Junior News – 9 June 2023

Later this month, I will be presenting at the International Coalition of Girls’ Schools conference in Cleveland, Ohio on an educational topic I am very passionate about; the importance of play in schools!

Along with Kate Millichamp (Head of Junior School, Shrewsbury High School), I’m looking forward to leading a session on the positive impact a playful school culture has on children’s wellbeing and academic success. With colleagues from across the globe in attendance, our aim is for the session to be informative, affirming and inspiring. The benefits of play have been readily documented in research, but unfortunately, without a conscious focus we all have a tendency to find play harder to prioritise as we get older. We have a responsibility as adults to facilitate role model play as an integral part of our children’s experiences.

Being part of the GDST family of schools is hugely beneficial and on this occasion the membership is facilitating valuable international networking and development. As a self-confessed, lifetime learner I’m unapologetic in sharing my eager anticipation for the learning I will benefit from at this 3-day conference. The opportunity to network with hundreds of colleagues from over 175 girls’ schools across 13 countries offers a plethora of benefits for our school community.

I look forward to reflecting on these benefits with you when I return on 30th June. In the meantime I encourage you to heed the advice of the legendary Michael Rosen to throw caution to the wind and play!

“Play is a fundamental human right.
Whoever you are, maybe you’re a mum, a dad, an auntie, an uncle or a grandparent, a child, a teenager, a teacher, whoever you are, let’s get out there and play.”
Michael Rosen, Author and Poet

Miss Hair
Head of Junior School

Dates for your Diary

Class Assemblies (8.35am unless specified):
14 June – Year 2
21 June – Year 1
05 July – Year 6 – End of Junior School Celebration event (8.45am)
05 July – Reception (3.00pm)

Other Trips:
23 June – Women’s Ashes (KS2)

Key Dates:
Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 Sports Day – 6 July (9.30 – 11.30am).
Nursery to Year 6 – Summer Fayre, 7 July (3.30-5pm)
Reception to Year 6 – Open Classrooms, 12 July (3.30-4pm)
Reception to Year 6 – End of term, 14 July (11.45am)

Father’s Day Breakfast: Friday 16 June

KS2 Forest School sessions:
12 June – Year 5
19 June – Year 3 and Year 4
03 July – Year 6
10 July – Year 5

School Trips for this term:
EYFS – Teddy Bear’s Picnic
Year 1 and 2 – Warwick Castle
Year 3 – Aquarium
Year 4 – Lego Discovery Centre
Year 5 – Everdon

Upcoming Events and Notices

Swap Shop: Our next Swap Shop event will be held on Friday 30 June, 8.00am – 9.00am and 11.30am – 12.30pm in the Junior School Library.

Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 Sports Day: 6 July, 9.30 – 11.30am. On arrival, please make your way to the Sports Field. All parents and families are welcome and we would love to see as many of you as possible cheering on your children.

Swimming: The last swimming lessons of the academic year for Reception to Year 6 will be week beginning 3 July, therefore the children will not require their kits to be in school in the last week of the academic year.

Prize Giving: We will be holding a prize giving ceremony for Junior School on Wednesday 12 July 8.45 – 9.30am. Prizes will be awarded to children from Years 3 to 6 for various academic and pastoral achievements and recognition. Parents of prize winners will be invited to this event in the coming weeks. We are looking forward to celebrating these achievements together at the end of the year.

Women’s England vs Sri Lanka Cricket Match 12 September: You will have received an email this week sharing with you a fabulous opportunity for your daughter to attend this match at Northampton County Cricket Ground. One of our parents has very generously offered to sponsor a box for us to facilitate a group of interested Junior School families to experience this opportunity together. If you would like to secure places for your family to attend this match please email junioradmin@nhs.gdst.net as soon as possible as spaces are limited due to the box capacity.

News from our classrooms: Nursery and Preschool

In Nursery, we are already in holiday mode. Our theme for this term is ‘The beach’ and some of the group have already been on holiday. Thank you so much for sharing your holiday snaps on Tapestry; it has been great to use them as prompts for discussion.

In French this week, we have looked at the weather (so important when considering a trip to the beach in England!). Although disappointingly grey at the beginning of the week, the girls’ positivity shone through and, when picking out the appropriate weather picture for the day, we still ended up saying how hot and sunny it was.

The girls have also been creating their own seaside scenes, using their developing scissor skills to cut out beach items before sticking them onto their beach picture. Whilst our youngest are excelling in experimenting by squeezing loop scissors, our older girls are displaying just how much they have progressed this year, using their other hand to hold and control the paper in order to cut around the pictures with precision.

This week has been a very active week, with the girls practising and preparing for our Sports morning.

On the day, children from various year groups supported the running of the morning and were a credit to the school. Well done to everybody!

The story of the week ‘Sports Day!’ got the girls engaged prior to the actual event. They talked about what they thought would happen, then after Sports morning they changed the conversation to what had happened, reminiscing about the morning!

Summer has entered Preschool and although the weather hasn’t reciprocated this throughout the week, the girls have shared their adventures of what they did during the half term holiday. It has been wonderful hearing all the memories you have made and that there will be many more to make!

We have also been focusing on the transition to Reception, speaking to the girls about the next important step of their journey. We have spoken about teachers, classrooms and settles, to help them understand the process.

News from our classrooms: Reception

This week we have taken inspiration from the book ‘The Snail and the Whale’, by Julia Donaldson to start thinking about journeys and adventures. This led to designing a postcard and writing it from the place that we had travelled to. The class decided to make a pictorial map to help sequence the story and aid in re-telling it.

We looked in detail at a real sunflower and a picture of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and then had a go at painting our own beautiful paintings.

In Maths we have been using the numbers up to 20 to play games, make with numicon and show a number on the tens frame.

Our role play is now a Travel Agents with Disney Land proving to be a very popular destination! We used a globe to think about planet Earth, then looked at the map of the United Kingdom and named the countries. Google Maps came in very useful! We have also been learning about different types of houses and houses around the world.

We really enjoyed helping at the Nursery and Preschool Sports Morning this week.

A very busy first week back.

Year 1 Art and DT Focus

Year 1 have loved making castle sketchbooks as they prepare for their visit to Warwick Castle on Tuesday.

They have also been working hard on a collaborative sewing project and dazzling us with their resilience and determination. Backstitch is a very tricky stitch to master!

They studied fabric bunting and learned how to carefully draw around a template onto fabric to give the desired shape – in our case, perfect, pointy pendants! With gusto, they then tackled the challenge of carefully cutting out their shapes. Pinning the right sides of the fabric was tricky and intriguing for some. The back stitch journey was a long one, but they all persevered and have now produced a pendant which will be sewn on to a strip of bias binding.

This glorious string of bunting will be hung in their new Year 2 classroom to celebrate and remind them of this learning experience.

Year 2 Art and DT Focus

Our Year 2 girls have worked extremely hard this week to create turtles as part of their Mexican topic! To create the turtles, they covered a plate in tissue paper and then drew patterns onto the shells with black pen.

The group also created brightly coloured flowers with tissue paper as part of the project, and we think they look fantastic!

Year 3 Art and DT Focus

This week, Year 3 have been putting their science learning to the test to create skeleton family collages using chalk and cotton buds!

Using different resources to what they would usually use, the girls proved to themselves that anything can be made into art!

Year 4 Art and DT Focus

In their Design Technology lesson this week, Year 4 enjoyed decorating their light boxes. It was fantastic to see lots of different designs and bright colours being used!

Over the last few weeks, they have created a design criteria, a mood board and final designs, and we have loved watching the light boxes come to life!

Next week, we look forward to adding the electrical components.

Year 5 Art and DT Focus

Our Year 5 girls have had an amazing time making bread!

This week, we completed our DT unit by choosing our own recipes to bake! The group were tasked with scaling down their chosen recipes, trying to follow them as perfectly as possible and baking without any adult help at all!

The results were… interesting.

Some fabulous rolls, plaited loaves, tiger bread and pizza swirls were among the wide range of goodies produced.

Year 6 Art and DT Focus

In Year 6 we have been very busy sewing our felt cushions.

We designed the cushions with a specific celebration in mind, for example a wedding or the birth of a new baby. We practised different stitching techniques and have used terminology such as ‘motif’ and ‘embellish’.

In art, we have been describing the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, thinking about the colour, tone and composition of the pictures and the atmosphere and mood evoked.

News from outside of our classrooms: Reception Prep Challenge

Our fabulous Reception class have produced some wonderful projects for their Prep Challenge.

They were invited to choose an animal from the rainforest to research and create a project on. I had the pleasure of each of the girls verbally presenting their projects to me when I visited their class and I was particularly encouraged by their clear enjoyment of the task, the creativity demonstrated and their self-confidence when articulating their learning.

These projects are proudly displayed in the Junior School entrance and I invite you to take a look when you next visit.

Miss Hair
Head of Junior School

Individual Achievement

We’d like to congratulate Caoimhe (Year 3) on her success in qualifying for the World Championship Finals for Irish Dancing.

Caoimhe has developed a real passion for Irish dancing and her determination and positive attitude have supported her to experience such notable success.

We are looking forward to hearing about her experience at the finals in September. Good luck from us all Caoimhe!