Prep Newsletter Lent Term Week 11 | Rossall - Independent Boarding School

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

Message from the Preparatory School Headmaster

Dear Parents,

In a first for Rossall Prep, this week we took part in the AJIS Music Festival Choir Competition, held at Bury Grammar School. Pupils from Years 4 to 6 who form our Chapel Choir travelled over to West Manchester to compete against eight other schools, and whilst we did not win, our first taste of competition was hugely rewarding on many levels. Indeed, the guest adjudicator made reference in his notes, to our energetic performance, our lovely upper voice, and super diction. Well done, Chapel Choir!

Year 5 had an out of this world experience as they enjoyed a visit to the planetarium as part of their learning for both Science and History. Having the opportunity to look up at the night sky (in the middle of the morning) and point out the planets of our solar system, is about as ‘hands-on Science’ as you can get when looking at Space. Our thanks to Dr Lister for another riveting exploration of the final frontier!

I was one of the very fortunate crowd members at MK Dons stadium on Monday evening for the ISFA cup final. I use the word fortunate because, whilst we lost the game on the night, I was there to witness the culmination of the first stage of a journey. They say Rome wasn’t built in a day but it is clear that the football and sports at Rossall are well and truly on the way to building some very strong foundations.

We enjoyed welcoming our parents to the first in our series of ‘Back to School’ curriculum events that took place on Thursday evening. Parents were back in the classroom learning how to support their children in learning how to read. The phonics sessions that were organised and run by Miss Finney and Mrs Trippier, were a great success, very enjoyable, and beneficial to all who attended.

Earlier today we bid a fond farewell to Father John. The children had created a card to celebrate his time at Rossall and we all thanked him for all the stories and lessons he had provided for us that has helped us to reflect and become better human beings. Thank you, Father John!

On Thursday evening I watched an outstanding performance of West Side Story by the Senior School. Congratulations to all involved! We are looking forward to welcoming our community into School next week for both our performances of Oliver Jnr on Tuesday and Wednesday. Not to forget our egg rolling on Friday morning at 11.15am.

Have a wonderful weekend and please do not forget to put your clocks forward on Sunday morning!

Mr M Turner

Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery

Rossall U9 v Highfield Priory U9

This Wednesday Rossall hosted two friendly hockey matches against Highfield Priory. We had a very excited squad, made up of all of the Year 3 and 4 girls. Many of them were making their Rossall debut.

Rossall Reds and Rossall Whites showed a great deal of determination and both teams played superbly, creating many scoring opportunities. Highfield were a strong team, but we more than held our own in both games. On this occasion we just lost out in both matches. Eleanor managed to capitalise on a beautifully created chance and scored her first ever Rossall goal! This was the final hockey match of this season and both performances bode well for next year. Well done to all the players.

We are already looking forward to the Hockey season 22/23!

Prep School Netball Housematches

What a glorious afternoon we had on Wednesday when all the Prep School girls took part in the House netball competition. All of the matches were extremely close, which is testament to the talent we have in school. Fantastic team spirit was evident in all three squads. Well done to Hesketh for being crowned overall winners, and to all of the girls that represented their houses so passionately!

Manchester Thunder Netball Trip

Last Saturday evening we took a group of Year 5 and 6 children to watch a Superleague netball match between Manchester Thunder and London Pulse. It was held at Belle Vue Sports Village in Manchester. What a fabulous experience to witness netball at the highest level. The children were fantastic ambassadors for Rossall School, and will hopefully be able to transfer some of these skills into their own game. We can’t wait to go back again!

Year 6

With rehearsals for ‘Oliver!’ in full flow, scientific investigations studying the research of Charles Darwin, and discovering the origins of Fleetwood and its creator Sir Peter Hesketh, it feels like we have jumped into a time machine and travelled back to the Victorian era!

There is no doubt that Year 6 in their penultimate term at Rossall Prep School are thoroughly enjoying every moment of the day, and the team spirit and camaraderie that they are showing in support of one another is extremely special and very rewarding for their teachers.

It really is non stop action, and it is wonderful to see the children grasping all the opportunities that come their way each week. Time flies when you are having fun; we just wish we could jump in that time machine to slow it down or keep them for another year!

Year 5

Year 5 visited the Astronomy Centre this week as part of their work on The Tudors and their Science topic, The Solar System. The children thoroughly enjoyed the star gazing experience. Here is what Dr Lister had to say about their visit;

It was a pleasure for me to spend some time with Year 5 at the astronomy centre. We discussed space and how it could relate to ‘The Tudors in England’. The link was ‘navigation’ – and how we have used the stars for centuries (millennia in fact) and how, even in Tudor times, we certainly used the North Star to ‘find our way’. I was very impressed by the fact that, even before we talked about Tudor England, I was bombarded by a lot of fantastic space-based questions, impressive stuff.

We have continued to work hard to master Fractions this week and have enjoyed reading and working on our English book, ‘The Darkest Dark’.

In Art, Year 5 have been looking at The Tempest costume designs, which were designed by Danielle Neves. They have been drawing in pencil using a grid to achieve an accurate outline and have been adding colour using watercolour paints. This has been a huge challenge for them and the class have impressed the art department by producing some beautiful pieces of artwork.

Year 5 cannot believe that there is only one week of the Lent Term left!

Year 4

The penultimate week of Lent term has certainly been a busy one in Year 4! Alongside getting ready for what is sure to be an outstanding performance for Oliver next week, the children have singing in choir competitions, competing in hockey matches, and completing house matches in both football and netball.

The highlight of our academic week has been creating a new Topic display board in both classrooms. The children worked hard in their art lessons to paint different sections of a volcano, and experimented with different tones and shades. They discussed which colours could be used for the magma chamber (yellow, red, orange and gold), the ash cloud (grey, black, white and silver) and the body of the volcano (brown, black and red), and then produced a large painting using the colours on their palette. It has been refreshing to see the children express themselves in a different way and explore the various ways in which they could combine and mix their colours to reach the desired effect and the result is fabulous.

In English, writing has been the key focus and this week, the children have transported themselves to a desert island and been tasked with writing a diary entry detailing what their day to day lives would be like if they lived on a tropical island. Reading sections of our class text, and watching parts of Moana have really helped to stimulate some fabulous ideas and descriptive pieces of writing.

Topic has been another fascinating week and we have focused our attention on Earthquakes. The children researched all about how they are caused and where they occur, realising that they lie mainly along tectonic fault lines. They were then tasked with an excellent STEM activity of creating their own earthquake-proof building that was tested with an earthquake of up to 8.7 on the Richter scale! Needless to say, they did not all survive!

We are all very excited for the events to come next week and look forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday and Wednesday evening!

Year 3

This week Year 3 have become writers for our very own Wildlife Magazine! We have started writing our own articles about blue whales and how they need to be protected. Using everything we have learnt from our book Big Blue Whale, we are using our magazine articles to persuade readers to save the whales. We have learnt features of persuasive writing such as rhetorical questions and alliteration. We are also using conjunctions and adverbs to enhance our writing. We will write our final versions next week!

We also teamed up with Year 6 this week to do some buddy reading which was great fun.
In Maths, this was our final week on fractions. We practiced finding the fractions of amounts and we applied this by creating our own colourful fractions kites! We also finished the unit off by having a go at fractions word problems.

In Science, we have learnt about how water is transported around plants. To investigate this, we conducted an experiment using some white flowers and food colouring!

In Topic, this week we have learnt about another threatened environment: the rainforest. We paired up to write and perform our own weather reports for different rainforests around the world, to learn about the rainforest climate. We also read Dr Seuss’ book The Lorax, and from this we learnt about deforestation.

To end the week, we had our final Rossall Rotation of the term, our last go at farm school! We visited Farmer Parr’s to learn about the animals they have there.

Only one week left to go before Easter and the summer term, how time has whizzed by! Well done for everything Year 3!

Year 2

This week we have had great fun enjoying the sunshine!

We have finished reading Major Glad, Major Dizzy and were transported through time from 1890-2010. We stopped off in 1910, 1940 and 1960 and had some great class discussions about the difference in the time periods. We have also planned and written our final piece of writing on ‘Major Glad, Major Dizzy’. We were transported back to 1940 and wrote a diary entry on how Major Glad became a hero by risking his life to put out a fire and save Amelia and William’s family home.

In Maths, we have been recognising that ½ and 2/4 are the same and been problem solving with fractions. We have also learned that a unit fraction means that the numerator has to be 1. We have been using the vocabulary non unit and unit fractions in our learning.

In Science, we have learned all about recycling. We work collaboratively to sort items into the correct recycling bins and independently ordered and described the process of recycling.

Year 1

This week in Year 1 we have continued to read our class story, ‘The Lion Inside’ and have also been thinking about the different animals that feature in the book. We decided that we would also like to look at the poetry book ‘ Rumble in the Jungle’ and create some of our own animal poems. We thought carefully about using rhyming words and adjectives, and then performed them to the Reception class.

As a class we came up with this one;

It’s great to be a kangaroo

All jumpy and bouncy and brown,

And wander through the jungle

Bouncing up and down.

In Maths we have been learning about measuring. We have used non-standard units of measurement such as books, cubes, footsteps, strides and jumps to measure parts of the playground and objects in the classroom. We have ordered ourselves by height and even incorporated measuring into our beach visit, where we had a team challenge to build the tallest sand castle.

Reception

This week we read ‘This is Our House’ by Michael Rosen.

In the story George wants to keep the cardboard play house all to himself. He doesn’t want to share it and makes up lots of instant rules to justify why others can’t enter e.g. no glasses, no girls, no twins allowed…

A resolution is found when George finds out for himself what it’s like to be excluded. It’s a valuable lesson for George and a good opportunity to empathise with this common childhood (and human) experience.

So, you can guess where this led the children … Yes, they wanted to make their own cardboard play house, which in fact didn’t stay as a house for long! The story also allowed the children to demonstrate how they thought George should have played with his friends in the cardboard play house.

A big empty box is a great starting point for creative and imaginative play. Children can decide how to change the box into something they can use for pretend play, like a castle, shop, cave and so on. Then they can use their imagination and problem-solving skills to turn ideas into reality.

Cardboard boxes can also encourage physical play. Often the first thing children want to do with a cardboard box is to climb into it – and perhaps jump out to surprise you!

Boxes of any size are fun to play with and will get your child’s imagination working. This weekend see if you can find a really big cardboard box that your child can fit inside and create something amazing. You might be able to get cardboard boxes from local supermarkets and other shops.

There’s no ‘right’ way to play with a cardboard box, so why not let your child decide what they want to do and follow their lead. You could start by just talking about the box together and as always have fun!

Nursery

When children are free to play, they play naturally at the ever-advancing edges of their mental or physical abilities.
Peter Gray Ph.D

Whether it’s creating a pirate hideout with your best friends, creating music with pots & pans, cooking up a storm in the mud kitchen or even just exploring mark-making with water and a paintbrush… seeing the learning unfold through free play is a wonderful thing to behold!

The children have definitely made use of our free-flow garden space this week, excited to finally see the sun out. In Sandpipers the children have explored their gross motor movements climbing, pedalling bikes and running as fast as they can along the grass with friends.

Our Sanderlings have added the soft play climbing equipment to their garden this week, the babies have loved crawling, climbing and standing on the top to wave at the older children in their garden. They have also enjoyed lots of water play and some free painting to create some lovely artwork to take home as cards for Mother’s day.

In Preschool the children have been busy exploring mark making with water in lots of different ways. They have used paint brushes to make water marks on the ground, used clothes to make large patterns on the chalkboard and their favourite experience was definitely a big water fight on Wednesday afternoon! The children were giggling so loud that Mr Turner could hear them all the way from Prep school! Or maybe that was the screams from the staff as the children chased them with pots of water? Hehe!

Award Winners

Year 6

In Year 6 our award this week went to:

6S Awards:
Harry- Outstanding Conduct and Behaviour in all Activities
Aran- Outstanding Commitment and Conduct
6R:
Sophie- Excellent Energy, Enthusiasm and Teamwork in Sport
Lukas- Presentation of Work and Handwriting

Year 5

Congratulations to our award winners this week, Lincoln for having a mature attitude in all aspects of school life and Xanthe for embracing every learning opportunity at rossall.

Year 4

In Year 4S our award winners are Seluleko Bhembe for his dedication and progress in his reading and Jude Whitehead for his overall sportsmanship and teamwork.

In 4R our award winners are Karanjot and Reuben for excellent creativity in art.