junior journal...

Eight schools performed at this year’s annual AJIS Music Festival held at Bury Grammar School. The standard was incredibly high, but our choir rose to the challenge. Performing ‘Cantar’ from Sing 2 and ‘California Dreaming’; they sang beautifully, carrying out all that Mrs McLean Hall had trained them to do. They remained engaged and smiling throughout and should be incredibly proud of their fantastic performance.

Book Week activities began with a visit from popular children’s author Sufiya Ahmed. Sufiya delivered an insightful assembly to the whole school promoting reading for pleasure and creative writing. Sufiya shared her inspiration for her books which are based on true life stories, the girls especially enjoyed hearing about Noor Inayat Khan, who was a young British Indian female spy, working for the British Army in Paris in World War Two. Throughout the day, Sufiya worked with Lower II and Upper II classes on creative writing workshops. After learning how to piece together a compelling tale, the classes wrote the start of their own story set during the French Resistance.

The Scholastic Book Fair took up residence for the week and all year groups enjoyed looking at and choosing new books to read. Across the years, pupils shared books suggestions and reading quests. Many pupils were also hard at work, writing short stories and poems for the BBC Blue Peter Creative Writing competition.

The enthusiasm for reading culminated in a celebration on World Book Day when the whole of the Junior School came together dressed as ‘Where’s Wally’. In the morning assembly, led by Ms Arschavir, pupils shared their favourite book of all time and tips on how to pick a book whether that is by looking at the cover or reading ‘the blurb’. We had a whole school photo on the netball courts which was later reproduced on a tea-towel and sold at the Spring Fair.

As part of the Seniors’ Feel Fab Feb fortnight, Junior pupils and their families were invited to attend a special ‘pop-up café’ run by Year 9 Design Technology and Food and Nutrition pupils. The Senior girls had developed their own cafés, creating menus, logos, uniforms and of course tasty treats which were available to purchase.

On Culture Day, Sixth Form pupils offered mini language tasters to the Junior girls at lunchtime, in the style of a ‘talking tables’ event. The girls had the opportunity to learn a few simple phrases e.g. ‘Hello’, ‘How are you?’, ‘I am called’ and ‘Goodbye!’ The languages included were Hindi, Arabic, Urdu, Japanese, Bengali, Japanese, Cantonese and Mandarin.

Netball is extremely popular amongst the Junior girls and Mrs Lane continues to be impressed by their enthusiasm and dedication, both to practices and during games. The teams have played many fixtures against schools across the region and competed in various festivals and competitions including the AJIS Netball Tournament for U10s and U11s.

Both tournament days were held at The King’s School Macclesfield on Thursday 16th and Friday 17th March. Two WGS Year 5 teams competed in the U10 competition - the A team finished fourth in the cup and the B team finished fourth in the plate. Over 20 schools competed in the full-day tournament. The A team were pipped to a medal in the last second of the game!

At the U11 tournament, hosted by Withington at King’s, two teams played in the competition. The A team finished seventh in the cup and B team were second in the bowl - again, beaten to the win in the final moments of the game.

All teams put in amazing performances and the girls should be incredibly proud of their play and attitude throughout the competition. A huge thank you to the parent supporters who attended and cheered on the girls.

Year 4 played their first football match against The Ryleys in January. An exciting last-minute goal gave them an 8-7 win. The girls put in an impressive performance with some accurate passing and super saves from Emma.

In February, a mixed Year 4 and 5 squad played in a football competition held at the Platt Lane complex. They worked well as a team and finished third in their group.

The annual Gym and Dance display was a wonderful display of enthusiasm, energy and excitement, as well as great skill, creativity and hard work. Both individually and within teams, the girls worked so well together to put on a splendid show.

The AJIS Indoor Athletics Tournament was held at Robin Park, Wigan on Thursday 26th January. The girls demonstrated superb effort in all their track and field events with wonderful results. Our team gained medals in a host of disciplines: speed bounce, balance, standing long jump, standing triple jump, obstacle relay and the Paarlauf relay.

Our Lacrosse team came third in the plate competition of the Pop Lacrosse Finals on Thursday 23rd March - a great experience for all involved.