26 January 2024
GREEN MONTH WORKSHOP ♻️
We love it when parents help us to deliver key parts of the curriculum and enrichment activities! Sharing your expertise or passions with our girls helps us to bring learning to life and showcases the application of thinking skills in the real world and real workplace by real people.
Thank you to Lisa Hayes who delivered a thought-provoking Green Month workshop to girls in Years 4, 5 and 6 this week. Lisa works for a business that seeks to make a positive difference through environmentally responsible manufacturing processes, and it was interesting to hear how her company is currently incentivizing the collection of waste plastic in developing countries to reduce its presence in the oceans.
The workshop gave girls the opportunity to think carefully about cause and effect - namely human actions that produce CO2 emissions, and how this in turn contributes towards climate change, environmental damage and societal problems.
If you have a professional expertise or hobby that you think might add to our progressive and creative curriculum, please contact Mr Cox at m.cox@not.gdst.net. We are especially interested in jobs where women lack representation, in green businesses that help to mitigate climate change, and in opportunities to see behind the scenes in exciting workplaces!
♻️ SPECIAL OFFER! ♻️
Many of the girls who attended this workshop expressed an interest in the Ocean Bottle product. For every unit sold, Ocean Bottle incentivizes people in less developed countries to clear 1000 single-use plastic bottles from rivers and waterways to prevent them from ending up in the ocean, and then send them for recycling.
Click here to find out more, and use the 30% discount code NGHS-30:
NGHS staff meet Bettany Hughes OBE
On Monday, Miss Baker, Mrs Eggington and Mr Cox had the pleasure of meeting Professor Bettany Hughes who was in Nottingham to promote her latest book, The Seven Wonders of the World. As an alumna of one of our sister GDST schools, she was thrilled to meet three GDST teachers and delighted to see how her achievements as a female historian and her views on Roman Britain feature prominently in our Year 4 curriculum.
This was a very interesting talk; it was reaffirming to hear Bettany Hughes asserting that teaching the WHYs of history is so much more insightful than focusing too heavily on the WHATs and WHENs.
Below and right: Excerpts from our Year 4 curriculum featuring Bettany Hughes, in which she extols the benefits of visiting sites such as Hadrian's Wall and Vindolanda to better understand the scale and setting of Roman colonisation and achievenent.
Green action - magnetfishing! ♻️
Take a stroll along Nottingham's waterways and you are likely to come across people engaged in the fascinating hobby that is magnetfishing - searching in outdoor waters for metallic objects with a strong neodymium magnet.
It is thought magnet fishing was initially started by boaters using magnets to recover objects such as keys that had been dropped overboard. Now a hobby with considerable following, 'magnetfishers' have been known to find interesting objects such as silverware, coins and even ancient swords and bicycles - whilst also helping to clear watercourses of litter and enabling more metal to be recycled.
Well done to Magdalena and Coco from Year 5 who - supervised by adults - have recently been magnetfishing on the Nottingham canal, and ensured their bulkier finds were reported to Nottingham City Council for removal and recycling! ♻️
Toy appeal - reminder ♻️
Thank you to those families who have already started donating educational toys to the Year 5 Toy Appeal for recycling; we will continue to accept donations until the end of the month.
If you missed last week's article about this Green Month initiative, you can read it here:
WORLD BOOK DAY
Mrs Crabtree
Exciting and creative opportunities linked to World Book Day 2024 will take place at NGHS Juniors from Monday 4 to Friday 15 March, with a ‘picture book’ theme and activities to promote a love of reading. Workshops will be run by Francis Stickley and our very own James Brown, both children’s authors and illustrators.
Picture books are for children of all ages, and sophisticated versions make great read-alouds for older children, who appreciate the layered meanings and themes. Talking with children about picture books stimulates wonderings whilst building comprehension, empathy, and visual and critical literacy.
This year, each class will create its own picture book, for a competition to be judged by Mr Brown and Ms Stickley. This will be a fabulous opportunity enjoy the whole process of authorship and illustration.
World Book Day itself will be on Thursday 7 March, and we would love the girls to come to school dressed as a character from a favourite picture book. Prizes will be awarded for the best costumes, so start thinking about and preparing your costumes in now!
Year 5 are evacuated
At precisely 08:45 hrs on Friday, Year 5 were evacuated to the safety of Beaumanor Hall deep in the Leicestershire countryside; this reenactment served to deepen the girls' understanding of aspects of wartime life, such as rationing, air raid precautions and the role of women in code breaking.
This was an especially interesting study visit, as Beaumanor was the real-life home of 'Station Y' from 1939 - a listening post hidden away from prying eyes, and with operational buildings disguised as rural dwellings. To the girls' delight, they stood in the very room where the message arrived to inform Britain of Germany's surrender.
What a fabulous display of vintage-inspired evacuee outfits, girls - you really did us proud!
Victory was OURS!
Miss Abbott
Collaboration with pupils from older cohorts is something that we positively encourage at NGHS Juniors - whether it be joint endeavour in sports, learning to read with a 'big sister' from Key Stage 2, or working together on Eco projects.
With this spirit of cooperation and sisterhood in mind, seven girls from Year 6 travelled with Senior School students to Oakham School on Wednesday where they were victorious in a netball match against a mixed Year 6-7 team. This was a tough game, however our girls demonstrated RESILIENCE and EXCELLENCE and came out very much on top with a convincing victory of 9:3. Well done to everyone involved, and especially to Luci from 6W for her Player of the Match award - V for Victory, indeed!
HALF TERM CRICKET CAMP 🏏
Cricket Camps are back this February at Nottingham Girls' High School with Mr Ashdown. Three full days of cricket will see plenty of games, skill development and competition. The camp is available to children aged between 6-12 years old, and will be softball cricket based (Incrediball and tennis balls).
Can't make February? Check out the Easter dates as well, or contact Mr Ashdown direct via the link 👉