Miss Hamalis’ Bulletin – Monday 11 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 Tooled Up Courses and Events please click here. 

• 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
• Tuesday 1 March 1pm ~ Autism and Girls

Next week, we will be celebrating Healthy Schools Week. From Monday 18 March, we will be collecting unwanted books, clothes, toys/gadgets (both adult and child) for the Alexandra Wylie Tower Foundation. You will be able to drop these items off in the courtyard between 7.30am and 8.20am each morning. Additionally, there will be raffle tickets on sale (every morning 7.30am – 8.20am, Monday 18 – Friday 22 March). Raffle tickets can be bought in person, or electronically (the link will be available in next week’s Bulletin or via a QR code available in the courtyard from Monday). The following will be on offer:

• Signed and framed England women’s rugby shirt (see image below): raffle tickets on sale for £5 per ticket.
• The chance for your daughter to swap places with Miss Bolton for the day: raffle tickets on sale for £2 per ticket.

All money raised will be donated to London Air Ambulance. More details of the lunchtime fair on Friday 22 March – for all year groups – will be in next week’s Bulletin.

In the Summer Term, all year groups in Key Stage 2 take part in a residential trip. These overnight stays provide lifelong memories for the girls and help establish and develop relationships with their peers. The trip programme has also been designed so that the experience on each trip differs, as does the length of stay and location. 

Over the coming weeks, we will be hosting parent and pupil information talks to discuss each trip in detail. If your daughter is in Key Stage 2, please note the below dates, which will be held in person at 8.30am in Fairseat Hall. You are very much encouraged to attend to ensure you know all the details ahead of the trip. 

• Year 4: Wednesday 13 March
• Year 5: Wednesday 20 March 
• Year 6: Wednesday 17 April 
• Year 3: Wednesday 24 April 

In preparation for your daughter’s residential trip, please see here for more information provided by Tooled Up: Supporting Your Child if They Feel Worried about Their School Residential Trip. Additionally, if you have any questions ahead of the meeting, please contact your daughter’s Form Teacher and/ or Miss Wright (Assistant Head CoCurricular): dwright@channing.co.uk

Active Day Camps will be running their Multi-Activity Camp throughout the Easter holidays. These will take place at St Michael’s Primary School. For more information and booking please click here.

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.

We value Personal, Social, Health & Economic Education (PSHE) as a way to support the girls’ development as human beings, to enable them to understand and respect who they are, to empower them with a voice, and to equip them for life and learning. 

Jigsaw is a progressive and spiral scheme of learning. It ensures that learning from previous years is revisited and extended, adding new concepts, knowledge and skills, year on year as appropriate. Parents are encouraged to view the spiral of knowledge and skills progression within each of the Jigsaw units of work, on your daughter’s year group page on Firefly. This information includes the key vocabulary used in each year group and suggestions for Family Learning. 

We include the statutory Relationships and Health Education within our PSHE Programme; this content is not taught until the Summer Term. Please note: “Parents have the right to request that their child be withdrawn from some or all of sex education delivered as part of statutory Relationships and Sex Education” DfE Guidance p.17. However, “there is no right to withdraw from Relationships Education or Health Education” p.18.

Puberty is taught as a statutory requirement of Health Education and covered by our Jigsaw PSHE Programme in the unit ‘Changing Me’ Puzzle in the Summer Term. We conclude that sex education refers to Human Reproduction, and therefore inform parents of their right to request their daughter be withdrawn from the PSHE lessons that explicitly teach this:

• Year 3: Lesson 4 (Inside body changes in the context of reproduction)
• Year 4: Lessons 1 (Fertilisation), 2 (Having a baby – naming parts of a female body) & 3 (Changes to female bodies in order to reproduce, including menstruation)
• Year 5: Lesson 2 (Puberty and female body changes), 3 (Puberty and male body changes) & 4 (Conception)
• Year 6: Lesson 2 (Male and female changes during puberty)

Ahead of the Summer Term, we will ask that you please inform your daughter’s Form Teacher, as well as Miss Alfaro and Miss Walker (PSHE & Emotional Management Leads) via email if you wish to withdraw your daughter from the specific lessons listed above.

Sign up for Summer Term clubs has now closed. When signing up, you will have noticed that 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 club places are always reviewed after sign up has closed. Please note that this is managed manually. We do strive to ensure that all girls have a range of club opportunities across the week; however, it is not always possible for every pupil to have a place in every club of their choice. 

Confirmation of the club(s) that your daughter(s) can attend will be confirmed in due course. It is essential to note that you must check SchoolBase once it has been confirmed that all clubs have been allocated as your daughter may not have been allocated a place in all of her club choices. 

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   

In last week’s Bulletin, we shared how pupils in Key Stage 2 (Years 3 to 6) have the opportunity to participate in the GSA Haiku Challenge: a traditional poetry form that dates back to the 17th Century. 

The final date for submissions is this Friday 15 March. More information and further writing tips can be found here and on Google Classroom.

Once again, 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.

This theme for this year’s Science Week is ‘Time’. As part of this, we encourage the girls to enter a national British Science Association’s poster competition, which we initially shared information about earlier in February. Once again, the girls are invited to create a poster showing how a certain type of technology has changed over time, or even the advancement of time-telling technology itself. For inspiration, they can look at the winners of the 2023 competition. Budding poster makers could also go futuristic, showing how they think the world might look in years to come, or could perhaps look at nature – lifecycles, lifespans, evolution and hibernation – nature is full of timely topics. 

Things you need to know:

• Your daughter can create an entry alone, or work as a team with others. 
• Each entry should be hand-drawn on one page of A4 or A3 plain paper, using pens, pencils, crayons, or paints. 
• Entries must have the following clearly written on their reverse: entrant first name and surname initial only (all names if a team) and entrant age (all ages if a team).

• The posters will be seen by a panel of judges, who are looking for: 
  • Creativity in approach – Innovative angle on the content or creative interpretation of the theme – don’t be afraid to think outside the box;
  • Content – Clear, accurate and informative about a STEM topic;
  • Effective communication – presented and communicated in an engaging way.
• The two runners up in each category will be uploaded to the British Science Association social media sites to enable the public to decide on a fifth ‘popular vote’ winner.
• Each entrant’s first name, age and school name will be announced on social media and on the British Science Association website. If you do not wish for this data to be shared, please make this explicit on the entry form.
• Entries may be displayed and used for marketing, with only first names used.
• Please see here for full terms and conditions.

We wish that everyone could be a winner, but we are only permitted to submit five entries. Your daughter needs to return completed entries to school by next Monday 18 March and Mrs Canning and Mrs Miller (Science Leads) will organise the selection of our five submissions into the national competition.

Thank you to all of you who have donated to the foodbank so far as part of the Sharpe House drive. We have received lots of donations and the Alexandra Wylie Tower Foundation is very grateful! The collection continues to run until Friday 15 March, so anyone who would still like to donate is welcome to all this week. 

Also, a huge thank you for your support towards our recent fundraising for the NSPCC and Just One Tree. As a school, we raised £429.51 for Just One Tree and £377.40 for the NSPCC. Thank you to everyone for your help supporting these excellent causes.

North London Laughs Comedy Night is next Wednesday, and for anyone who did not manage to get a ticket, but would like one, a very limited number of final tickets have been released – please head to the venue website to purchase: North London Laughs < Alexandra Palace 

The CA will donate all proceeds to Great Ormond Street’s Gastroenterology Department.

There are still slots available 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 her back and front unaided, and must be accompanied at the poolside on the day by an adult.

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 CA 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: 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 preloved uniform in good condition, unlabeled, washed, and bagged in the blue bins in the courtyard. We are particularly looking for uniform items in sizes 24, 26 and 28. Thank you!

• Wednesday 20 March: Charity Comedy Night, North London Laughs
• Thursday 21 March: Next choir rehearsal
• Saturday 23 March: Charity Swimathon 
• April TBC post Easter break: PreLoved Uniform Sale
• Sunday 9 June: Summer Fair “ChanFest 2024”