Junior News – 21 June 2024

Another week and another range of opportunities for our girls to speak up and speak out. Our Year 2 pupils presented their fascinating assembly on Wednesday, making sure that their voices were clearly heard, taking the stage with an enthusiastic audience of parents, pupils, and staff.

On our theatre stage this week, our Senior School students wowed our Junior School pupils and children from local primary schools with the musical production of Annie. It is a powerful message for our younger children to see familiar girls only a few years older than they act, dance, sing, and play in the orchestra with such poise, confidence, and finesse.

Northampton High strengthens our girls’ voices, encouraging them to speak freely without interruption. Indeed, the International Coalition of Girls’ Schools (UCGS) references The New York Times’ article “The Universal Phenomenon of Men Interrupting Women”, which reports on academic studies and countless anecdotes making it clear that being interrupted, talked over, shut down or penalized for speaking out is nearly a universal experience for women when they are outnumbered by men.

Girls’ school students are more likely than their female peers at coeducational schools to experience an environment that welcomes an open and safe exchange of ideas. Nearly 87% of girls’ school students feel their opinions are respected at their school compared to only 58% of girls at coeducational schools¹.

One of the books I am currently reading is Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, by Caroline Criado Perez. First published in 2019, the book explores how data, fundamental to the modern world, relies on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions from economic development, to healthcare, public policy, and education. However, because so much data fails to take into account gender because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. Feminist Criado Perez investigates the shocking root cause of gender inequality and research, diving into women’s lives at home, the workplace, the doctor’s surgery, and more. Built on hundreds of studies in the US, the UK, and around the world, I am finding this book is reframing how we look at the world, compelling us to ensure an equitable world for our daughters and our pupils.

Criado Perez writes, “We teach brilliance bias to children from an early age. A recent US study found that when girls start primary school at the age of five, they are as likely as five-year-old boys to think women could be ‘really really smart’. But by the time they turn six, something changes. They start doubting their gender. So much so, in fact, that they start limiting themselves: if a game is presented to them as intended for ‘children who are really, really smart’, five-year-old girls are as likely to want to play it as boys – but six-year-old girls are suddenly uninterested. Schools are teaching little girls that brilliance doesn’t belong to them. No wonder that by the time they’re filling out university evaluation forms, students are primed to see their female teachers as less qualified.”

There is no doubt that our Northampton High girls are encouraged to be themselves and have a valued voice without interruption. This is witnessed every day in the classroom, in their performance and in their actions. From assemblies to more physical pursuits, our girls demonstrate their inherent inner confidence, their authenticity and unbridled determination and joy.

The foundations for a bright future are built in early years education. A child’s worldview and social skills are shaped at a young age. From the earliest of starts, our pupils’ experience is key: our youngest pupils participating in their Sports Afternoon this week to the most senior of girls on the theatre stage in Annie.

For girls, GDST’s research The Futures Report (updated 2024) demonstrates the many benefits of a GDST junior school, including

Multiple findings show that GDST Junior School girls are significantly more confident than their non-GDST peers; for example, GDST girls at age nine are over 20% more likely to feel confident taking risks than their non-GDST peers.
GDST Junior school girls are almost 20% more likely than their non-GDST peers to believe that women’s equality is an important issue.
GDST Junior school girls are over 20% more likely than their non-GDST peers to think that school prepares them to work well in a team.
At the age of 9, 79% of GDST students feel confident about their ability to overcome problems, compared to 58% of the national sample of girls.

This experience does not shelter girls’ school students from the real world, but to the contrary better prepares them to find and use their voices beyond the walls of the classroom. ICGS recounts comments from university professors, “I could identify students from girls’ schools on the first day of class. They were the young women whose hands shot up in the air, who were not afraid to defend their positions.”

We are proud of our work every day, teaching our girls there is enormous potential and power in being a girl. Together, we are raising girls’ voices.

Mrs Amanda Wilmot
Acting Head – Junior School

Parent Notices

Sun cream and Sun hats: Now the weather is much improved, may we please ask that pupils wear sun cream to school and ensure they have sun hats with them in school every day.

Wraparound Care: In Wraparound Care, we have reintroduced fruit as a snack as well as the biscuits currently available.

Swap Shop: The Swap Shop is open every Friday afternoon from 2.45 – 3.45pm in the Junior School hall if you need to top up uniform items.

Headphones: Please may we ask parents that girls from Year 1 to Year 6 to come to school every day with headphones. These can be the in-ear or over-ear type connected to the Chrome Books and the pupils’ laptops with an audio jack.

Breakfast Club: A polite reminder that Breakfast Club starts at 7.30am each morning. We are unable to welcome pupils into school until our staffing is in place at 7.30am.

Dates for the diary:

Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 Sports Day – Wednesday 26 June, 9.30-11.30am – Refreshments will be served.

Art Gallery viewings will be available in Junior School at the Arts Festival on Wednesday 26 June from 6.00-8pm and then on Thursday 27 and Friday 28 June from 3.30-4pm.

Open Classrooms – There will not be Open Classrooms on Wednesday 10 July from 3.30-4pm, as previously communicated.

Looking ahead to September, our Curriculum Information Evenings will take place in the week commencing 9 September. We will confirm dates shortly.

Summer Term 2 – Please click here to view a list of the upcoming events, assemblies, trips, performances and fixtures next half term.

Class Photographs

We are pleased to confirm that the class photographs taken last week are now ready for you to view.

You will receive a letter for your daughter(s), providing a link to the online site and security code to enable you to view the photograph.

Please look out for the letter and we hope you like the photographs.

Mufti Day

The Junior School Council are organising a MUFTI DAY on Friday 5 July to raise money for their charity of the year the Make a Wish foundation. This charity grants wishes to children with critical and life-threatening illnesses.

Please find the Just Giving link here with a suggested minimum donation of £1.

Thank you for your support.

Junior School Council

News from our classrooms: Nursery and Preschool

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves in Nursery on Tuesday at Sports Day and it was lovely to see so many family members joining us.

In Maths we are looking at bigger and taller and when one of the girls found a large stick at Forest School, this linked well. The stick was bigger than the girls but was it taller than Miss Cooke and Mrs Hunter?

Our story this week has been linked to the theme ‘Supertato Go Veggies Go’, with that evil pea trying to win all the prizes!

On Wednesday some of our older girls got the opportunity to go and see the beginning of the production of ‘Annie’ performed by our older girls within school.

Next week the weather looks to be getting rather warm so can you please apply sun cream every morning, as you can appreciate Nursery is very busy and it takes up lots of our valuable playing and learning time to apply every child’s sunscreen. Many thanks for your continued support.

In Preschool we have been looking at our planet ‘Earth’ and the different countries it is made up of. We have started to explore our own family connections to these places. Over the week we have focused on the countries – England, Scotland, France, Australia and Africa.

The girls have joined in with activities such as, designing their own tartan material, painting water lillies in the style of the Artist, Claude Monet, aboriginal art pictures and identifying African animals.

We have looked at where we live now by using Google Earth to zoom down to see where in the world we are. We also looked at the school and identified our garden, which many of the girls thought looked like a swimming pool!

We had a wonderful Sports Day and continued with these activities in our PE session and in French we looked at colours and various types of transport.

News from our classrooms: Reception

This week we have been very busy! We have enjoyed taking on problem solving tasks with shapes finding out how we can make a triangle, square or rectangle using lots of smaller shapes. Everyone was highly successful with this!

Another highlight has been our role play ‘Travel Agents’ which is evolving in our classroom. Everyone had lots of exciting news about places they had been to, or are looking forward to visit over the coming months.

Next week we look forward to our Sports Day alongside Year 1 & 2 and we have been practising our running, hopping and jumping skills to take part in this event. We hope parents and families can join us to watch next Wednesday morning.

Let’s hope the sunny warm weather continues!

Year 1 Computing Focus

This week, Year 1 have been learning how to open and type in a Google document. Learning how to create capital letters, ‘finger’ spaces and full stops was a little tricky at first, but the whole class worked very hard and typed some fantastic sentences about the activities they enjoy at Forest School.

Year 2 Computing Focus

This term the girls have been making music using the Purple Mash programme 2 Sequence. They have managed to add sounds onto ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ and change the pace to get different effects. They have also played with the different instruments tools to see what effects can be created.

Next we are using Google Slides to create a presentation to share with their new teacher to tell her about themselves.

Year 3 Computing Focus

This week the girls have been sharing their knowledge of the tools in Google Slides to prepare a presentation about themselves. We will then be sharing these presentations with their new teacher.

We have been thinking carefully about what we think our new teacher needs to know about us.

Year 4 Computing Focus

Year 4 students had a blast in their recent Computing class as they delved into the world of music terms and explored ‘Busy Beats’ on Purple Mash! They matched various music terms with their definitions, and when listening to catchy tunes, they focused on the beat, texture, and tempo.

After getting inspired, they unleashed their creativity by creating their synthetic tunes using the software. The best part was when they shared their creations with each other – some tunes were definitely very busy and full of exciting beats!

Year 5 Computing Focus

“In Year 5, we have just started doing game making on Purple Mash and we really enjoy it because we have unlimited things we can do… we have to use our imaginations. So far we have been working on the basic setting of our games, thinking about adding items to collect and enemies who will attack the player!

We are really looking forward to finishing the games, adding levels, and playing them!” Holly & Zoe

Year 6 Computing Focus

Over the course of the year, the girls have developed their Computing skills and are now confident at using Google Classroom, Mote, Google Docs and Google Slides.

They are also able to choose reliable websites and acknowledge their sources. This means that they are well prepared for their transition into Senior School.

News from outside of the classroom: Year 5 Trip to Everdon

On Monday, Year 5 had a fantastic day conducting a river study at Everdon. We did four activities which were: Measuring the flow rate of the river, sketching the meander, measuring the depth of the river, and stream dipping for invertebrates.

“My favourite activity at Everdon was measuring how fast the river was flowing because you took turns to go to each different job and there were five different things to do – the best one was where you had to put a rope around your waist and you have to catch the ball when it was coming down the stream using a net!” Leah

“The best activity was measuring the depth of the river at different points so that we could create a transect diagram. It was really deep and really cold and at the end we went into the deep bit and we all crouched down so we could get wet! After being in the river, we had to try and get our boots off and it was really hard… Eloise’s boots would not come off!” Annabel & Eloise

“I really liked stream dipping because you didn’t know what you were going to find. Holly and Amber found a fish and a lot of freshwater shrimps, Eloise and Thea found a pond snail, and Elizabeth found a leech! It was fun just kneeling down and going under the reed with the net. I got really excited when I found something because I didn’t seem to have much luck.” Thea & Constance

Weekly Awards

Star Learners of the Week:

Amber G, Elodie K, All of Year 2, Siena-Louise D B, Grace A, Olivia T, Mayura G, Caoimhe H-T, Evette B, Eloise C, Holly G-S, Cristina S-R, Hester L, Luthailiu P and Tara S

Congratulations to the following girls who achieved a certificate in the Junior Mathematical Challenge 2024:
Bronze Certificate – Angelie B, Victoria F L, Aurelia T
Silver Certificate – Diya B, Kinara B, Anna H

External Achievements:

Penelope J – represented the school at a NTGA trampolining competition
Anne A – received Fast Phonics achievements
Zara B – achieved a Merit in her Grade 1 Flute exam
Millicent S – completed a 100m front crawl in Swimming
Grace B – competed in a Swimming Tournament and now in the finals
Avani A – competed in a Cricket Tournament and won all her matches
Eloise C – competed in a Cricket Tournament and won all her matches
Amelie N – won all her heats and also the freestyle relay at the Northampton Swimming Club Summer Swim Gala

Birthdays This Week

This week, we wish a very Happy Birthday to the following members of our Junior School family:

Betsy H and Caoimhe H-T

GDST Alumna of the Year and Trailblazer Awards

It’s that time of the year once again!

Voting is now open for the annual GDST Alumna of the Year and Trailblazer Awards. To find out more information about this year’s fantastic finalists and details on how to cast your vote, please click here. Voting closes on Friday 12 July, and we really appreciate your support.

Good luck to all of this year’s amazing nominees!

Miss Price
Digital Marketing Assistant