This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.
Dear All,
Welcome back to the second half of our Michaelmas term. As I said to the children in my assembly on Monday, this is the busiest and most hectic half term, only rivalled by the Summer! The children have returned full of energy and determination to learn and succeed in all they do.
On Monday I welcomed Nursery to my office, as they joined in with the annual Trick or Treat around the Rossall site. Whilst we, of course, managed their volume of sweets, the event provided the children with the opportunity to experience new buildings and meet different adults around Rossall.
The heavens opened on Wednesday afternoon, right in time for our football and netball matches against St.Pius. The games were all hugely competitive but I would like to mention the sheer grit and resilience that was shown in some quite horrific conditions, to carry on playing and doing so with a smile on their faces. I was a proud Head during the course of the afternoon.
After drying off, I was delighted to attend the Parents’ Forum in the Pennine Suite, alongside our Head of Pre-Prep, Mrs Loy. It turned out to be an excellent debate about all things Prep School, ranging from car parks to homework. I am always really open to a dialogue with parents and thoroughly enjoy talking about our plans for the future, as well as the reasoning behind many of the decisions that we make. What encouraged me was the positive nature in which I believe we are working together in a true home-school partnership, in order to provide the very best for the children. My genuine thanks to all who attended.
Year 4 visited the Circus on Thursday, as part of their topic on the history of entertainment. I know that they had a wonderful time watching the acrobats, clowns and jugglers, as well as travelling on the tram!
Finally, Year 6R delivered a fantastically informative and enjoyable assembly on Friday, where they spoke about their topic from last half term, World War II. Congratulations for providing such a wonderful assembly and for the clarity of delivery of your work. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about your learning!
Have a lovely weekend,
Mr M Turner
Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery
Year 5 & 6 Netball match at St Pius X
On Wednesday 2nd November Year 6 and some Year 5 girls went to St Pius X Prep, where we played a Netball match. We all played fantastically and won! The score was; 9 to Rossall and 2 to St Pius. The weather conditions were not what we would have hoped to play netball in, but we all ploughed through and did our best. By the time we got there it was already pouring with rain.
The St Pius children were very welcoming, and afterwards they led us inside to have snacks. Unbelievably, they also gave us pizza and juice, which was delicious! Some of the other children from their younger years came and watched us play, and were cheering for St Pius X. On the trip back to Rossall we sang Matilda songs, and as we entered Rossall we sang the Rossall school song; “The Carmen!”
Footballing Fun in the Rossall Rain!
It was wet and wonderful to welcome St Pius to Rossall for our annual footballing fixture this week. The wild wind and driving rain didn’t dampen the children’s spirits, and it was extremely rewarding to see all the boys from Years 5 and 6 represent the school team so committedly.
There were goals galore from all the teams and the camaraderie, determination and sportsmanship shown by the Rossall players was superb. Everyone welcomed the well-earned Rossall tea and the children hosted our St Pius friends admirably.
Well done, Rossall!
Swimming Success
During the half term holidays, at the North Lancashire Championships, Daisy got her qualifying time for the 2023 Lancashire Championship in 50m freestyle, and smashed new personal bests in all of her races. She is still hoping to gain her qualification times in 50m breaststroke, 50m butterfly and 200m individual medley before the end of year. Congratulation to Daisy for all the work that has gone into such fantastic results and we look forward to you making a real splash in 2023.
Year 6
Year 6 have had an active first week back, and it was extremely rewarding seeing them all represent the school on the football and netball teams against our friends from St Pius. The wind and rain didn’t deter the teams from playing committedly, and the team spirit shown by all the children, parents and teachers supporting one another was very impressive!
The class have thoroughly enjoyed putting the finishing touches to our work on ‘Peace and Conflict’ and are now ready to explore our new area of study focusing on ‘Earth Matters’ and an appreciation of all living creatures and the environments they inhabit. We will be looking at biomes and ecosystems across our planet to stimulate our writing and research, but surely there aren’t many environments quite as hostile as the Rossall playing fields on a wet and windy Wednesday afternoon!
Rehearsals are going splendidly for our production of ‘Matilda’ with news from the Music and Dance departments that our cast may be ‘revolting’ but are wonderful performers! This was evident with a polished and well-presented class assembly from 6R, who delivered a powerful presentation to the Prep School in Chapel to round our week off perfectly. Roll on Monday for another action-packed week!
Year 5
It’s been another action packed week here in Year 5 with lots of new topics and learning going on.
We have started our new fiction book called ‘The Lost Happy Endings’ which focuses on traditional tales. The pupils were excited to create their own tale, but with a twist! Changing the characters or the setting were just a few examples of their creativity. We are looking forward to continuing to learn about Jub and her search for ‘the happy endings’.
In Maths, both groups have been working amazingly showing their determination and resilience in tricky problem solving questions involving numbers up to one million. Next, we are moving onto addition and subtraction and applying this to real life scenarios.
Starting off with an experiment all about gravity, our ‘Forces In Action’ topic in Science has promoted the curiosity of all the pupils. Using flour and different weighted/sized balls, the Year 5’s used their scientific knowledge to interpret their findings.
It was superb to see so many Year 5’s take part in sport this week. Representing our school in such horrendous weather conditions deserved a medal in itself! Fantastic performances and well done to everyone involved.
Year 4
We began a new science topic this week all about sound. The class started by jetting off on a ‘sound walk’ and visited a variety of areas in the Prep and Senior School. We even paid the goats a visit and established they were very cheeky having recently developed a taste for clip boards.
In English, we began a new book entitled ‘Leon and the Place Between’, by Angela McAlister, about a boy who goes to a circus and is drawn into a mystical world. The children loved the idea of circus performances and began creating leaflets to inspire people to attend their own circus.
Bridging together our English and Topic lessons about entertainment the children have been asking questions about why snacks are related to entertainment, i.e. popcorn and candy floss? This led to the very important question – ‘why does popcorn pop?’ The children learned that popcorn has been around for thousands of years; however, scientists have only recently resolved the mystery behind the popping sound and the detailed mechanism of how the popcorn bursts due to the vaporisation of water escaping from the kernel after it has cracked.
On Thursday, we had our first ever trip in Year 4 – a visit to Blackpool Tower Circus. The children enthusiastically headed to Rossall tram stop in eager anticipation of the circus performance that lay ahead of them. Upon arrival the children excitedly found their seats and waited fervently for the show to begin. Clowns, jugglers, tightrope walkers, contortionists, acrobats, you name it, all performed daring acts and the children sat engrossed throughout the show, taking in the different acts and the special talents of the circus troupe.
The children represented the school wonderfully and kept many tram passengers entertained with their stories from the circus. Overall, the children had a fabulous time and are already asking when our next class trip will be!
Year 3
What a fabulous start of the second half term Year 3 have had! We’ve been starting lots of new areas of learning and the children have embraced them enthusiastically.
In English we have started our new book Winter’s Child. For this, we have written our own descriptive list poems and are also learning to use speech marks. We have also been learning about using ‘a’ or ‘an’ before nouns.
In Maths we are continuing our journey through addition and subtraction with 2- and 3-digit numbers, now moving on to column method including exchanging.
Our new Science unit for the half term is called Forces and Magnets. This week we learnt about pushes and pulls: we used force meters to measure the force required to move a toy car across different surfaces. The children were very curious and careful in their investigation!
Our new Topic is Riotous Royals, learning all about infamous kings and queens in English history. We started this week learning about William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings. We wrote our own news reports describing the details of the battle! We also explored the Bayeux Tapestry and in Art we created our own versions of this famous historical artefact.
A fabulous first week back, well done Year 3!
Year 2
The first week back at school has been action packed and full of lots of learning. We have started new topics in all subject areas and most of these have involved meeting new animals.
Our English work focuses on the book “The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark” by Jill Tomlinson, the children have met our main character Plop and completed some descriptive writing using adjectives. However, the animals that have caused the most excitement are the dinosaurs we have been learning about in our topic lessons. The children have proved to be very knowledgeable about these prehistoric beasts and have enjoyed sharing their knowledge with classmates.
On Wednesday we completed some artwork related to this, the idea being to create a sunset silhouette of dinosaurs reflected in water. This required quite a lot of scraping and water, however, the end product was really quite pleasing. If the introduction of dinosaurs caused excitement, the distribution of roles for our nativity led to some ecstatic faces, some children have already learnt their lines and we are all really looking forward to getting our teeth into practice.
It looks like we are going to have a very busy few weeks ahead!
Year 1
It’s been a wonderful first week back in class and our Year 1 children were raring to get started on Monday! We described what we did during half term and shared our news with each other as a whole class- it was fabulous to hear about all the things you were busy with. The children even brought souvenirs, and other things, to show each other and to talk about with their friends. Some great discussions were had and that was just on Monday!
In Maths we are exploring number sentences and fact families using part-whole models- it’s been tricky but we are certainly getting the hang of it! In phonics we are facing a challenge in learning how to spell words spelt with the tricky split digraph sounds- well done on trying so hard with this Year 1!
We then had a bit of a surprise this week in Year 1 when we realised that there was someone, or something, chewing and nibbling through Mrs Loy’s paper. We decided it must have been the cheeky and sneaky Nibbles, the book monster. We wanted to find him and try and stop more of our paper or even books from getting nibbled so we created detailed ‘Wanted’ posters and have placed them around the school. If you see Nibbles, please let Year 1 know!
Reception
Sometimes our children struggle with coping strategies and require tools to improve self regulation. This can occur at school or at home. Addressing specific needs like sensory overload, worries or anxiety, fears, or nervousness can be as simple as having a set of sensory coping strategies on hand. One way to do this is using mindfulness and positive coping skills like deep breathing exercises, which we link to the children’s interests.
Deep breathing acts as a coping tactic and a calming activity. It’s an easy coping strategy for children because taking deep breaths with mindful breathing can be done anywhere and without any equipment.
Taking controlled breaths with deep breathing can give children a sense of control that helps them rest and address self-regulation or emotional regulation when they are upset, worried, or feel a need to calm down.
This week we tried a deep breathing activity which used a simple picture of a pumpkin, but we used a real pumpkin, too. The small decorative pumpkins are perfect for this activity, because children can hold the small pumpkin in their hands and feel the weight of the pumpkin as they complete the breathing strategy.
Using a pumpkin picture, we showed the children how to use deep breathing as a coping tool by taking calming breaths while they trace the lines of the pumpkin. We also coloured our own pumpkin breathing pages, as we know there are many benefits of colouring too and one is the calming ability that colouring has. Adding heavy work by coloring in pages can be a great way to calm the sensory system through heavy work in the hands.
The children have thoroughly enjoyed these activities and hopefully the children can learn to use them to help self regulate in the future, even maybe at home with the pumpkins they have coloured in this week.
Nursery
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have”
Maya Angelou
The Sanderlings started their week with a spooktacular party, the children were invited to come in dressed up in their best spooky costume. Following this theme the children used their fine motor skills to pick spiders out of pumpkin scented playdough whilst using their senses to describe the lovely new scent with words modelled by Miss Heatley. As the week progressed and with bonfire night fast approaching the children have been creative and made their own interpretation of fireworks using black paper and brightly coloured chalks. In the garden Mrs Beddis and Miss Schofield have encouraged the use of words linked to Autumn and bonfire night. The babies have also been on a walk to look for hedgehogs and observe the further changes to the leaves now Autumn is firmly upon us. Finally, the babies have also created circular firework patterns using paint in primary colours.
The Sandpipers also started their week with a Halloween party, the children took part in fun activities, turn taking games such as pass the parcel and of course no party would be complete without a disco. Halloween celebrations fit in perfectly with The Sandpiper’s book of the month ‘Room on the Broom’ by Julia Donaldson. With all the sweets and goodies that the children may have consumed over the Halloween period Miss Southern has also placed a focus on healthy eating, how we can eat sweets and chocolates in moderation and what we can do to keep our teeth and body strong and healthy. The children enjoyed learning about the things we can do to keep ourselves healthy and took part in a tooth brushing activity using toy teeth. After all the partying was over it was time to focus on the next big event in our calendar – Bonfire Night. The children have painted their own fireworks and used crayons and chalks to ‘mark make’ fireworks. Finally, The Sandpipers have started learning Christmas carols – stay tuned for more information on this.
The Preschool also embraced the spooky spirit with a Halloween party. All of The Preschool children have been trick or treating at The Hall and The Preparatory School where they were greeted by Mr Turner who gave all of the children a little sweet treat – Thank you Mr Turner and to everybody in The Hall. Thank you to Heather, our front of house supervisor, for arranging the trick or treat activity. Preschool enjoyed another visit from the ‘Senior Readership Team’ as our next secret reader was unveiled – Mr Quartermain. What a lovely time we had! Mr Quartermain read two books (our favourite was Paddington) and kept the children engrossed with many different accents and voices, thank you Mr Quartermain. On Thursday Preschool went cooking with Mrs James, it was time to cook a dessert, Miss Emsley and Miss Simms hope you enjoyed the apple crumble the children brought home. To finish the week Miss Emsley gave us strings and paint and showed us a trick to create firework and bonfire pictures, each picture was unique and came out beautifully.
Awards
Year 6
This week awards go to:
6S
Kieran for Courage and Determination.
Jessica for Strength of Character.
6R
Freddie for Curiosity in Maths.
Joseph for Collaboration in Topic.
Year 5
5R’s certificates are presented this week to: Hollie for trying hard and persevering; and Thomas for enthusiasm and curiosity in Topic.
While in 5S Jasper and Millie were recognised for not giving up during tricky problem solving questions and working collaboratively- helping others.
Year 4
This week our certificate winners are Eryn for always being kind and caring and Spencer for outstanding perseverance in all activities.
Year 3
The certificates this week go to Abrianna for amazing care in her work and to Larry for great work in Maths.
Year 2
Our certificate winners this week are:
Arabella for Outstanding attitude and effort.
Beau for Fabulous independent writing.
Year 1
This week’s certificates in Year 1 go to:
Lena for sharing her thoughtful ideas and questions with her peers in English this week.
Max for creating a descriptive and interesting ‘Wanted’ poster in English this week.
Reception
This week’s certificates of achievement go to Vova and Tabitha.
Vova has followed instructions very carefully to create an amazing painting of a spider.
Tabitha has persevered with her cutting skills to cut very precisely around different shapes.
