It’s been wonderful to welcome our Reception children back into school for the Spring Term. They have returned from the Christmas holiday refreshed and raring to learn, and what better way to embrace the start of the year than to discuss their thoughts on what they would like to achieve in 2023? With bags of enthusiasm and smiles on their faces, the children came up with their own unique ideas. We celebrated each one and encouraged the children to recognise links with our building learning power values; to be resourceful, reflective, resilient and relating. The children then represented their thoughts through beautiful drawings and used their ‘fred fingers’ to write down their ideas, which they stuck onto the back of leaves. The young learners then worked carefully and collaboratively to make a ‘turning over a new leaf’ tree which takes pride of place in Reception’s shared area. What a fantastic start to a new year and a new term.

Rosie Snagge, Reception Class Teacher

Something’s burning in Pudding Lane, but who is to blame? Year 1 had the opportunity this week to discover what really happened in 1666 during the Great Fire of London. Divergent Drama ran a fantastic workshop for our lucky children, who created scenes from the great fire, explored the different tactics used to quell the blaze, and discovered how the flames were eventually extinguished and what it might have been like to have experienced such an historic day first hand. Year 1 had so much fun bringing this fascinating history topic to life. Exploring the timeline of events and meeting historical figures meant the children had a hands-on, practical experience of their new topic in a lively and entertaining way. The day really ignited an enthusiastic curiosity for factfinding among the children and it was a great way to introduce such a dramatic topic.

Kerri Wilkes, Head of Year 1

Even the gloomy, grey January weather couldn’t dampen the enthusiasm, energy and spirit of Year 2 pupils returning to school on Tuesday morning. And they were still full of excitement as they headed off to the South Downs Planetarium and Science Centre in astronaut Tim Peake’s home city of Chichester. Welcomed by a passionate and knowledgeable team of volunteers, the children were treated to an elaborate, spectacular and fun day of space exploration and stargazing. While reclining on enormous former aircraft seats within the 11-metre, domed Star Theatre, the impressive star projector portrayed the heavens onto the ceiling. Renowned astronomer Dr John Mason enthralled his audience of teachers and pupils alike as he navigated and narrated his way through a 24-hour celestial cycle. His passion for astronomy was infectious and the children shared their knowledge of the solar system, locating the sun, the moon and the visible planets of Venus, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. Dr Mason utilised the magnificent technology to superb effect, identifying the patterns depicting an array of constellations within the night sky, including the Great Bear and Little Bear, Orion and Sirius before spectacularly bringing them to life with stunning images. Children gasped in wonder as they detected a meteor shower and were flabbergasted to detect the International Space Station orbiting the earth at the phenomenal speed of five miles per second – or 18,000 miles per hour; at which point a female astronaut conducted an incredibly informative and enlightening tour of the International Space Station, explaining all the practicalities of eating, drinking, exercising, brushing your teeth, going to the toilet and sleeping in space. Before leaving the amazing planetarium, the children completed a quiz and learnt about the Artemis programme; discovering that the planned Artemis 3 mission, which is due to launch in 2025, will see the first woman and first non-white astronaut set foot on the moon. Who knows what impact this wonderful visit may have on our Year 2 pupils and what their futures may hold, but they certainly excelled themselves at the planetarium; demonstrating their inquisitive natures and impressive thirst and desire to extend their knowledge of the universe.

Shirley Jervis, Year 2 Class Teacher

The Year 3 children welcomed the new year and the new Spring Term by collaborating to become relating learners. And the week certainly started with a bang as Year 3 got stuck into the brilliant ‘Marvellously Minty Geyser’ experiment. This fun test looks at the physical reaction of mixing two ingredients, in this case Mentos mints and diet cola. Mixing the mints and cola releases carbon dioxide which has settled at the bottom of the bottle which creates pressure and forces the cola up and out of the bottle with impressive results. Inspired by the experiment and the book George’s Marvellous Medicine, the children were then given the opportunity to make their own ‘medicine’ involving lots of weird and wonderful things such as mouldy socks, a rotten banana, toothpaste, baking soda, washing-up liquid, paint and bubble bath. Year 3 also switched sports this week during their Games lessons, with the girls playing hockey and the boys playing rugby. Both sports require a good deal of collaboration, resilience and perseverance and we look forward to playing matches in the coming weeks.

Robert Grech, Year 3 Class Teacher

Year 5 have this week been in the swimming pool focusing on the butterfly stroke during PE. Butterfly requires a good deal of strength, stamina and technique and is the second fastest of all strokes, after front crawl. It is to many also the most spectacular of all strokes to watch. The butterfly kick is an essential element of not only this stroke but also underwater freestyle and backstroke starts and the children have demonstrated a big willingness to learn. Each class in the year group continues to make good progress in developing this most wonderful stroke and will revisit it later in the term after honing their techniques in the other swimming strokes.

Jo Gordon, Year 5 PE Teacher

Following last term’s project reading Homer’s Iliad, Year 6 began their next adventure in Latin with an opening look at Homer’s Odyssey. Alongside learning some of the background to the writing of the poems and the myth of the Trojan War, they started with a look at the themes and listened to some of the original poem (admittedly in English translation rather than the Ancient Greek!). Preps for the term will be taken up with reading an abridged version, and then in the summer term they will look at Virgil’s Aeneid, meaning in one year they have covered all three great classical epics. Meanwhile, the work of learning actual Latin continues, and this week saw the children tackle a whole new set of noun endings (how many parents remember this particular joy?). While there is no substitute for focussed learning of endings, it doesn’t hurt to throw in some creative writing and artwork to help remember the grammar and, once again, a variety of self-expression was invited. “The dog finds the cat under the house” can lead to an extraordinary range of representation…

Alex Walker, Head of Classics

‘People who possess Microsoft Excel skills are highly sought after in all industries, including sales, marketing, and finance’. Armed with this headline statement from a recruitment company, Year 7 have been refreshing their understanding of the application Excel in their Digital Literacy lessons. Being able to quickly navigate around the program, to input and manipulate data, to change the layout and the format of the data are all important building blocks to deepen their understanding of an extremely powerful program. The children had to increase column widths, rename sheets and create bar and pie graphs among a number of other requirements. The children will be using this application further down the line in conjunction with other subjects with the aim of them becoming efficient users of the software, and to be effective in presenting data and forming conclusions from their findings.

Richard Dunn, Head of ICT

Which city was purported to have been founded by Romulus and Remus in 753BC? What major event happened in 1381? Who once famously uttered the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner?’ These were but a few questions from the first round of this year’s Townsend Warner History Prize, sat by 20 intrepid Year 8 historians this week. Founded in 1885, the Townsend Warner History Prize is the oldest prep school competition in existence and tests pupils’ general understanding of key moments in time. It’s certainly not for the faint hearted as many of the questions are most challenging, but it takes more than a bit of challenge to ward off our determined Year 8 Highfield historians. The test papers will be marked by the Head of History at Harrow School before we find out whether any of our ‘TW 20’ have qualified for round two. Only 200 nationally make the grade. All I know is that the Year 8 pupils are enthused by the trial and have stoically prepared by gradually improving their contextual knowledge throughout the last term. We wish them all the very best of luck.

James Ridge, Head of History