This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.
Dear All,
What an incredible show! Given the staging was only erected on Monday morning after the success of the Senior production, ‘Anything Goes’, I was blown away by the resilience and confidence of our Prep School pupils. In a flurry of excitement and anticipation, the Prep School brought the tale of Mary Poppins to life in their captivating production of “Mary Poppins Jr.” The sell out audiences were whisked away on a magical journey that left hearts soaring and spirits uplifted. Of course, no production of Mary Poppins would be complete without its share of magic and wonder, and the Prep School’s rendition was no exception. From the breathtaking Year 5 rooftop version of ‘Step in Time’ to the Year 3s becoming buzzy bees in ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’, and the Year 4s having a ‘Jolly Holiday’ with Mary, the show was full of well known songs. Of course our wonderful Year 6 pupils led as the main cast in ‘Anything Can Happen’, ‘Precision and Order’, ‘Practically Perfect’ ‘Feed the Birds’, ‘Chim Chim Cheree’, ‘Brimstone & Treacle’, ‘Let’s go Fly a Kite’, ‘A Man has Dreams’, and of course, ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’.
As the final curtain fell and the applause rang out, it was clear that the Prep School’s production of “Mary Poppins Jr.” had been a huge success. The power of musical theatre is something quite extraordinary and I was delighted by the incredible confidence displayed by all involved.
Congratulations to the cast, crew, and everyone involved in bringing this timeless tale to life. Your hard work and dedication have truly paid off, and your performance will be remembered fondly for years to come. The Flickr photo album will be in next week’s newsletter.
Congratulations to our footballers who played in the North of England finals following their success at local level. They represented Fleetwood Town in the League 1 finals, against other league clubs. They narrowly lost out in the quarter final, conceding a heartbreaking late goal to Carlisle Utd in the final 30 seconds. Huge congratulations for such a positive run in this competition and for displaying such a positive attitude.
The Prep School Council’s initiative to bring joy to the children of Blackpool Victoria Hospital this Easter season has once again been a fantastic success. With the support and enthusiasm of our school community, the appeal for Easter eggs has helped to foster a sense of unity and kindness among us all. Thank you for your kind donations.
The Year 2s were in fine voice this morning in the Spring themed assembly. They taught us about all the things they have learnt about the seasons, sang a lovely song, and made us aware of many traditions across different faiths and cultures that take place at this time of year. We were even joined by the Rossall Rabbit who delivered some chocolate treats for all the children across the School!
Speaking of Spring, the Prep School, Nursery and indeed the whole of the Rossall School community is looking forward to welcoming many of you to our Spring open day on Saturday. I hope that you are able to join us to explore our wonderful campus and to speak with any prospective families who are thinking of joining our fabulous School.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Mr M Turner
Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery
Year 6
What a ‘Practically perfect’ week we have had! The children in Year 6 have certainly followed Mary Poppin’s advice and seen that, “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and — SNAP — the job’s a game!”
The children had enormous fun on Wednesday and Thursday evenings and gave the performances everything they had and a little more! The result was most definitely Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Mrs Scott and I (Mrs Kenmare) are so proud of them, they have worked incredibly hard over the course of the term and have achieved so much in the classroom, on the sports field and of course on the stage.
We are all looking forward to a well-earned rest over the weekend and our final week of the Lent Term.
Year 5
The class clearly enjoyed performing in Mary Poppins this week, and it was wonderful to see how excited they were to display their musical talents and work together with the rest of the school to help put on a mesmerising show.
In between rehearsals and performances, we have enjoyed learning about the Apollo 11 Space Mission in 1969, which has linked our Science Topic with our creative writing work. We have enjoyed reading ‘The Darkest Dark’, about a young boy desperate to become an astronaut, and how he was inspired by watching Neil Armstrong take the first step on the moon. This enchanting true story has enthused the class to write some wonderful descriptive pieces, as well as captivated our interest in the Solar System.
There are so many questions that we would like answered. Fortunately, we have Astronomy in our Rossall Rotation, so we cannot wait to share our findings with Dr Lister and Mrs Scott, who always blow our minds with incredible space facts. ‘Beam me up, Scotty!’
Year 4
Wow! What a fantastic week we have had. The children have been so busy with rehearsing and performing Mary Poppins, and all the staff are extremely proud of how well they did. We still managed to find some time to squeeze in a few lessons too!
With it being Science Week this week, we ventured to our ‘secret garden’ to carry out an experiment. We continued with looking at animals that are classified into different groups, moving from vertebrates to invertebrates. We went on an invertebrate hunt to identify which ones live in our very gardens here at Rossall. Much to our delight, we found a wide variety of creepy crawlies including ladybirds, worms, slugs, woodlice and earwigs. We enjoyed examining them closely using magnifying lenses and classification keys to determine the exact specimen.
In English, we have completed reading our chosen book and finally discovered what happened when ‘The Giant Stirred’. We started to plan our very own version of the story, moving on to working hard to write it – detailing the events of the book and empathising with the characters in the story as they faced some very tough decisions. I have been very impressed with the Year 4’s response to the text and the emotional anguish displayed in their writing.
Year 3
Well, to say that Year 3 have been BUZZING this week would be an understatement! We have loved being involved in the Mary Poppins show as our buzzy bee characters. The children performed their number ‘Spoonful of Sugar’ beautifully in the rehearsals and in the live shows. Congratulations for your performance and part in the show, you were amazing Year 3!
Despite the excitement of show week, we have also managed to do lots of fun learning this week. We finished off our fractions unit in Maths and now have started on Mass and Volume, starting by looking at counting in scales.
In English we finished our Big Blue Whale book and started to look at our final writing task of the half term: to write our own Wildlife Magazine! Each child is going to write a persuasive article about protecting blue whales. This week we researched facts to use in our articles, using bullet points to list them, and then looked at features of persuasive writing.
In Topic this week we learnt about deforestation. For this, we read ‘The Lorax’ and discussed the benefits and disadvantages of chopping forests down in order to get a balanced perspective.
This week has been Science Week and we have enjoyed some fun Science activities about our unit on Plants! We learnt about water transportation in plants and conducted an investigation using food colouring with white roses to see how they changed colour. We also visited the Senior School Science department and had a wonderful session with Mrs Bradburn. We looked at lots of different types of exotic plants and used our iPads to identify them. We also used microscopes to look at leaves and pollen cells up close. It was fascinating!
A fantastic week Year 3, well done to you all and it’s hard to believe next week is the last one before Easter!
Year 2
Year 2 have had a very busy week! In the classroom, we have been writing poems about our aspirations and dreams and have started a new topic on measurement in Mathematics. The children have thoroughly enjoyed the practical nature of this and could be found all around school using their metre rulers to measure the height and length of various objects, most pleasingly they are now confident in using vocabulary such as longer than and shorter than.
We have been doing lots outside of the classroom too, watching the dress rehearsal of Mary Poppins, preparing for our class assembly, visiting Famer Parrs and attending a Science Week demonstration.
The Easter holidays are getting ever closer, only one week to go, I am sure that a couple of quizzes early in the week will bring us all back down to earth!
Year 1
This week we finished our class book ‘The Lion Inside’ and we were very surprised to find out that the lion was not as brave as we first thought. The book is a story of friendship and equality, reminding us that even a lion and a mouse can be the best of friends regardless of how different they are. We thought about what qualities the different characters have that makes them a good friend.
In Art we looked at different landscapes of Africa and talked about what colours, shapes and patterns we could see. We learnt that African tribes have their own patterns and colours that represent their tribe, and we talked about how this is similar to wearing a school uniform as it shows that we are part of the Rossall School community.
In Science, we learned more about animal diets and sorted animals by what they eat. This will also be followed on during our visit to Blackpool Zoo on Monday.
We have also enjoyed the entertainment this week, watching the Year 2 Spring assembly and had a chance to watch the dress rehearsal of Mary Poppins. It was practically perfect in every way!
Reception
This week, we have taken part in British Science Week – a 10 day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths, with the theme ‘Time’.
We strive to inspire our scientists of the future. So every day we have done new Science activities to keep our young scientists inspired throughout the whole week. This week we have investigated the quickest way to melt ice by choosing different options, such as using heat from hands, adding water or using salt. We have talked about how people change over time and sequences and described photos of people at different stages in their lives. We have thoroughly enjoyed using a variety of timers to investigate how many times we can do various actions before the timer runs out. In Maths we have learnt about seconds, minutes and hours and what we can do within this time. We planned to do some experiments looking at how shadows change direction and length over the course of the day depending on the position of the sun but the sun hasn’t been out all week so we will do this on our next sunny day instead!
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
This week in Nursery we have focused on personal, social and emotional development.
The Sanderlings
This week the babies in the Sanderlings room have been focusing on their personal, social and emotional skills. The Sanderlings team have been encouraging the babies that have just started in the Sanderlings room as well as those who are transitioning into the Sandpiper room to become more confident and explore their new environment. The babies have been encouraged to engage in new activities and experiences with the reassurance that there is an adult close by for support. In addition, the older Sanderlings babies have been helping to take care of the younger babies. This is a great way for the babies to build on their understanding of how to be kind and gentle to others and build on learning empathy.
The Sandpipers
This week the children in the Sandpipers room have been focusing on the importance of sharing and taking turns. The children have taken part in group discussions with Miss Southern and Mrs Mayer to give meaning and understanding as to why we need to share and how others may feel when we don’t share. Throughout these discussions, there have been some great language and problem-solving skills used by the children. While exploring the garden the children have been practising these new skills by sharing the resources and waiting for their turn, especially with the bikes. The Sandpiper team has begun to extend the children’s knowledge in this area by introducing the story ‘ The Colour Monster’ by Anna Lienas. The story and illustrations in this book encourage young children to identify the different feelings through the colour of the monster in order to make sense of their own feelings and the feelings of others. To support the book and to extend their understanding of emotions the children took part in multiple different activities. We have introduced an emotions board with a mirror and pictures of different emotions, taken part in a colour-mixing activity and are in the process of learning a new feelings-related song.
Pre-School
This week the Pre-School children have been focusing on understanding their own feelings, the feelings of others and the importance of kindness and supporting each other. The Pre-School team have discussed different feelings with the children using the ‘Colour Monster’ story and they have encouraged the children to use colours to represent different emotions. The children learnt that sometimes they may feel different emotions all at once and this is normal. The children have been working on strategies to regulate their emotions and they have been encouraged to share these emotions with a trusted adult.
Moreover, the children have been encouraged to look for the signs of Spring in the Rossall grounds. The children spotted different flowers, different birds and bird nests. On a farm visit the Pre-School children also talked about different animals and how they change as they grow. One child shared a story about her rabbits at home and commented on the differences to the rabbits at Rossall School.
Finally, the children who will be transitioning into reception class visited Mrs Tripper’s class to share their talking tins and talk about the items they had brought in from home.
Awards
Year 6
This week’s certificates for class 6R go to Archie, for demonstrating commitment in all his tasks both inside and outside the classroom, and Sam for showing good leadership, initiative and organisation. Our certificate winners in 6S are Karan for excellent team work, leadership and organisation and Reuben for showing resilience and perseverance in everything he has done this week.
Sebastian also earned a Bronze Level award in the Primary Mathematics Challenge Bonus Round.
Year 5
Well done to our certificate winners this week, Olivia for outstanding enthusiasm and involvement in all activities and Dolly for outstanding positivity and enthusiasm in class activities.
Year 4
Our first certificate in Year 4 this week goes to Romano for having such a brilliant first week settling in at Rossall and our second certificate goes to Abrianna who is such a fantastic role model and good friend to others.
Year 3
The Year 3 certificates this week go to Darius and Beau for the wonderful ideas and information they have for their blue whale articles!
Year 2
Our certificates this week go to Hugo for improved effort in all areas of the curriculum and Jessica, for effort and application in preparation for our class assembly.
Year 1
This week in Year 1 our Certificates of Achievement go to:
Ares for creating wonderful African tribal patterns in Art. Theo for curiosity and engagement in Science.
Reception
This week’s certificates of achievement go to Rory and Milly.
Both children take an active part in class discussions each week, answering and asking lots of questions to clarify their understanding and take their learning further. This was clearly demonstrated on our recent school trip to Leighton Hall. Well done to both children!
