.

To use an aircraft analogy, their reading is ‘taking off’ and it is a joy to hear reading aloud begin to flow and watch as they delight in reading picture books and early chapter books with confidence and enjoyment.

Spoken language is a key component of our English curriculum and our assembly preparation began with sharing favourite books together and talking about why they love them.

It ended with showcasing performance and presentation skills to parents, pupils and staff. I felt enormously proud of each class member and delighted in their growing confidence and poise.

In Year 2, the book Lots: Diversity of Life on Earth has provided inspiration for our writing.

This week, we have used some of the many rich, detailled illustrations as inspiration to help us understand how we can use adjectives to describe settings and powerful verbs to describe how different rainforest creatures move.

A kenning uses two words, connected by a hyphen, to replace a noun e.g. wave-traveller is a kenning for a boat.

The girls then wrote a kenning about themselves, before composing kennings to describe an imaginary monster and creating a digital image of the beast! 

This term, our fantastic Year 4 pupils have been truly captivated by the enchanting tale of ‘Odd and the Frost Giants’! They dived deep into the story, stepping into the shoes of Odd himself. To unleash their creativity, the children penned heartfelt letters explaining why they decided to run away.

In chapter 2, they encountered a cheeky fox, sparking their imaginations even further. They used expanded noun phrases and similes to craft vivid descriptions of this cunning creature.

For some extra spelling fun, our budding writers practised their words in a playful new way – by writing on each other’s backs! It was a fantastic mix of learning and laughter as they tried to guess their classmates’ spellings.

Year 5 have been reading (and watching) ‘The Lost Thing’ by Shaun Tan.

“I really like the colourful illustrations in the book, and loved creating a care leaflet explain how to care for a lost thing. I also really enjoyed using A.I. to generate an image of the Lost Thing. It was very difficult because I had to keep changing my description!” Aggie

“I loved watching the end and the colourful part of the Lost Thing’s story. I wrote a letter to the Lost Thing in character and used lots of emotional adjectives like hopeful, nervous, lonely overjoyed.” Amariah

“I enjoyed working as a group on a script for an advert. It was really fun because we got to present it to the whole class.” Alice

Year 6 are enjoying a unit of work based on the story of ‘Peter Pan’, which they will be performing at the end of term.

Activities so far have included writing a character study for their part in the play and using evidence from the text to support their ideas.

This week, the girls have risen to the challenge of summarising the story in 150 words or less, which is not an easy task!

The team worked incredibly hard and fought until the very end, but unfortunately Northampton High School lost 26:0.

Leah was the Captain and also awarded Player of the Match. Particular mention also goes to Anushka, Cristina, Sophia and Hesali. 

The teams participated in a Netball tournament and a range of outdoor adventure activities. The girls demonstrated excellent teamwork and sportsmanship.

The Year 6 team came 4th in the tier two trophy competition beating much larger schools such as Streatham and Clapham and Sydenham High School. Beyond their Netball achievements, pupils showed great courage in activities such as archery, climbing, abseiling, and leaping for the trapeze.

It was a weekend filled with growth, challenge, and excitement for all involved, including Mrs Blake and me.

To celebrate Pancake Day, Year 1 and 2 ate pancakes at Forest School. Together, we sensibly cut apples and cooked them with cinnamon over the fire to create a delicious topping for the pancakes, which were also gently toasted over the campfire. Delicious!

In Year 5’s Forest School session, we made delicious Viking-inspired ‘pottage’ – a chunky, flavoursome soup made with turnips, parsnips, leeks and carrots. We washed and chopped the vegetables and added them to a broth, which was gently cooked over the campfire. As always, the girls showed that they can use tools and fire very safely. Excellent work!

The show will take place on Wednesday 12 March in the Senior Hall at 3:45pm.

Year 5 and 6 are welcome to join them to see some exciting experiments!

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 11 March. The Spring Term sessions are free of charge.