Thank you to all our musicians who performed with confidence and composure this morning. This was particularly impressive considering the age of the performers and with Rohan just in Year 2! There were also at least five pupils performing publicly for the first time with Ziyad and Zain only starting to learn the guitar in September. Isabel, who performed so beautifully in ‘The Wizard of Oz’, performed ‘Yesterday’ - a song that she has enjoyed singing in choir. Congratulations and well done to all our performers this morning. An excellent start to the new term! Thank you Miss Macklam for organising this assembly.
Last night saw Highfield Priory School take centre stage at The Charter Theatre in front of an audience of over 300 people. We were entertained by Miss Burns’ Dancers (from the age of 4!); our Infant Young Voices; our Year 4 actors and our Year 6 oboe player. It was amazing to see the dance, singing and acting coming together for the first time, involving eighty pupils from all the different age groups and classes. Our youngest performers in Reception and Infants were fearless as though they have been treading the boards for years. The stage presence of our Year 4 pupils (aged 8/9) in front of so many people, the bright lights and the special effects, was quite incredible. The production was all pieced together with very limited time at school and just two sessions in the theatre itself. The performance really showed Highfield at its best and was a real celebration of the range of talent at Highfield. Pictures will be posted on our Facebook page over half-term which will give just a flavour of this very colourful and mesmerising performance. I would like to thank our Directors, Mrs Duke, Mrs Shackleton and Miss Burns, for all their hard work in preparing the children and for giving them the opportunity to perform to such a high standard on this stage. It is a memory that I know will stay with parents and children for many years to come.
Congratulations to our amazing swimmers! James, Oliver, Zahara and Sophie travelled down to The Olympic Pool in London to represent the North of England in the Nationals. They were supported by a large contingent of parents and children from Highfield throughout the day. All the swimmers did incredibly well and even managed to improve upon last year’s performance. Oliver achieved three Gold Medals in medley relay, backstroke and breaststroke (including two national records in his individual events); James achieved two Golds for his individual front crawl and relay and a Bronze in his backstroke; Zahara achieved a Silver for her breaststroke and Gold in the freestyle relay; Sophie came 6th in backstroke (achieving a personal best). Our team helped the Junior Northern Team to come first overall in the country! There are over 380 schools in the organisation so the children have all done amazingly well bringing home 8 medals in total. We are very proud of you all!
Good luck to Oliver, James, Zahara, Sophie and their supporters who are travelling down to the Olympic Pool to swim in the ISA National Finals on Saturday. Enjoy the experience! We will all be thinking about you tomorrow with our fingers crossed.
I visited our 2+ Nursery on a bright but blustery Wednesday morning. I settled down and watched Nathan, Scarlett, Sienna D and Sienna M eating their breakfast before a busy and fun packed day ahead. Sienna, Arthur and Violet obviously thought I was missing out and brought me toy biscuits, cakes and toast! Arthur then explained that he, Nathanael and Leo were firemen with special silver shiny tape placed specifically on different parts of their body. Leo then shouted out with his pretend microphone that there was a fire in the kitchen! The three of them rushed off at top speed to deal with the problem. Hugo was starting his day listening to a book in the quiet corner with Miss Dad. He was asking questions and pointing at the pictures, taking in every word, before he rushed off to join Maeve in the soft play area. Maeve was balancing carefully across a bridge before jumping off the end and then excitedly running round to complete the challenge again. I joined Scarlett and Nathan who were playing with the measuring cylinders. Scarlett gave me a cylinder so that I could join in and we filled up the biggest cylinder together. Annabelle raced up excitedly and told me that Father Christmas had come last night down the chimney and left lots of presents in the kitchen before she dashed off to take part in another activity! Eliza and Leo were playing in the kitchen very contentedly with Miss Smart, sharing toys and cooking a feast for later in the day.
It was lovely to see the children so active and happy to be together and with their nursery nurses, going from one activity to another and getting fully involved and excited. I look forward to returning to watch and join in more activities later this term.
On Tuesday night, our Junior school, led by the School Choir, performed a wonderful arrangement of carols at St Maria Goretti Church. The congregation also watched a number of group solos as well as a very accomplished performance of Silent Night by our flautists: Katie, Olivia E and Millie. It was lovely to see so many of our past pupils and parents as well as our present ones on this very special evening. A big thank you to Miss Macklam for all her hard work in the lead up to this very memorable event.
Christmas came to Highfield this week when our fantastic PTA spent their Monday morning decorating the school. The children were delighted as they came out of assembly, pointing out the decorations and discussing the Christmas cards and Highfield post box. The preparations continued with rehearsals for the Infant Nativity, Carol Service and Nursery and Pre-School shows well underway. The standard and quality of performance was very impressive with still a week to go. Good luck everyone - we can’t wait to see you in action!
Thank you 1D for your fantastic assembly this morning all about animals. We really did visit the Highfield Zoo where you shared facts about a range of animals from birds right through to amphibians. I enjoyed your telling of Brigitte Minne’s story in which the animals competed to see which animal had the best tail. Your final song, ‘Wag, Wag, Wag Your Tail’ was very entertaining! You all spoke with so much confidence and certainly looked like you were having lots of fun! Congratulations 1D and thank you Mrs Davidson for organising this assembly.
Last Sunday, The Sunday Times League Tables were released. The school achieved its highest position on record of 13th in the country and 1st in Lancashire and the North West (4th outside the London region). This is an incredible achievement and a testament to all the hard work of the children, staff, parents and governors. Thank you all for your continued hard work and support.
The school supported Children in Need today in true Highfield style with a variety of fancy dress from dressing up as their teachers to wacky accessories and a huge variety of night wear! The children chose what they wanted to come dressed in and loved showing their outfits to the other classes. The school raised over £220 for this very worthwhile cause.
This morning, I watched a wonderful musical assembly with over twenty individual performers and our choir who were holding their very smart new choir folders. The composure of all the performers, from reading out their introduction to the actual playing of their piece of music, was quite incredible. We had pupils playing a real variety of instruments: from the ukulele (Eryk, Year 4) to the trumpet (Danial, Year 2) our youngest performer. We also had our first trio of Year 6 flautists: Millie, Katie and Olivia, who played beautifully. It was lovely to watch the audience listen intently and I really appreciated the amount of effort and time that each musician had put into preparing their piece of music. It was a very fitting end to our first week of a new and exciting half-term. Congratulations to all our performers and a big thank you to Miss Macklam for organising this musical feast!
What a busy half-term! Looking back over the newsletters, there has been such a varied amount of activities taking place with so much to celebrate and remember. The weather has really allowed the children to make use of our grounds with many visits to Highfield Haven and we have been able to host lots of matches on our all-weather pitch and newly drained field. The children have enjoyed trips to Speke Hall, Bring Yer Wellies and the Museum of Lancashire; excellent results have come in from the Grammar School examinations and Year 4 have just completed their auditions for next term’s production of The Wizard of Oz. This week has been no exception with Year 5’s French Breakfast, under 11s playing netball away at AKS, the Pre-School Creepy Crawly Roadshow and tonight’s PTA event –The Roller Disco! I hope all our children now enjoy a well-deserved break and return ready for an exciting second half of term and the lead up to Christmas.
Thank you 6J for your assembly all about ‘Evolution’ this morning which you have been studying in class. It was very interesting to hear how our understanding has developed throughout history and to hear the depth and detail of your study of the subject in class which is very impressive. You coped with some difficult dialogue which you projected well to your audience. I really enjoyed watching you acting out the story of Mary Anning and watching your final song taken from the Horrible History books. A fascinating assembly which I am sure will help you to remember this subject in the future.
The sun was shining on Thursday morning to greet all prospective and current parents to the school. The visitors were very impressed by the quality of work on display, the school facilities and the good manners and enthusiasm of the children, especially our Year Six who were commended for being excellent guides.
Open Morning will take place between 9am and 12noon next Thursday. If you have any family or friends who would like to come to school to celebrate your children’s achievements and look at the work already completed this term, please let them know. It is a great opportunity to see the school in action. We will also be Tweeting and Facebooking the event, so please feel free to ‘like’ and ‘re-tweet’ the news to others. Many thanks for your continued support.
I was out and about with our babies on Thursday. I was very lucky to join them on a walk of the grounds on a beautiful sunny morning; not a bad way to start your working day! The amazing light created lots of different shades of colour and the children’s eyes and ears were drawn to all the different shapes, colours and noises outside. Molly pointed to the leaves and was really animated with any slight noise or movement raising her hand into the air. Evelyne was sitting very calmly and contentedly next to her companion, sharing Molly’s woolly sheep, Ewan. She was listening to Miss Kidd and Miss Gordon as they talked about the different trees, leaves and birds. Henry and Jemima were in the other pram and were also very engaged, taking in everything around them. They looked at the owls in Highfield Haven and the different colours of the plants and the wild flowers. It was lovely to see the children in the grounds on such a beautiful morning. There was so much to see and listen to in this very natural environment, with the reassuring words of Miss Kidd and Miss Gordon teaching the children about the world around them. Thank you to our babies for a very enjoyable start to the day; it definitely put a spring in my step!
It’s the second week back and activities are well underway. It has been lovely to see all the children in action and the all-weather pitch in full use. The children have enjoyed some excellent weather and are making the most of the outside areas for their play time and lessons. In HPSED, the children have been paying close attention to their table manners with straight backs, holding cutlery correctly, polite conversation and eating with their mouths closed! They have been trying really hard to impress staff and monitors and have been rewarded with stickers and house points for exemplary manners. I hope you are all seeing an improvement at home too! Miss McShane’s Bitesize Bootcamp also started this week. The children were put through their paces and introduced to a number of new pieces of equipment all before 8.30am! They came into school invigorated and raring to go, especially Year 5 who were trialling the new assessment program on the laptops in class.
I visited our Reception Class on Thursday to see how they were getting on in their first full week in school. They were extremely relaxed and gave me a very warm welcome. I had actually seen them in a PE lesson on Tuesday and mistaken them for a Year 1 class because they were taking part in a very complex PE session which involved lots of instructions. They were able to follow these instructions with ease as though they had been at school for years. The other thing that really struck me when I walked into the room was the amount of children who I recognised as being among our very first babies at Highfield and here they were looking so grown up! I was delighted to welcome them into Reception and they greeted me with great enthusiasm in return! They were very keen to show me what they were doing. Ayesha, Eloise, Siya and Lola were in the role play area as sisters who were celebrating Lola’s seventeenth birthday. I said, “Seventeeeenth!” To which the response from the girls was, “We are only pretending, Mr Duke!” They also got a real surprise when they opened the fridge and found two bells and in the oven they found a brown bear, much to their delight and giggles! Hanna, Avni and Aarnav were playing with the garage, taking it in turns sharing and really communicating well with each other, entirely engrossed in the game. Luca, Robert and Yaseen were counting figures with Mrs Diston and were keen to show me the numbers they knew, counting aloud clearly. Aibhlin, Amelia, Georgia, Naina and Lyla were in the middle of casting and rehearsing a play which involved tap dancers, princesses, Irish dancers, knights, princes and dog paws: a fascinating cast! I can’t wait to visit again soon when the production is complete!
Thank you, Reception, it was lovely to see you all so happy in your first week of term.
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.
We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence.
But we rather have those because we have acted rightly.
We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence then is not an act but a habit.” (Aristotle)
Do these words sound familiar? I hope so as they grace the home page of our website which I hope you all visit often!
Aristotle’s words encapsulate what we do here at Highfield. We achieve excellence by working hard on a daily basis. Not just academic excellence, although we are very proud of our academic status as the top Independent Preparatory School in the North West. No, also excellence in Swimming, Athletics, Art, Music, Chess, Public Speaking and Drama...I could go on. But I think the excellence I am most proud of is the children’s pursuit of personal excellence –that determination to be the very best that they can be at all times. We see it in the way they conduct themselves through the corridors of the school –although I think Amarillo may have changed the way I view those corridors now! We see it in their pleases and thank yous; the way holding a door open for another is second nature to them; we see it in the playground as they care for each other; we see it in their straight backs and engaging eye contact; their firm hand shake and their clear voices. We see it every day in each and every one of them and we see it in the boys and girls of our Year Six class. We couldn’t be more proud of them.
Thank you Year 6 for a brilliant Leavers Assembly! You brought back so many amazing memories from your time at Highfield; it was lovely to hear you speak of the moments that have been special to you. You really made us laugh with your fantastic rendition of ‘Amarillo’ through the corridors and classrooms of Highfield! It was wonderful to celebrate the years with you, applaud your achievements and there were definitely a few tears shed and lumps in the throat! You are a wonderful class and this morning you provided us with another beautiful memory. I look forward to continuing to celebrate your success next week with your School Production and Speech Day.
Our Year 6s enjoyed their performances this week. Thank you to all the staff and parents who helped support this amazing production and to everyone who came along to enjoy the show!Photos from Highfield Priory School and Nursery's post ... See moreSee less
