Junior School Newsletter – Michaelmas Week 8

This week’s newsletter for Rossall Junior School and Nursery.

YEAR 6

The Year 6 were like ‘caged tigers’ on their return to school this week, not wild and dangerous but full of enthusiasm for school and excitement to be reunited with their friends. How fitting this was as our creative work for the half term is based on the book ‘Can We Save the Tiger?’ This captivating story is full of amazing facts and stunning artwork that will engage the children’s creativity and inspire their writing skills, not to mention their beautiful artwork as you can see from some of their posters.

YEAR 6 SCIENCE CLUB

Our Year 6 pupils had an explosive start back at school, enjoying the new science club!

YEAR 5

Year 5 enjoyed a visit to the Rossall Kitchen this week as part of their Rossall Rotation lessons. We had enormous fun making some delicious cupcakes! The children weighed the different ingredients, followed the recipe and engaged in some rather messy electric whisking! Whilst the cupcakes were baking they even washed up! The results were a triumph and each child left the kitchen clutching a box full of treats. We hope you enjoyed them!We have begun investigating how Forces work and learning about the Anglo Saxon invasion of Britain. Year 5 have once again shown that they are true champions by winning another TT Rockstar battle! Well done Year 5!

YEAR 4

It has been great to welcome Year 4 back for the new half term and it is exciting to find out about the new work we will be doing! We have already been on a ‘sound walk’ in Science to see what we can hear in different places around school as we will be learning all about sound in our new science topic ‘Listen Up’! We have been sharing our knowledge of historical events and people as we begin to find out what people have done for leisure and entertainment in the past in our unit ‘Let Me Entertain You! Our new book ‘Leon and the Place Between’ has already got us thinking about the circus and magic and we will all be performing in our own Year 4 Circus later in the term!

YEAR 3

What a great first week back in school we’ve had in Year 3 with lots of new topics starting! We started reading our new book Winter’s child tying in with our topic about polar regions. We also started our new science unit – “May the Force be with you!” all about forces and magnets. We conducted an experiment to see how much force is required to move a toy car on different surfaces. 

YEAR 2

This week we have started learning about our new topic ‘What’s in the Dark?’ We have started our new language book ‘The owl who is afraid of the dark’ and been introduced to the main character Plop. Just like Plop, we are going to be learning all about the dark over the next few weeks. This week, we learned about the history of fireworks and the Gunpowder Plot. In Science, we conducted an investigation looking at what Owls eat. We dissected owl pellets (like a cat fur ball) and identified the food the owl had been eating that it could not digest. We identified rat skulls, ribs and vole arms!

YEAR 1

There has been lots of mischief in Year 1 this week, and not just from the children! Nibbles, The book monster has invaded. Now we just have to try and stop him from escaping and invading the rest of the school. He loves to nibble things… especially books, but he will nibble just about anything – shoes, socks, rubber ducks, even soap. We have made wanted posters to try and catch him. Look out for him! Let us know if you spot him.

In Science we have started to think about identifying and naming different materials, so we can investigate and find the best material to make a cage to capture Nibbles in. 

In Maths we have been learning about addition and how to add two groups of objects and using + and = to help us write equations.

RECEPTION

Remember, remember, the fifth of November!

Over four hundred years after the Gunpowder plot, Reception has been remembering how Guy Fawkes and his fellow plotters failed to blow up Parliament and kill King James I. We have created firework patterns in coloured sand, ordered rockets according to size and created collage bonfire pictures.

Bonfire night is celebrated every year on the 5th November, although this year it may be very different due to lockdown, there will still be bonfires, fireworks and sparklers lit in many gardens all over the country. Reception has therefore been learning how to keep safe on Bonfire Night and how to look after our pets. Lots of fantastic discussions and important things to learn.

NURSERY

The children in Pre-school are continuing to enjoy their Letter and sounds sessions every day. We have already covered so far environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, rhythm and rhyme and this week we are staring on alliteration. The children are identifying words with the same initial sound as their name and have to find real objects from a selection that have the same sounds. It’s a great game you can continue to play at home by giving them a bag to search around your house. They have realised that some letters play a trick on you by making two different sounds for example the letter ‘G’ for Goat sounds different than ‘G’ for Giraffe. 

The children are enjoying their new curriculum which has a variety of choice on offer. In wellbeing Wednesday we learnt a new pose in Yoga called the Monkey squat pose which we have to imagine you are hanging from tree in the jungle and if you’re the perfect primate we are taking the monkey squat one step further by raising our hands off the floor.

We have found our inner artists by creating Jackson Pollock inspired firework paintings. Sounded a great idea but when you have to clean the paint from the celling maybe not so good!!!! However, the children had a great time experiencing different ways to create a picture.

In our weekly Spanish lesson we have been continuing to explore colours, Rojo, Anaranjado, Negro, Blanco and Rosado. We also recap on the past weeks words. Hopefully sometime soon they will be able to practise these words on a trip to Spain maybe.

The babies have been enjoying the lovely weather we have had after the dreadful storm on Monday. They have had a stroll to the beach, lovely walks around the school and enjoyed playing in their own little garden with the added bonus of a visit from the chickens.

AWARD WINNERS

Reception – Alicia Lawton for demonstrating good understanding of new mathematical vocabulary. Josephine Cohen for confidently segmenting words for spelling.

Year 2 – Alfie and Ben

Year 5 – Charlotte for super writing, Kameron for showing amazing resilience and Betsy Head Teachers Award for showing kindness and consideration to her peers.

Year 6 – 6S Awards:Ranveer for All-Round Achievement and Shamini for being an Excellent Role Model

SPORT

YEAR 6 GIRLS’ FOOTBALL

Goal!!! What a performance from the Year 6 Girls as they kicked off in style at their weekly lunchtime football club under the expert guidance of Mr Rund. They are a talented team and can’t wait to fine tune their skills for when we can play fixtures some time soon. One thing is for sure; they’ll be ready!

YEAR 5 & 6 GIRLS’ NETBALL

The Year 5 and 6 Girls were delighted to share their netballing skills with the boys this week in Sports Club.Fun was had by all and Mrs Santamera was amazed at the progress shown by everyone.