This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.
Dear All,
The joy of reading is a lifelong skill that should start in earnest from a young age. Some of my favourite memories stem from reading to my own children at bedtime. As we all know, a big part of learning to read comes from listening to others reading. I was delighted to be able to do that very activity for our Nursery Pre-School children on Tuesday. ‘Supertato’ is one of my favourite stories for young children; full of suspense, excitement and some wonderful vegetable characters (whom I love making up voices for)! I am delighted that our Senior Leaders at Rossall have also agreed to visit Nursery with their favourite books, as we launch our ‘Senior Readership Team’ initiative. What a wonderful way for our youngest Rossalians to meet the adults who help to shape their educational journey.
On Wednesday, we hosted the annual Association of Junior Independent Schools (AJIS) Cross Country here at Rossall. The opening AJIS event of the year is always well attended with children from across the North West travelling to take part on the famous Rossall course. I would like to thank all schools for visiting us and providing such excellent opportunities for their children to develop resilience and determination – it is a challenging course! Also, a special note of congratulations and thanks to both our Rossall runners, as well as our supporting Year 5 and 6 pupils, who all wonderfully represented our School. There were some fabulous performances, with Caitlin finishing second in her race, and both our U10 Girls and U11 Boys both winning the plate competitions. Fantastic!
Our Harvest Festival in Chapel was a delight. Listening to our Year 6 pupils as they delivered a super assembly with a message of real appreciation and thanks for all we have, was heartening to hear. The tins and dry food produce that was so kindly donated will be delivered to The Pantry, a local food bank charity, in the coming days.
Have a relaxing weekend,
Mr M Turner
Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery
Rossall Shines at the 30th AJIS Cross Country
The Rossall playing fields looked spectacular in the blazing sunshine as schools arrived from across the North West of England to take part in the annual Junior Independent Schools Cross Country.
Now in its 30th year, the Preparatory School are proud to be the hosts of this prestigious event, where nearly 500 runners gather for a stern test of endurance, stamina, teamwork and determination.
There were four races in all, with approximately 120 competitors in each event. This was a wonderful opportunity for the Rossall runners and a thrilling experience for many who were competing for the first time against children from other schools.
On home soil, the Rossall team ran superbly showing excellent team spirit. This determination led to the U10 and U11 Boys both winning the Plate competitions.
The U11 and U10 girls just missed out on this achievement by the smallest of margins. However, there was one individual performance that was outstanding; Caitlin in Year 5 ran heroically to take the individual silver medal! Battling from 8th position as she ran over the rugged terrain of the sea wall, with sheer determination she overtook nearly all those in front of her to claim an incredible 2nd place on the podium, much to the delight of the Rossall children and teachers!
The atmosphere was electric throughout the afternoon and the dedication shown by all our runners, as well as the Preparatory and Sixth Form helpers, created a wonderful team spirit amongst the Rossall children.
Well done, Rossall!
Year 6
Another busy and productive week for Year 6! We thoroughly enjoyed welcoming so many schools to Rossall on Wednesday for the AJIS Cross Country. All of the Year 6 children were involved in the event, either as runners or as guides for the other schools. Mr Condon and I were incredibly impressed not only with the resilience of our runners but also the way our guides conducted themselves. The were excellent ambassadors for Rossall.
We continue to enjoy delving into our books, ‘Star of fear, Star of hope’ and ‘When we were Warriors’. Both books tackle the subject of World War 2 in very different ways. The children are thoroughly enjoying reading and predicting what might happen next in the fast moving, exciting plots.
Our Topic, ‘Peace and Conflict’ links seamlessly with our texts and is encouraging some excellent discussions.
In Mathematics we have moved onto problem solving multi-step problems. The children have enjoyed the challenge that this has posed and have had fun creating challenging problems for their peers to solve!
It was a glorious day on Thursday for our Rossall Rotation. The children had fun creating delicious treats in the Rossall Kitchen.
We hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Year 5
This term’s well-being theme of inclusivity has been demonstrated throughout our learning this week, especially during our RS lesson, where we have been thinking about worship and how it is shown in different religions. It has been really lovely to see our classmates of different faiths have the opportunities to share their religious experiences and ways of worshipping. With this week’s Harvest Festival we were able to show a way of worshipping through singing hymns and giving thanks.
We have started to learn about rivers in preparation for our trip on Monday. We have talked about the water cycle and identified some famous rivers in the United Kingdom, using atlases. Please remember to have wellies, spare clothes and an extra pair of socks. Nobody likes soggy socks!
In our English work we have been thinking about using commas to change the meaning of a sentence. We thought it was very funny with the phrase ‘let’s eat Dad’ compared to ‘let’s eat, Dad’. We then applied this in our writing about our class book ‘Queen of the falls’. We have been writing letters to our friend Annie Edson Taylor, to tell her how proud we are of her for her daredevil plan to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
Year 4
Autumn has certainly arrived this week, however the wild and windy weather never stops us at Rossall. It has been full steam ahead for Year 4. In English, we have been engrossed in all things gorilla and have been busy creating fact-files about gorillas and their habitat. The children have also been comparing the height of a gorilla with various members of staff. I lost this by 25cms, however I can tell you that Mr Rund has won the accolade for being the nearest in height to a gorilla! I hope the children have enjoyed the journey of researching new information and the delight of discovering something previously unknown to them.
Linking seamlessly with our English curriculum, the children’s project for art is to draw and paint a gorilla. They have done amazingly well and we now have a troop of psychedelic gorillas keeping a beady eye on us from the wall display!
This week we also undertook the first science experiment of the year. Who knew that a pair of tights and a banana could teach so much about the digestive system! The children engaged enthusiastically with the experiment and there was much teamwork and laughter as they worked together in groups to replicate peristalsis in the gut.
Year 3
This week in Year 3 has been as busy as ever! We have been working really hard on our Maths and really enjoying the end of our place value unit, looking at ordering and comparing 3-digit numbers. In English, we finished Seal Surfer and reached the end of the beautiful story about friendship. We wrote to describe both the setting and then the character, using inference from the book. In Science, our theme was bones! We learnt about the skeleton and how it helps with protection, support and movement, For topic this week our theme was Coastal Wildlife and we researched our chosen coastal animals using the internet. We also used our sketches of the Great Wave of Kanagawa from last week to create beautiful paintings, they are bright and full of detail! It was really special to finish the week with the Harvest Festival in Chapel, a really meaningful event for all. Well done for a fabulous week, good job Year 3!
Year 2
Teachers love it when the children lead the learning in the classroom as it demonstrates a depth of learning that goes beyond what is written in an exercise book. This really has been the case this week. At our Monday assembly Mr Turner talked about inclusivity, his message clearly hit home with the Year 2 children, not only because of the chocolate that was on offer, but also the important message that came with these delicious treats. As part of our topic we were finding out about Mary Seacole and her significance in history. On the discovery of the fact that she faced discrimination we had an in depth conversation and lots of questions related to the message and Mr Turner’s assembly. The next day Ayana brought in a fascinating child friendly book about racism, it was so pleasing to see how the children independently questioned the attitudes and prejudices of the past.
The highlight of the week was definitely the visit to Dr Lister and the Astronomy Centre. The children loved learning about the stars and even being able to lie back and see them moving through the sky. Photos were taken, but it was simply too dark!
Year 1
We have really enjoyed learning about penguins this week and we worked really hard to write full, interesting, and informative sentences about them. Year 1 are really doing well to apply their phonics skills to their writing each and every day. We’ve also had some proud moments in Maths this week where we have been learning to count one more and one less, recognise numbers effortlessly, and even use greater than and less than symbols to compare amounts and numbers. In Topic we are learning more about animals and beginning to classify them- it’s been so interesting for our children! We have also started to think scientifically and we have experimented with objects that might float or sink in water. Well done for another fabulous week in school Year 1!
Reception
Helping children learn about the world around them and the environment is so important. One of the ways in which we can do this is to help them learn about the changing seasons. The advent of spring, summer, autumn and winter each brings with it its own unique natural characteristics and the ideal opportunity for helping children learn. Young children are usually keen to learn and improve their understanding of the world around them and the chance to gain new knowledge can be incorporated into a variety of activities.
One of the best ways of helping children get an idea of the changing seasons is to get outdoors and explore. In the autumn there’s the excitement of crunching through autumn leaves or finding the first conkers as they fall from horse chestnut trees. We thoroughly enjoyed our walks around the school campus and the activities in the ‘Secret Garden’ as we looked for signs of Autumn, observed the different colours we could see, collected leaves and looked for conkers.
To enhance the children’s learning experience even more, we have read several books and stories that are related to the different seasons, especially Autumn. We loved the story about the ‘Leaf Thief’ and had fun stealing leaves from the ‘Secret Garden’ to make wonderful leaf collages with. We also used some of the leaves to print with, using Autumnal coloured paint.
Our wonderful collection of autumnal objects is growing by the day and causes great interest for the children as they use tweezers to prise the shiny conkers out of their shells and use the magnifying glasses to look for bugs on the leaves. We have even used all the conkers collected for our Maths lessons! So, if you are out and about over the weekend, we would love more exciting things for our collection please?
Nursery
“The goal of early childhood education should be to activate the child’s own natural desire to learn”
Maria Montessori
It has been a busy week in The Sanderlings with another successful stay and play, we enjoy meeting all of the families we have in the setting and it was lovely to see a mixture of parents and Grandparents at this session. Mrs Beddis has been strengthening the babies’ fine motor skills with a mint scented sensory play dough activity, the children were encouraged to squash the play dough between their fingers whilst the practitioners used words linked to our senses. The Sanderlings have a fascination with the tractors that are often found driving up and down our school field, so of course we had to take the babies on a hunt to look for the tractors – we found our favourite blue tractor as well as a red tractor with a trailer. Our sand and water tray has been in full swing outdoors which has caused a lot of excitement, the babies have been building their own sandcastles and filling different pouring equipment with water. Finally, as one of The Sanderlings learning intentions for this week was all about singing songs with actions we have made sure that our song time has been extra physical with lots of opportunity to get our hands, feet and bodies moving.
The Sandpipers have been on a sound walk with preschool, the children listened out for the natural sounds we can hear and tried to recreate them with musical instruments being mindful of the speed, pitch and amplitude of the sound. This activity linked perfectly to our learning intention of using musical instruments to create sounds. Our Sandpipers have recently introduced a signing in board which they complete together during circle time. The signing in board has every child’s name with a picture of them, the children sign themselves in on a five frame; the children then count how many children are in today and try to make comparisons between how many boys and girls are present – The Sandpipers are getting really good at this. Miss Southern has introduced a daily 10 minute mindfulness activity where the children are encouraged to relax, have time to reflect and take in their surroundings before they go to the next part of their day. Miss Sumner has been helping The Sandpipers to hold their pencils to create marks on paper, eventually this will mean the children are well equipped for their early writing as they progress through the nursery. To complete the week Mrs Mayer has started phonics with us, we have been listening to the individual sounds we can hear within our names.
The Preschool children have had an extremely exciting week and were thrilled to meet our first mystery reader… Mr Turner. What a story it was! Mr Turner read ‘Supertato’ using funny accents that not only kept Preschool engrossed in the story but provided the source of many laughs. Thank you Mr Turner for your time and brilliant storytelling skills, the children were talking about the story all through tea time which is certainly an excellent indicator of the fun learning experience they had just been a part of. The preschool can’t wait to meet their next mystery reader especially if they are coming from our own Senior ‘Readership’ team. The Preschool children now have an interactive signing in board on their board, the children have been comparing the number of boys to the number of girls on each 5 frame using mathematical language of smaller than and greater than. Miss Emsley has been building with the children using large bricks to recreate places the children may have visited such as Blackpool tower. Miss Ward’s teacher time has been centred around an active listening games called ‘noisy neighbour’ where the children have to listen to the sounds someone is making to determine which one of their friends they can hear as well as a game called ‘silent pass’. We are sure that your child will tell you all about the listening games if you were to ask. Mrs Gaynor has been drawing with the children and getting to know our children’s family life, the children were drawing and talking about who lives in their house. Finally, The Preschool have been on a walk around school and have visited the library, the dining hall and Junior school.
Awards
Year 6
6R
Emily for resilience in the AJIS Cross Country
Dawood for being an excellent ambassador for the school at the
AJIS Cross Country
6S
Grigoriy for Outstanding progress
Jessica for Outstanding commitment and standard of work
Year 5
Well done to this week’s award winners. In 5R, Rhiannon and Grace were awarded certificates for being kind, thoughtful and a good friend. In 5S, Eleanor and Monty for being excellent role models.
Year 4
In Year 4 our certificate winners are Dolly for outstanding enthusiasm in Science and Aaron for excellent sportsmanship in Games.
Year 3
Our certificates in Year 3 this week go to Wyatt and Lexi for their great effort in Maths.
Year 2
This week’s certificates have been awarded to Darius; Outstanding effort in class and Ayana for sharing her book and knowledge about inclusivity.
Year 1
This week our awards in Year 1 go to:
Hugo for trying his hardest in Maths this week and showing he enjoys working with numbers!
Lexi for challenging her ability when working with numbers and always having a try at tricky Maths!
Reception
This week’s certificates of achievement awards go Nicholas and Lexie.
Nicholas has settled well into new school routines and completes all activities.
Lexie makes a positive and valuable contribution to all class discussions.
