This week's newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.

Dear All,

The second half of the Summer term is well underway. The children have started new topics and have thrown themselves into all lessons and a variety of different events. The Ocean Day today was most certainly a firm favourite with the children enjoying ocean themed activities and taking a trip down to the beach.

They also wore blue as a non-uniform charity event to help raise funds for Fleetwood Beach Wheelchairs who help to ensure that everyone has access to our wonderful beaches. Year 6 were doubly busy, as they delivered their exhibitions to the children across the School, as well as the parents. The theme of sustainability most certainly fitted with our Ocean Day and I know that all attendees were suitably impressed by the knowledge and work of the children. Well done, Year 6!

Earlier in the week, our athletics superstars took part in the AJIS Athletics Competition in Manchester against children from all independent schools across the North-West. Congratulations to all participants but particular mentions must go to Michael for his Bronze in the 75m hurdles, and to Emily for her Silver at high jump - both superb achievements. Speaking of achievements, again our congratulations go out to Jack and Freddie for their incredible exploits at the national IAPS swimming finals in London. More details in our additional piece but suffice to say we are incredibly proud!

Next week promises to be full of fun, with our sports' day on Friday, cricket and rounders matches, and the open day on Saturday. 

Have a wonderful weekend.

Mr M Turner

Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery

Rossall Athletes Reach the Podium at the AJIS Athletics

Well done to the U11 Athletics Team for an outstanding team performance at the AJIS event in Manchester this week. All our Year 6 athletes competed admirably with Emily and Michael achieving silver and bronze medals in the High Jump and the Hurdles respectively. This was an incredible accomplishment against competitors from 20 schools throughout the North West of England.

Congratulations to Lincoln and Michael who have qualified for the National Independent Schools Athletics Championships to be held in July. Michael will compete in the Hurdles, whilst Lincoln will represent the North West region in the Shot Putt and Javelin. Good luck, Superstars!

IAPS National Swimming Finals

On Saturday 3rd June, Freddie and Jack (Year 6) travelled down to London for the IAPS National Swimming Finals at Olympic Park. Jack swam in the Under 11 Boys 50m Butterfly, swimming a time just outside of his PB, he improved his ranking by two places to finish 13th. 

Freddie swam in the Under 11 boys 50m Freestyle. He took over a second off his PB to qualify for the final in 2nd place. In a very exciting final, Freddie equalled his new PB and touched in first place to become the National Champion for the second year running, a fantastic achievement. Huge congratulations to both boys!

Year 6

It was absolutely wonderful and extremely rewarding to see Year 6 present their Exhibition on 'Sustainability’ to the school this week with an array of fabulous display boards and interactive activities for all to enjoy. The quality of the artwork and confidence of the presentations was outstanding.

There were games, quizzes, prizes, music and even electrifying science experiments that thrilled all ages from the children in Pre-Prep to our parents and grandparents, who were clearly immersed in all the varied learning activities.

It was an opportunity to demonstrate all the skills they have acquired throughout their time in the Prep School, especially the teamwork that is required to put on such an amazing education festival and they passed with flying colours!

Congratulations to the Year 6 for a marvellous exhibition and for excelling as a team once again.

Year 5

Just like that and we’re in our last term of the year- how fast has it gone?! 

We have enjoyed welcoming Year 5 back to an eventful and busy last few weeks. This week, Year 5 have enjoyed piloting the new Century programme we have introduced. They have enjoyed navigating the website and answering questions on different areas of Maths and English through their ‘nuggets’. 

In English, we have started our new novel, ‘The Hunter’ by Paul Geraghty, in which the pupils were enthused by the characters they have met already. They created accurate predictions on evidence gathered from the front cover, blurb and illustrations and were shocked to infer that poachers were potentially involved in the story. 

During PSHE we have continued to look at what makes a loving relationship and the different types of relationships we may come across. Year 5 have also explored and learnt about changes that may happen to their bodies as they grow and have therefore asked mature and sensible questions regarding all topics arising. 

Ocean Day was also celebrated at the end of this week with the theme being ‘Ocean is Family’. Both classes enjoyed their time at the beach engaging in a number of activities such as a scavenger hunt, building 3D sculptures and creating a piece of drama. Fantastic pieces of ocean art have also been completed to be entered into a competition organised by the School Council; well done everyone!

Year 4

We're into our final half term of Year 4 and we have so much to fit into a few short weeks.  

What an amazing day we had for Ocean Day! The children had a fantastic time creating drama pieces and building pebble sculptures on the beach, all the while learning about the important role our oceans play in helping us all to survive.  

Our Maths lessons have led to the introduction of our latest topic - Money. This involved the creation of our very own Year 4 Ross Shop where many high-end items could be purchased including the hugely popular glue stick! Children were given a sum of ‘money’ to spend on a variety of items in the Year 4 Ross Shop and were fascinated to learn that the dodecagonal £1 coin hasn’t always looked the way it does, leading to a lively discussion about how ‘old’ its predecessor must have been!

We have started our new Topic and the children have enjoyed sharing all their prior knowledge about the Iron Age and linking it to their learning from Year 3 about the Stone Age. They watched a BBC clip looking at what life was like in Britain during this period and how important the discovery of iron ore became to the different tribes.

In Science the children have been learning all about electricity and what life would be like without it. It’s safe to say the children were unanimous on their decision that they would not be able to cope without it!

Next week we have Sports Day to look forward to and the children have all been practicing their running, throwing and relay passes during Games. 

Which house will come out victorious?

Year 3

This has been a great start to the final half-term! The sun has been shining over Rossall and Year 3 have been full of energy and enthusiasm for school. 

We have of course started our new book for English: Zeraffa Giraffa. We began reading about the journey a young giraffe makes from Egypt to Paris along the river Nile and did some writing with conjunctions and apostrophes. 

Connected to this book, our topic is all about Ancient Egypt! We started this new topic by sharing what we already know about the the Ancient Egyptian civilisation, learning some new vocabulary and ordering a timeline of events, learning about BC/AD.

In Maths we have been learning about angles, lines and shapes. We found out about acute, obtuse and right angles, as well as perpendicular and parallel lines.

For Science this half term we are learning about Light and Shadow. We started this new unit by learning about natural and unnatural sources and did a 'light hunt' around the school.

On Friday we celebrated World Ocean Day by wearing blue and enjoyed our beach activities, including the Scavenger hunt and building sculptures with beach resources! Our Art this week was also connected to Ocean Day, and we created bright jellyfish using pastels. 

Well done for a fab week Year 3!

Year 2

It has been an incredibly productive first week back. The children have been working hard in the classroom, we are continuing our problem solving unit of work in Mathematics and the children’s understanding of this particularly tricky concept has been most impressive. In English we have started our new book “Grandad’s Secret Giant”. We have already created leaflets advertising our skills and completed some descriptive writing using expanded noun phrases. Our artwork remains focused on the sea, this week we have been creating pencil drawings in the style of Michael Kidd.

As always the final half term is incredibly busy, with learning taking place in and out of the classroom. Ocean Day was a real success and Year 2 loved the opportunity to get down to the beach and build sculptures from the natural materials on the beach. Not only that we had the opportunity to visit the Year 6 Exhibition and discover a great deal about sustainability from all the interactive and interesting stalls.

Year 1

Welcome everyone and what a fabulous, sunny week it has been to start the last few weeks together as Year 1. We dove straight into our new topic, ‘Blast Off!’, and discussed so much about Space and our Solar System. The children were so keen to hear about how our planet moves and rotates and how this explains how we measure time. We learned a few interesting facts about Neil Armstrong and what it would be like to visit the moon- how very curious!

In English we have been going back to basics with a real determination to solidify and secure our speaking and writing skills. We understand fully what a noun, a verb, and an adjective means and why they are important in the sentences we speak, read and write. Fabulous skills, Year 1!

In Maths we have been learning all about halves, quarters and what makes a whole too! The children enjoyed linking this learning to some of their favourite foods like pizza and cake…they certainly now know how to halve a pizza equally between 2 or 4!

In Art we have been looking closely at some of Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous pieces of work and we talked about how they made us feel when we looked at them. We also talked about what the images made us think of and it was so fun to hear everyone’s ideas! We have also created some ‘under the sea’ art for our Ocean Day this week. Dressing up in blue and taking a trip to the beach, building sand sculptures and learning about sea safety has been a wonderful highlight and way to end our first week back.

Well done everyone! 

Reception

Gardening is a great and inexpensive way to teach your little adventurers about nature and the environment. Digging in muddy soil and watching their own little plants grow can encourage children’s love of the outdoors and foster their curiosity about the surrounding world. Taking care of their tiny seeds and plants will teach little gardeners responsibility and patience and will improve their organisational skills.

This week, Reception have planted some mysterious seeds after reading ‘The Tiny Seed’ By Eric Carle. We discussed how to plant seeds, what equipment we needed and what we had to do to look after our seeds so they grew healthy and strong. The children made excellent connections to our previous topic of animal needs. The children carefully followed instructions to plant their seeds and began looking after them straight away by watering them.

I wonder what their seeds will grow into? Maybe the children would like to grow something at home too? We’d love to see photographs of your planting and gardening if you do.

Nursery

“Emotional intelligence begins to develop in the earliest years. All the small exchanges children have with their parents, teachers, and with each other carry emotional messages”

Daniel Coleman 

This week in the Nursery we have focused on Personal, Social and Emotional development.   

The Sanderlings

The Sanderlings have been focusing on songs that can be linked to the sea ahead of Ocean day, the songs included ‘1 2 3 4 5 once I caught a fish alive’, ‘row your boat’ and the ‘big ship sailed on the alley alley oh’. Song time is always a firm favourite in The Sanderling room and always ends with lots of happy faces. The babies have enjoyed a walk to the beach and whilst walking along Mrs Beddis, Miss Heatley and Miss Schofield used words associated with the environment such as sand, water, shell and tide. Inside The Sanderlings room and garden the babies have been taking part in water play; there have been various sea themed creatures encased in ice and the babies have used pipettes and paint brushes to release them, it was like magic. 

The Sandpipers 

The Sandpipers have enjoyed reading the story of ‘The Colour Monster’, the children have been talking about how they can use colours to describe how they are feeling for example, yellow is happy, red is angry and pink is loved. Miss Sumner talked about what each of the feelings mean and the children talked about how they were feeling each day and what makes them feel happy, sad and excited. The Sandpiper team has introduced a sensory calm time during teacher time every day before tea. The children lie down whilst listening to relaxing music, watch the calming lights dance on their ceiling and walls as well as play with the sensory toys; this links to the learning intention of the week. Finally, to celebrate Ocean day on Friday the tuff tray has been set up in a beach theme. The children have been hiding the sea creatures and using the spades to uncover them. 

Pre-School 

This week the children have been focusing on activities to support their Personal, Social Emotional development. The Pre-School took part in a painting activity where they discussed how they are feeling today and why they feel that way using colours to paint their feelings. The children were able to come up with different reasons for their feelings and how they can help one another if they are feeling sad or upset. It was a lovely discussion with lots of useful ideas suggested by the children. Miss Simms has made kinetic sand with the children and then encouraged them to make different shapes such as animals and people. On Wednesday the children took part in a well-being Wednesday activities using yoga and breathing exercises to calm their minds and refocus before their next learning adventures in the afternoon. On Friday, Pre-School celebrated Ocean day. The Pre-School children talked about their experiences of going to the beach with their family and friends and  spoke about how therapeutic going to the ocean can be. Pre-School has welcomed some new children who have moved up from The Sandpipers room; all the children have made amazing friendships and settled in well.

Awards

Year 6

This week our awards in Year 6 go to the following pupils-

6S Awards:

Jessica for Outstanding effort and initiative in Home Learning projects.

Kieran for Outstanding effort and progress in Maths.

6R Awards:

Freddie for Excellent achievement in Athletics.

Reuben for Excellent effort and achievement in Maths.

Year 5

Our certificate winners this week are:

In 5S, Skyla for settling in so well and having a great first week at Rossall

Also Monty for showing superb interest and inquisitiveness during our Century sessions.

In 5R, Karanjot for showing amazing writing throughout the English curriculum.

Along with Sophie for excellent effort in Maths.

Year 4

In Year 4 our certificates this week go to Lara and Alfie for writing an excellent poem in English.

Year 3

In Year 3 our certificates go to Marcel and Felix for lovely effort in their English work. 

Year 2

Certificates for Year 2 this week go to Starsky, making a fabulous start to Rossall School and Arabella, for being a positive role model.

Year 1

This week’s Certificates of Achievement in Year 1 go to: 

Yuha working so hard in writing questions and statements this week! 

Olivia for having a wonderfully positive attitude that can inspire everyone around her!

Reception

Certificates of achievement this week go to Theodore and Francis for having an outstanding attitude to their learning.

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