Miss Hamalis’ Bulletin – Monday 4 March 2024

You can view all events for the year in the school calendar via our Parent Portal: SchoolBase login. Your calendar view should already be filtered to display the Junior School events and events which are specific to your daughter’s year group. 

The ‘School Calendar Parent View’ button shows the complete calendar, which can be viewed by each month, week or day. Events also appear on the right-hand side of the home page under ‘Forthcoming Events’ and the monthly view of the calendar also appears at the bottom of the home page.

We have collaborated with Tooled Up Education: an invaluable digital library of evidence-based resources on all aspects of parenting, education and family life. Founder, Dr Kathy Weston, has collated the best and most up-to-date research from around the world and distilled it into usable, easy to understand resources which can be instantly applied to daily life. 

Channing Pin: cha0706

For upcoming TooledUp Courses and Events please click here. 

• Monday 11 March 12:30pm ~ Brain Development: The Early Years & How Parenting Can Optimise Lifelong Skills for Emotional Wellbeing
• Tuesday 12 March 12:30pm  ~ Navigating the Teen Brain & the Parent-Child Connection 
• Friday 15 March 12:30pm  ~ The Menopause, the Brain & How to Support the Family System through the Lens of Connection

KS2 Recital Evening will be taking place on Thursday 21 March at 4pm in the Music Room. This is a perfect opportunity for your daughter to show off her hard work on her instrument in a warm, supportive environment. It is also a good chance for her to practise the mastery of performance nerves ahead of ABRSM exams.

If you wish for your daughter to apply to perform in the Key Stage 2 recital evening, please fill in the form here by Thursday 14 March. Ms Munro will let you know on Friday 15 March if your daughter has secured a spot. This event is always very popular and will be running on a first come first serve basis. Regrettably, incomplete registrations cannot be processed.

We will be holding Summer Term Practical music examinations during Monday 20 – Thursday 23 May for candidates in both the Junior and Senior School. These examinations are also open to candidates who have practical music tuition outside of school, providing their teacher has stated that they are ready to take an ABRSM Practical examination this term. 

Please note: regrettably, Year 6 pupils will be unable to take their examination in the Summer Term, as they are away on a residential trip the week the examinations take place in May.

As we need parental consent before we enter candidates, parents need to complete the online form by 4pm on Tuesday 19 March at the latest. Regrettably, we will be unable to process late applications.

This year for Healthy Schools Week, we will focus on a different aspect of being healthy each day. We will think about others, as well as how we maintain a healthy lifestyle ourselves. As such, the week will culminate in Thoughtful Friday where every member of the Channing community is encouraged to donate something to the Alexandra Wylie Tower Foundation that they no longer need. For example: unwanted books, clothes, toys etc. In addition, we will be raising money for the London Air Ambulance, who without the generosity of others, cannot continue to save lives across the capital. 

Please see an outline of the week below: 

If you have empty egg boxes, please send them to school with your daughter and hand them into the Office. We need these for our activity on Tuesday 19 March. Any extras will be sent to the AWTF food bank as they always need these for packing and distributing eggs.

A reminder that our pupils have an opportunity to exhibit their work at this year’s Young Artists’ Summer Show at the Royal Academy. Submission is done online by parents (for free) and closes on Wednesday 27 March (last day of term). Please encourage your daughters to submit their wonderful artwork!

How to enter:

• Pupils can submit one artwork of any type and there is no theme. 
• The artwork can be made using any medium. It can be a painting (including digital), sculpture, photograph, installation, video, drawing, or a combination. 
• Parents submit their own child’s work on the Royal Academy website. Simply:
  • Register for an account
  • Select ‘Channing School: The Bank, London, N6 5HF’ in the school finder
  • Share the necessary details and submit jpeg photos of the artwork

The artwork will be seen by a panel of judges and selected pieces will be shown in an online exhibition. Some of the artworks will also be shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in July and August.

This year, pupils, who are aged 8 years and over with a love of both Mathematics and Creative Writing, will have the exciting opportunity to create their own ‘Maths Story’. The Young Mathematical Story Authors (YMSA) competition is the world’s first annual, international competition set up to encourage young learners to create their very own mathematical story picture books. For examples of previous winning and shortlisted entries, please click here. 

For further information including all eligibility criteria, judging criteria and a picture book template, please click here. The main eligibility criteria are as follows:

• Pupils are aged 8 or over by Friday 22 March.
• Pupils can submit one story only.
• Each story must focus on one mathematical concept, e.g. division, shape, fractions of amounts, converting measure, etc. The more specific the concept, the better!
• Pupils must be able to clearly explain the chosen mathematical concept in the story without assuming readers’ knowledge of the topic (the more specific, the better e.g. ‘short division’ rather than ‘the four operations’).
• Where possible, pupils’ own drawings are strongly encouraged to avoid any copyright issues.
• All entries must not exceed 10 A4 pages (excluding front and back covers) – consider using, or referring to this template.
• All entries must be completed electronically to be able to be submitted as a PDF file.
• All entries must be submitted to your daughter’s Form Teacher by Friday 22 March, so that they can be collated and submitted into the competition before the deadline.

The file name of all entries must be saved in the following format: School’s name_Author’s first nameAuthor’s last name_Author’s age_Author’s gender (e.g. ChanningJuniorSchool_DavidSmith_9_Male). Please support your daughter to submit her entry to her Form Teacher, via email, in the above format before the deadline.

The overall winner will receive an award of £100, and their school will also receive £100. The winner will also have their own profile, their school and their winning entry featured on the MathsThroughStories.org website (since its launch in March 2017, the website has been visited over 1,500,000 times from more than 220 countries around the world!). Good luck to all participants!

Pupils in Key Stage 2 (Years 3 to 6) have the opportunity to participate in the Girls’ School Association (GSA) Haiku Challenge 2024 (GSA Challenge): a traditional poetry form that dates back to the 17th Century. 

Award-winning poet Karen McCarthy Woolf will be this year’s competition judge, and she has explained how to write haiku poems as follows: “Haikus relate to what’s happening right now. They ask us to observe the world around us, and to distil it into a tiny, miniature poem. The most important thing to remember is that haiku are poems grounded in time and place. They are like a snapshot — think of it almost like a photo on Instagram or BeReal.”

Challenge rules: 

• All entries should be completed at home and submitted via the assignment document shared on Google Classroom (Ms Bharucha, English Lead will then compile all the entries and submit them to the GSA)  
• Final date for submissions is Friday 15 March.
• Only one haiku entry per pupil.
• The poem must: 

• have 3 lines, 17 syllables at most, with a 5 – 7 – 5 syllable count per line
• have a current seasonal reference, as haikus relate to what is happening now
• use juxtaposition (placing two things together with contrasting effect)
• not have similes, metaphors or rhyme

• Entries must clearly include: pupil name, age and poem title on the submitted document (template available on Google Classroom).
• This competition is only for children in Key Stage 2.
• All entries must be original work only.

More information and further writing tips can be found here and on Google Classroom.

Prizes:

• A certificate of participation.
• Each piece of writing will be read by award-winning poet Karen McCarthy Woolf. 
• Runners-up and winners will be eligible to feature in a unique historical limited edition anthology that Karen is editing ‘Triumph, Like a Girl’ Letters & Poems Celebrating 150 Years of the Girls’ Schools Association.
• Three lucky winners will also be asked to visually record reading their poems which will be revealed and showcased to all the Heads and educational leaders of GSA at a Summer Briefing this June.

Form Teachers in Years 3 – 6 will especially encourage girls, who regularly complete English extension lesson activities and who they believe will excel and enjoy participating in the GSA Challenge, to participate in this challenge. We would appreciate your support discussing this stretch and challenge English opportunity with your daughter at home and helping her to submit an entry on her form’s Google Classroom by Friday 15 March.

In the new Summer Term Extracurricular Clubs Programme, you will find detailed information about each of the before, during and after-school clubs on offer next term. To ensure that you only sign up for those clubs that your daughter is interested in and committed to joining, please read through the booklet carefully. It is essential that you discuss the new and exciting options together. Please note that some clubs, which have been clearly indicated on the programme, have automatic sign up. If there are any changes to your daughter’s place in this club, please contact Miss Radford (jsreceptionist@channing.co.uk) immediately to ensure her space is released and available to others. 

Please carefully consider how many clubs your daughter can attend, avoiding signing her up to multiple clubs in one day, and every day. If your daughter is signed up for a lunchtime club, she is only able to attend one, and must commit to the club (rather than choosing to play instead). When signing up, SchoolBase will either add your daughter to the club list, or add your daughter to the Waiting List if the club is already full. This does not mean that your daughter has definitely been put on the Waiting List as the club places will still be reviewed once they close for sign up. However, it is imperative that you sign up to secure a place for your daughter in her chosen club in a timely manner and before the deadline. 

If your daughter is interested in attending any of the clubs on offer in the Summer Term, please register your interest on Schoolbase between Tuesday 5 March 9.30am and Friday 8 March 6pm. After this point, you will be unable to sign your daughter up for any extracurricular clubs. Please read this document carefully, which provides written instructions on how to access the Parent Portal. If you have any trouble accessing the Parent Portal, please contact schoolbasesupport@channing.co.uk directly (not the School Office as we are unable to help with technical queries relating to SchoolBase). 

Confirmation of the club(s) that your daughter(s) can attend will be confirmed the week commencing Monday 18 March (an email will be sent to you confirming when everything is up-to-date on SchoolBase). It is essential that you check this list on SchoolBase to ensure both you and your daughter(s) know which clubs they have been allocated for the Summer Term. If there is a mistake and you can no longer make any of the clubs that your daughter has been allocated, please contact Miss Radford: jsreceptionist@channing.co.uk straight away. 

All clubs will commence on Monday 22 April and will run for 7-9 weeks (depending on the club), with the final week being Monday 24 June for both internal and external clubs. Please note that there are no after school clubs on Friday 28 June due to the half day for Founder’s Day (KS2 Cheerleading will run as usual before school). Once a place on chargeable external clubs has been confirmed, you will be charged for the block of sessions for the duration of the Summer Term, which will be added to your school bill. This is because all pupils are required to commit to the full block of sessions. If you have signed your daughter up for an external club, you are strongly encouraged to sign up to a club run by Channing Staff that takes place beforehand. If you do not, your daughter will attend Waiters for the duration and will be collected by the Club Leader before the club begins. Please remember that after 4pm, you will need to ensure you sign your daughter up for Late Owls, should she be attending after her club. 

If you have any questions about the club programme, please contact Miss Radford: jsreceptionist@channing.co.uk  

Between Monday 4 March – Friday 15 March, SHARPE House will be collecting for the Alexandra Wylie Tower Foundation. The AWTF is a charity closely connected to the school that runs a weekly food bank in Islington. Those in the local community, who are desperately struggling, can get a hot meal, clothes and also stock up on basic essentials for the week ahead. Anything that our community can spare is very welcomed and the AWTF greatly appreciates our continued support.

Items that continue to be desperately needed are:

• Washing powder
• Sanitary items
• Oil
• Tuna
• Sugar 
• Salt 
• Long life milk 
• Microwave rice 
• Coffee 
• Warm coats (all ages and sizes) 
• Shoes (all ages and sizes) 

Please place any donations in one of the blue bins labelled Food Bank collection in the courtyard at the front of school.

The charity Little Village is holding a donation drive at Pond Square Chapel this Thursday morning, 7 March, 10am -1pm. They are especially in need of children’s clothes aged 3-6 years and safe sleeping spaces for children, for example: moses baskets, cribs, cots and toddler beds. To find out more information about charity and how to donate via their website see: Donate stuff.

To mark International Women’s Day, Channing Staff are collectively attempting to cycle 300 miles throughout the day on our static exercise bikes. We are raising money for the charity Smart Works who help give women the confidence they need to reach their full potential, secure employment and change the trajectory of their lives. 

If you would like to help us reach our fundraising target, with even a small donation, you can sponsor us here: Channing School supporting Smart Works London

There are still slots if your daughter would like to participate. This year, we’re raising funds for Hypo Hounds  which supports people with Type 1 Diabetes, and is a charity close to a Y6 family. Please download a sponsorship form from Classlist.com.

If your daughter(s) would like to take part, please add her name and form to the sign-up sheet (link below). For safety, your daughter must be able to swim at least one length (18m) on their back and front unaided, and must be accompanied on the day by an adult at the poolside.

Venue: Poolside Manor Swimming Pool, Lyndhurst Gardens N3 1TD

Time: Saturday 23 March, between 4:30pm and 6:30pm

Sign-Up Form: Swimathon Sign Up

Event details: Classlist.com

The Channing Association Parent and Teacher Choir meets fortnightly in term time on Thursday evenings 7:30pm – 9:30pm at St Michael’s Church in Highgate. The choir is open to all genres of music, and there is a small cost per person per session to cover venue hire and sheet music.

Upcoming rehearsal dates are: 7 and 21 March, 25 April, 9 May, 6 and 20 June, and 4 July. 

For any questions and to sign up please email jschanningassociation@gmail.com

We are always building our preloved uniform stock up and welcome donations. Please continue to place any unwanted uniform in good condition, unlabelled, washed, and bagged in the blue bins in the courtyard. Thank you!

• Thursday 7 March – Next CA choir rehearsal
• Wednesday 20 March – CA Charity Comedy Night, North London Laughs
• Saturday 23 March – Channing Association Charity Swimathon 
• Sunday 9 June – Summer Fair “ChanFest 2024”