This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.
Dear All
What a fabulous whirlwind of a week we have had at Rossall; a week that has included every season in terms of the weather! Saturday proved to be a resounding success, despite the limited ability of one or two staff acts, and a great deal of money was raised for a wonderful charity. Rossall students clearly do have a great deal of talent!
Raising money was the name of the game today, as the whole School including Prep and Nursery, took part in a non-uniform day (with a hint of purple) to support the Little Princess Trust charity.
We look forward to seeing just how imaginative our pupils can be next week, as they dress up for our World Book Day celebrations on Thursday!
The footballers performed wonderfully well on Wednesday, as they travelled over to Cheadle Hulme to take part in a festival of football. There were no winners – however, Rossall’s Year 4 team drew their first game and then went on to win their next six, finishing the day having only conceded one goal! A quite remarkable achievement against some excellent independent schools.
An unbeaten festival qualifies as a win in my eyes, and therefore the boys were treated as the tradition holds, to a McFlurry on the way home!
The choir was out on Tuesday performing in the AJIS competition that is open to all independent schools across the North West. Mr Dobson was delighted by their performance and was quick to praise the beautiful
Bikeability sessions started today for our Year 6 children and will conclude next week. This annual event in the calendar never loses its importance and I am delighted that the pupils have managed to ‘get on their bikes’, both around campus and the neighbouring roads.
Have a wonderful weekend,
Mr M Turner
Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery
Highfield Priory Hockey
This week we visited Highfield Priory for a hockey fixture. For some of us this was our first match we have ever played against another team. Unfortunately, we lost our first match, but made had a well deserved win in the second game. Well done to all the girls who took part.
Science Week
During Science Week we enjoyed a variety of experiments, such as making rainbows, and colour mixing. While learning about static electricity, magnetism, germs and the importance of hand washing. There were even more activities throughout the week including planting bulbs, using our senses to work out the flavours of crisps and hatching eggs.
Year 6
To say the weather has been changeable this week would be an understatement. We have had four seasons in one day most days. The children have walked around campus in bright Spring sunshine and returned in golf ball sized hail, we have even had some snow!
None of this inclement weather has dampened our enthusiasm for playtimes, sports or indeed academic lessons ( all of which have been in a snug, dry classroom!)
The children continue to thoroughly enjoy our latest book ‘The Island, A Story of the Galapagos’ by Jason Chin and have produced some excellent work using the present perfect tense, colons and adverbials. The link with their Science topic, ‘Evolution and Inheritance’ has led to some amazing discussions about how the creatures of the Galápagos Islands have adapted to survive.
In Topic we have enjoyed learning about the Industrial Revolution and the inventions that we still use today. One of my personal favourites was the Jelly Baby. I had no idea that the sweet treat was invented in 1864 by an Austrian immigrant working at Fryers of Lancashire, and were originally marketed as “Unclaimed Babies.” By 1918 they were produced by Bassett’s in Sheffield as “Peace Babies,” to mark the end of World War I. Bassett’s themselves have supported the “Peace Babies” name. It is fabulous being a teacher, you really do learn something new every day.
Year 5
In English this week we have continued our class book, The Darkest Dark, and based on a true story, have thought about how Chris would have felt watching the moon landing back in 1969. We have been learning about parenthesis, particularly using brackets, to add extra detail to our writing.
In Science, we have looked at the different seasons and how they are created by the Earth’s tilt. This helped us in our Geography work, where we compared the polar regions to the UK and looked at the variation in the amount of sunlight or darkness at different times of the year.
In PSHE we have continued to think about keeping safe, what to do in an emergency, who can help us and thought about what rules we have in school to keep us safe.
Year 4
Our week in Year 4 began with a bang as it was finally time for our big volcanic moment – the eruption. After previously constructing the volcanoes, the children carefully added washing up liquid, vinegar and water followed by the magic ingredient – bicarbonate of soda! They were certainly surprised and delighted by the reaction created when their volcanoes began frothing with ‘lava’! You would not believe that within one minute of our final volcanic eruption (and the photo below being taken with blue sky in the background) the snow and sleet rained down upon Rossall and led to a hasty retreat back indoors!
Whilst the hail and snow has been pounding the playground outside, the children have been busy thinking about speech in English. We began by using freeze-frame drama to recreate the pictures from our book before role-playing what the characters might be saying in that exact moment. The children then used these ideas to write speech sentences as well as learning about direct and indirect speech.
In Maths we have started our new unit about fractions. This has involved plenty of discussions about cake and the importance of cutting slices equally to avoid any family disputes. Therefore I hope you enjoy using this excuse to bring out the cake this weekend and get ‘practising’.
Year 3
We started off with a huge amount of excitement this week, with our highly anticipated trip to the SeaLife centre in Manchester! This trip was a perfect way to enrich our learning of our current topic, Protect the Planet. We have been learning about how plastic pollution affects sea wildlife, and participated in a fascinating workshop about this. We learnt about ways to help reduce plastic pollution and made our own persuasive posters about protecting the oceans. We loved exploring the aquarium, seeing and learning about so many different sea creatures, and even getting to touch some of them in the feel tanks. A fabulous day!
We have continued to enjoy the rest of the week, in English we finished reading the Big Blue Whale. We learnt how to use bullet points when researching facts, and have started planning to create our own Wildlife Magazine!
In Maths, we have continued fractions, looking at fractions on number lines and tenths.
We conducted an investigation in Science, all to do with plants, inquiring into how water travels through plants. We put red food colouring into water for some white flowers and the next day they had turned pink!
We loved our second session on the Farm for Rossall Rotation, and we made some flowery art on Friday afternoon.
Well done for a fabulous week Year 3!
Year 2
The Year 2 class have had another fun and work packed week. This week we have continued learning about shape in Mathematics. The children have been discovering the meaning of vocabulary such as vertices, edges and faces and identifying these on various shapes. In English we have been continuing to read our book. ”Major Glad, Major Dizzy”, an aspect of this was the completion of poetry all about growing up and our aspirations. The end result were some thoroughly impressive poems, the thought that was put into creating these masterpieces was most pleasing and reading through these creations when marking was an absolute pleasure..
Our topic work on “The Great Fire of London” has taken us to the bakery on Pudding Lane and we have been finding out all about how the fire started, how long it lasted, the destruction it caused and how the people of London reacted to the disaster.
There has also been lots of fun and excitement in our learning outside the classroom. On Wednesday the PE staff were busy with exams so Year 1 and 2 had a lesson with Mr Rund, there were races and lots of different games, the children particularly enjoyed “traffic lights” especially Harry
who won himself a cup. We have also had our second visit to the Rossall Kitchens which results in yummy treats, but Mr Rund never gets to enjoy the culinary delights!
Finally just a quick reminder, we have had lots of bridges in over the last few weeks, if they could all be in by Monday 27th of March we will have our competition.
Year 1
This week in Year 1 we are continuing to explore, through discussion of course, different climates around the world whilst also learning about all the continents too. We have pinpointed so many different countries that are within each continent and the children already knew about so much! We really liked seeing photos from different countries in Europe within our Atlases and Information books from our Library. We are talking about our environment and our world, and all the different ways to take care of it. It’s so interesting to hear all of our ideas of helping our planet and making small changes that can have big, positive impacts on our environment- well done everyone! This week we have been super musical; practising for our class assembly with Reception has been fantastic! Our singing voices are just so wonderful to hear and we can’t wait for our family to come and see us sing in our chapel. Great week, Year 1!
Reception
This week, we have taken part in British Science Week – a 10 day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths, with the theme ‘Connection’.
We strive to inspire our scientists of the future. So everyday we have done new Science activities to keep our young scientists inspired through the whole week. This week we have looked at capillary action and created our own rainbows. We have used static electricity to make our hair stand on end and learnt about the parts of a plant as we planted some bulbs for Mothers Day. The children have used their senses to identify the mystery crisp flavours and used magnetism to retrieve paper clips from the bottom of a jug of water. The children enjoyed learning about germs and the importance of washing their hands. We had to help hatch some eggs in the classroom and enjoyed colour mixing experiments, especially with skittles!
We have used British Science Week as an opportunity to link STEAM to other curriculum subjects and to the children’s own backgrounds, lives and interests, we now have some budding scientists in the class!
STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, art and maths. STEAM learning during the early years helps children develop vital skills like critical thinking, curiosity, collaboration and creativity, and this week we have seen these in abundance!
Once British Science Week is over, this doesn’t mean the exploration and curiosity have to stop in Reception! The children will continue to take part in weekly Science experiments and investigations, based around the topic we are studying.
Nursery
“Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding”
Brian Greene
This week has been British Science week so in Nursery we have been exploring science under the umbrella of the Early Years Foundation stage ‘Understanding The World’
The Sanderlings
The Sanderlings have been investigating with Mrs Beddis who set up an experiment involving vinegar, baking powder and food colouring to determine what happened to the solution. The babies were very happy to find it fizzed and made bubbles once they all had a go at stirring it. The Sanderlings also continued with the messy theme by exploring slime, ice cubes and shaving foam (not altogether). The babies used all of their senses to investigate what we can do with different textures and smells. The Sanderlings have also enjoyed playtime in their garden under the canopy listening to the rain, hail and wind.
The Sandpipers
The Sandpipers have put on their wellies to enjoy muddy puddles in the garden and on our school grounds. The children splashed in the puddles and tested different ways to make a bigger splash, with the biggest splash happening when they jumped together. The children made delicious smoothies whilst talking about healthy eating. As the berries and milk mixed together they noticed that the milk turned pink and the berries seemed to disappear. Mx Preston taught the children that berries are solids, and as the blender chops them they become liquid with the milk, and the berry juice turns the milk pink. Finally, the children have shown a great interest in using the sofa as a rocket ship, so they searched for some rockets blasting off to space and The Sandpipers ended up in space learning about our solar system. Did you know people have walked on the moon? Our Sandpipers were so impressed with this and have decided to walk on the moon too.
Preschool
Preschool has been discussing the changes in weather after experiencing a really heavy hail storm. At first the children thought the hailstone was snow but following a discussion and observation, the children decided that it was too hard and round to be snow as well as there being no evidence of snowflakes. This led to a further investigation of different types of weather. Preschool’s book of the month is ‘There is a rang tan in my bedroom’. The book has enabled the children to talk about why plants are so important and how we need to care for them. The children have now taken an active role in watering the plants in the Preschool room. Finally, during a beach school session with Miss Emsley the children talked about living creatures and looked for signs of marine life on the beach. On the beach there were lots of puddles, the children touched the puddles and discovered the water was cold, Miss Emsley supported the children to discuss temperature and the factors on the beach that would affect the temperature of the water at this time.
Awards
Year 6
In Year 6 our certificates go to:
Emily and Freddie, with both awarded for their excellent contribution in all areas of the curriculum.
Amelie for outstanding Home Learning.
Roman for outstanding Academic Achievement.
Year 5
In 5R, this week’s awards are to Huxley and Karanjot for perseverance, resilience and determination during our DT lesson.
In 5S, Sam and Jasper received awards for super work on parenthesis in English.
Year 4
In Year 4 our certificates go to Ben for outstanding effort in Maths and Rocco for excellent sportsmanship.
Year 3
Certificates in Year 3 this week go to Stanley and Sarah for representing our school so amazingly on our trip.
Year 2
Certificates go to Oskar Fabulous for understanding of shape in our Mathematics lessons and Arla for being an outstanding role model to classmates and Pre-Prep.
Year 1
This week in Year 1 our Certificates of Achievement go to:
Lena for using an expressive reading voice and for the hard effort she has put into making her written sentences interesting.
Olivia for always having an enthusiastic attitude towards everything we do in class and for working hard at the same time.
Reception
This week’s certificates of achievement go to Kennedy and Vova.
Kennedy has enthusiastically taken part in music lessons recently. She knows all the words and actions to the song we will be singing for the parents in our assembly.
Vova is trying very hard with his sounding and blending at the moment and is therefore making great progress with his reading.
