Word from the Head – 23 May 2025

We are very excited to announce that the School Musical for Autumn Term (November 2025) will be…. HADESTOWN!

Hadestown is a musical retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In a nutshell, it’s the story of a singer-songwriter, Orpheus, who travels to the underworld to rescue Eurydice, who went there to escape poverty and the cold. The musical also features Hades and Persephone, who rule the underworld, and the Fates, who are a trio of powerful mystics. The music is inspired by folk and blues traditions.

Open to students in the current Years 8-12, we invite pupils to prepare an audition piece and get ready to go down, way down….to Hadestown!

LAMDA enrolment for next academic year is now open for next year’s course. If your child is in Year 7 or Year 8 and you wish them to take the course, please complete the enrolment form before the end of Tuesday 3 June. You will find all the details of the course in the invitation letters sent out last week.

The Careers and Higher Education department is hosting the Careers Convention 2025 for our Year 10 and Year 12 students on Thursday 19 June, aimed at broadening and deepening students’ understanding of careers across a wide range of sectors, and informing them about the best ways to prepare themselves for success. To achieve this, Channing students need to hear from and have contact with people from these sectors. We are delighted to have several speakers already confirmed, but we would like to be able to add further representation from those who are in the fields of Medicine, Science, Financial Services and Law. If you, or anybody you know, are interested, we would be very grateful if you would complete this form to let us know.

We are also seeking parent volunteers whose organisation would be willing to host a small group of our Year 10 and Year 12 students for work insight visits on either Thursday 12 June or Thursday 19 June (afternoon only), particularly in the Financial Services, Media, Consulting and Medical sectors. Please email careers@channing.co.uk if you might be able to offer this experience to our students and we will get in touch to discuss this further with you. As always we very much appreciate all of your continued support.

Channing School is a main sponsor of Fair in the Square, a free, volunteer-led event which brings our neighbourhood together. Please come and visit us at the Channing/HNCP stand where we will have Young Enterprise products to sell as well as details of HNCP and Channing partnership activities.

If you are interested in volunteering yourself or have questions, please email Fair in the Square’s Volunteer Coordinator, Caroline at: carolinerainbird_prior@sky.com.

This festival is a celebration of local culture, do have a look at the programme for further information. We hope that you’ll be keen to take part and connect with other families, pupils, and staff at the Fair and/or the Festival.

Costume Design Workshop
A talented group of KS3 students took part in a creative costume design workshop in the Arundel Centre on Monday. Students were given the brief to select one of the 4 elements of nature; earth, fire, water or air, and take inspiration to create an elaborate carnival costume design. After some initial research and brainstorming, they developed preliminary sketches outlining their design ideas.

In a bid to move away from two dimensional design and experiment in 3D, they then moved on to look at the three dimensional stage of Alexander McQueen’s design process, where designs are realised in miniature using paper before being constructed in fabric. They also looked at the intricate full scale sculptural work of artist Isabelle de Borchgrave, who creates replicas of historical costumes using beautiful hand printed paper.

Taking inspiration from these works, students then used a range of materials including paper, foil and wire to form detailed maquettes of their final carnival costume designs.

The students fantastic work can be seen on display in the Arundel Centre foyer. It is hard to believe what they have achieved in a little over an hour!

LAMDA Showcase Performances
Wednesday and Thursday last week saw 64 students treading the boards in fantastic LAMDA Showcase evenings in the Arundel Centre. The girls have all worked so hard and it was wonderful to see their creativity and skill sparkling under the theatre lights. With impressive performances all round the audience got to see each of them shine in their chosen scenes. For some students this was the highlight of the course, while for others they enjoyed the process of developing their skills, ‘playing’ with their scripts and making friends. You can see recordings of the evenings on the Channing Performance website.

Mural Club
Here is a sneak preview of some of the work and some of the students involved in the mural club. These are now on display around the Brunner House building site and we hope to photograph the many participants and contributors from Years 7, 8 and 9 for a future publication.

This term saw a return of the ever popular Baking Club at La Sainte Union school. Ms Kung and Mr Felder took eight enthusiastic Year 7 students to our partner school on Highgate Road to prepare a bakery classic in the shape of chocolate brownies. The delightful smells of chocolate and vanilla wafted through LSU’s airy and bright food tech kitchen and everybody enjoyed getting stuck into a recipe that was brought to life by a member of the Channing catering team, Diego Barreto. Creating mouthwatering treats was of course only one objective of the partnership club: of equal importance was the social aspect of mixing and conversing with students from another school, building new connections and bonding over a shared interest for homemade food. The session proved successful on both the culinary and social side, with conversations flowing easily and organically between Channing and La Sainte Union students. We are already excitedly thinking about the next edition of Baking Club, due to take place in the autumn.

Whitehall Primary School on Hornsey Lane, a mere 10 minutes away from our school site, joined us this term for a KS2 Reading Club. Delivered by Dr Hayward, the weekly reading sessions attracted an enthusiastic crowd of Year 5 and 6 children, some of whom pulling out their books in the canteen during snack time, even before the session started! The aim was to support the students with their reading skills and help them digest and process what they read by discussing the narrative with one of our designated Year 10 mentors. A big thank you to them and Dr Hayward for organising these invigorating reading sessions that brought a real buzz and a host of new stories to the library.

Staying on Horney Lane, we were also delighted to send a group of six Year 8 students to St Aloysius’ College, where they participated in a Design & Technology club this term. Led by Aloysius’ teacher Ms Osmani, and assisted by Channing’s art technician Teresa Loughney, our students joined their contemporaries at our partner school for 5 sessions on Wednesday after school to make their own lamp. The feedback from our students was positive all around with most of the girls enjoying the fact that DT added a whole new dimension to their learning experience at Channing and helped them overcome those nagging little voices saying that ‘this might not be for me’. The students also appreciated the fact that the club gave them the opportunity to hone their crafting/manual skills, as well as having a physical object to show for their commitment.

Channing’s debating coach, Ms Donington, is leading a KS2 Junior Debating Club for a number of children from St Joseph’s Primary School: “So far we have played a policy making game called ‘If I Ruled the World’: the pupils create a policy, decide how and why to implement it and why this would make them a good ruler for the day. Policies ranged from swapping lives for a day, through to cures for illnesses and all people having access to the same amount of money for the day. In the next session, we debated the motion, ‘This house would move to the moon’. We voted against colonising the moon as there are not viable solutions to the health risks presented by the environment on the moon.” We’re thrilled to hear that the sky’s the limit in Debating Club – literally – and look forward to it continuing after the May half-term break.

The Sustainability Officers, Satine and Opal, along with the Year 8 Eco Reps, spoke in this weeks’ Year 8 assembly about how and why we need to reduce food waste at Channing. In the main dining room alone, the equivalent of 140 cases of satsumas, 2,400 pieces of battered fish or 2,000 packets of crackers are thrown away each half term. Food waste is thought to contribute between 6-8% of global greenhouse gases, so reducing our food waste would make a considerable difference to Channing’s carbon footprint.

Satine and Opal also spoke about reducing single use plastic in the school canteen. Mini plastic jam, honey and marmite pots will be replaced by long lasting dispensers. We want to stop using single use plastics as much as possible. Channing already asks students to bring in refillable water bottles and not to use single use plastic bottles. Floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch there is already at least 79,000 tonnes of ocean plastic , an area of 1.6 million sq km (618,000 sq miles). This is three times the size of France. We at Channing want to do our bit by not adding to the huge amount of plastic waste. As plastic doesn’t biodegrade, a takeaway coffee cup will take over 30 years to break down and a plastic toothbrush over 500 years. Every classroom has a box to recycle hard plastic so we encourage you to bring in your old toothbrushes and pens to school to be recycled.

The Year 8s also spoke about sustainable makeup, looking at brands that don’t test on animals, don’t use harmful polluting chemicals or unsustainable palm oil and do use recyclable packaging and treat their workforce with respect.

Well done to everyone involved.

Science Talk
On Tuesday 13 May, all of the Year 9 students and Mr Jacobs’ Year 10 Physics class were treated to a talk by eye surgeon Mr Jacobs. It was fascinating to hear about the different types of eye problems, such as cataracts and blindness, and how they come about from conditions such as diabetes and from high exposure to UV. It also offered an explanation and video demonstration on how these conditions can be rectified or helped through the use of different types of surgery. It was an excellent and entertaining talk, and we are very grateful that he came to Channing to speak to us!

Georgina V

IET Faraday STEM Challenge Day
On Tuesday 36 Year 8 students took part in a STEM challenge where they had to work in teams of 6 to design and make a prototype that satisfied one of three briefs:

• An educational toy for a child ages 2-5.
• A device to support people with disabilities
• A device for people who take part in sports.

The students were not allowed any help from the teachers and had to manage their own time and budget when building their prototype and purchasing items from the shop.

The two Channing teams (team 1: Anya A, Liliana B, Eleanor M, Aayushi M, Emilia M; team 2: Ava K, Jessica C, Lara G, Thea I, Abigail B, Saumya S) and 4 teams from Parliament Hill, La Sainte Union, Hornsey School for Girls and St Aloysius all came up with excellent ideas from a relay toy, to a light doorbell for deaf people and all had working (or semi working) prototypes by the end end of the day.

All teams presented their ideas clearly and effectively and it was unclear who the winner would be. In the end the winning team was Parliament Hill School with an educational toy teaching children about photosynthesis through the use of a light sensor and a buzzer.

Well done to everyone who took part. It was an excellent day!

Science Club
This week Science Club saw students testing their engineering skills by building the slowest parachute from a hooked metal mass, sellotape, plastic/paper and thread. After a very rushed construction, in limited time, the winning team obtained just under 2 seconds of flight time with a stable trajectory. The team members were: Eliza J 7LR, Georgina W 7LR, Maia C 7LR and Erin L 7LR.

Future sessions will be every Friday 12.30pm in LG1.

Bebras Round 2 Coding Challenge
Students from Years 7, 8 and 9 participated in the Bebras second round Coding Challenge. We have previously received no awards in this round and so it is really pleasing that we have had success this year. This round is particularly challenging as the Navigator challenges, in particular, require the students to solve scenario based coding problems which require GCSE standard programming skills.

In Year 9, congratulations go to Marwa who was awarded Gold and best in school and to Eve who was awarded a distinction. 44 students achieved a merit. Equally as impressive were 50 pupils in Year 8 students who attained a merit for the same challenge.

The Years 7s took the Novices Coding Challenge, which also required them to program solutions to a variety of problems. Penelope was awarded a gold and distinction and best in school. Bea, Jasmine, Hattie, Helena, Madison, Valentina, Maia and Erin all achieved gold and distinction awards. 14 girls in Year 7 achieved a distinction and 31 achieved a merit certificate.

Well done to everyone who took part. The individual results will be shared with the students in lessons.

Parents, feel free to try one of the novice challenges yourself!  Task: Write a program that draws a green star.

British Science Week Poster Competition Winners!
Congratulations to Saira C, Ella C, Pavi G & Sophie B from 10MG who won the national Senior 2 category of the British Science Week clean air poster competition. Here is a link to the page where you can see all of the winning posters.

Anatomy Club
This week the students dissected a rat. During the dissection, students identified major organs such as the heart, lungs, liver, stomach, intestines, kidneys, and brain. The liver in a rat is very large, comprising three lobes. The lungs are much smaller, tucked behind the heart in the thoracic cavity. The rat’s anatomical layout is similar to that of humans.

Biology Challenge
Year 10 students were invited to participate in the Biology Challenge Competition. Testing general biology knowledge, students took two 25 minute online papers. Congratulations to all students who participated and a special mention goes to the following students who have received awards for their entries: Evangelina U, Isabell N, Emma F, Isabella M, Minnie M, Vittoria D, Rebecca R and Emily G.

MiSAC Annual Competition
All of Year 10 entered the annual Microbiology in Schools Advisory Committee competition as part of their study of the microorganisms in the topic on cycles and the variety of living organisms. This year’s competition was very popular, with entries submitted by 105 schools, with a total of 454 entries (255 at KS3; 199 at KS4), involving 744 students.

I am delighted to be able to offer my congratulations to Ella C who has been commended for design & creativity in the Key Stage 4 group in the 37th MiSAC Annual Competition on Human Fungal Diseases and Antifungal Drug Resistance. Her entry is shown below.

UKMT Junior Maths Challenge Results 2025
We are pleased to announce the annual Junior Maths Challenge results for 2025. Our students get an increasing number of certificates every year and this year followed this pattern. Huge congratulations to the large number of Year 7 and 8 students who achieved Bronze, Silver and Gold certificates.

In total they received: 55 Bronze Certificates, 25 Silver Certificates and 10 Gold Certificates.

Special congratulations must be given to Madison Y in Year 7 who was ‘Best in Year 7’ and to Lara G in Year 8 who was ‘Best in Year 8’ and also has the accolade of being ‘Best in School’. Well done Lara!

The following Year 8 students have qualified for the Junior Kangaroo which is a further round of very challenging problems: Lara G, Aayu M, Liana B and Mayssa A. This takes place next month – get practising!

Please do try some of these questions at home from the paper this year:

On Thursday 7JG delivered presentations on some short stories they had read in groups. The stories ranged from Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Pedestrian’, where the group explored life under a totalitarian state; Frank Stockton’s ‘The lady or the tiger?’, where the group pondered which door they would choose, the one with the beautiful lady behind it or the one with ferocious tiger; Mona Gardner’s ‘The Dinner Party’, where they explored life for women under the patriarchy, and Terry Bisson’s ‘They’re made out of meat’, where they explored what humans might look like from an alien perspective, complete with piglet costumes. Well done, 7JG!

Congratulations to Bea and Eva B who won their league cup final with their grassroots team in the London Football School U12 Girls league last Friday. They also played a year up, beating London Soccer Stars to win the U13 Challenge Cup in the Camden and Islington league. It was a very tight match finishing with a score of 1-0 in the last 5 minutes of the match. Well done to Bea, Eva and their team!