Prep Newsletter Michaelmas Term Week 8 | Rossall

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

Dear All,

During Monday’s assembly, I spoke with the children about ‘courage’, one of our learner attributes. Talking about our fears can help us understand how we can display courage and it was hugely interesting to listen to what they were frightened of. We talked about showing strength in our approach to tasks that we are not keen on but also displaying the courage to do what is right, when faced with dilemmas and challenging situations. I concluded with a reminder that courage does not always roar like a lion, but that sometimes it can be the little voice in your head at the end of the day that says I can try again tomorrow! I was pleased to deliver the certificates to the children at our awards assembly later in the week; the examples of courage being shown across the School, was a delight to read!

On Wednesday, we welcomed Westholme School for a round of football fixtures across Years 4 to 6. The afternoon saw some resilient and excellent displays for a huge amount of children. Well done to all those involved in the fixtures – it is always lovely when a visiting member of staff says that Rossall is their favourite place to visit due to the welcome they receive, the manner in which the matches are played, the politeness of the pupils, and of course, the sausage rolls. My thanks to all the parents who came along to support.

Rossall Rotation was back in action on Thursday, as the children shifted to their new activities. The excitement over what element they will be changing to is always fantastic to see. Year 5 were delighted to be placed on Golf, with one class heading to the simulator on site, and the other jumping on a minibus to experience the driving range at Tee Time Golf. Many of the children had their nasal flu vaccinations on Wednesday; the nurses who came in were wowed as the children spoke of their afternoon – the golf, the kitchen, the astronomy centre, the beach, the farm and the forest.

Our Remembrance Service on Friday was observed with great respect. I would like to put on record my thanks to our Prep School Captains, Jessica and Lex, who did a great job of carrying and laying their wreath in Chapel.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mr M Turner

Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery

Five Prep Football Teams on Fire!

It was wonderful to see the excitement and pride on the faces of all the children from Years 4,5 and 6, who represented Rossall so determinedly on the football field against Westholme this week.

Taking part in two mini tournaments the children weathered the wind and rain before their scintilating football lit up the Rossall skies.

With 35 players representing the Rossall Rhinos, Rams, Raccoons, Rats and Rascals the playing fields were a hive of activity.

There were goals galore, and the talent and camaraderie on show was uplifting for the parents and teachers from both sides.

We all enjoyed hosting our friends from Westholme, and it was rewarding to hear their teacher say that Rossall was his favourite school to visit, not just because of the delicious sausage rolls and cake but because of the warm welcome and delightful children.

Well done, Rossall!

Year 6

“Humans have changed the world a lot over the years – to make room for ourselves and to produce the things we need. Some of the other animals and plants we share the earth with have coped with the changes very well. But some haven’t….”
This is the summary on the back of our new English book, ‘ Can we save the tiger?’ and as you can imagine the statement has given rise to a great deal of discussion. The children have already produced some incredible work using this book as a starting point. They have written poems about tigers using inference, passages using modal verbs imagining themselves to be a farmer in Bangladesh who has a tiger stalking their livestock and some fabulous work showing how they felt watching an advert about tiger poaching. Some impressive writing about a powerful but increasingly helpless beast. I am already looking forward delving deeper into this thought provoking, challenging book.
We have made an excellent start to our Topic and Year 6 enjoyed working in small groups to become experts in one of the seven biomes we are studying. Mr Condon and I are looking forward to the presentations next week.
The weather has bared its teeth several times this week and we have found ourselves dodging heavy showers on more than one occasion. Please do encourage your child to bring their coat. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Year 5

In English, this week, we have read the first few pages of our class book ‘The lost happy endings’ by Carol Ann Duffy. We have studied how the author uses different elements to create atmosphere and stir emotions in the reader. We have looked for examples of personification, similes and metaphors and created some of our own, as well as creating expanded noun phrases to describe settings and characters. We were also set the challenging task of writing a story for our Pre-Prep audience, but only allowed to use 100 words. It is a lot more difficult than it sounds!

In Science we have continued to experiment with forces. This week we tested friction using forcemeters to measure the friction created on different surfaces and investigated which created the most and least friction when trying to move an object.

In Topic we learnt about the first Viking invasion. We used facts about the Vikings to write our own newspaper report about the terrifying attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne. We talked about why the Vikings decided to invade Britain, and when and how they travelled here. We have also enjoyed learning all about Viking artistic styles and trying to write our names using the runic alphabet.

Year 4

The week began with an important question linked to our current circus topic – should animals be used for entertainment in the circus? This led to our class debating ‘for or against’ animals being used to perform on a stage. We looked closely at historical photographs from Blackpool Tower Circus and were amazed by the variety of animal acts which performed there in the past, and as amazing as it would be to see them, we decided they would be better in their natural habitat.

In Maths, the children have been introduced to ‘Carry’, a number stealing character, who supports the children when exchanging four digit numbers. Carry was also helped by Harry, Larry and Sally, to aid memory association with mathematical problems.

After completing our ‘Sound’ survey last week we moved on to understanding how sound travels through a series of vibrations. To gain an appreciation of how this happens the children used tuning forks and water to gain a visual understanding of how vibrations create movement. The children were fascinated by the relationship between sound and the waves that were produced in the water. We also watched as salt and rice jumped around on drums caused by vibrations made with tuning forks. Fascinating!

Year 3

This week Year 3 have been full of enthusiasm and energy across all aspects of their learning! We’ve been challenging ourselves in our writing, creating diary entries inspired by the snowy scenes of Winter’s Child. We have continued to practice our use of speech marks, learned about past tense verbs and starting to look at using adverbs to describe actions.

In Maths we are continuing our addition and subtraction journey, looking at patterns of adding hundreds, tens and ones and now adding and subtracting two 3-digit numbers together! In Topic, we have learnt about our next ‘Riotous Royal’: King John! We discovered why he has such a bad reputation and how this resulted in the Magna Carta to protect the people and keep them safe.

We have been true investigators in Science, taking the next step in our learning about Forces into the realm of magnets! The children made predictions and then tested different objects in the classroom to see if they are magnetic, depending on what material they are. We discovered that some metals are magnetic but not all. This week also saw our first Rossall Rotation of this half term, and we are doing Astronomy!

Well done for a fab week Year 3, keep up your eagerness!

Year 2

As ever the Year 2 children have been working incredibly hard, at the start of the week Bonfire Night still fresh in our minds and in relation to our class novel “The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark” the children have been describing fireworks using adjectives and adverbs. This culminated with the class creating a collaborative poem. I was quite impressed with the children, so thought I would share their poem

Fireworks flashing brightly

Fireworks crashing loudly

Fireworks zooming, whizzing, whooshing

Fireworks soaring in the sky

Eyes looking brightly

Eyes watching carefully

Eyes reflective, bright, colourful

Eyes staring up to the sky

Ears listening patiently

Ears ringing loudly

Ears sore, painful, happy

Ears waiting for that bang

Heart beating quickly

Heart pumping fast

Heart excited, amazed, scared

Heart sad for it to end

We have now moved our attention to Remembrance Day, the children have been learning about the importance of this solemn occasion and the class have created their own poppies in preparation for Friday’s service. With Maths, Science, Topic lessons, the nativity practice and our new Rossall Rotation activity life in Year 2 just seems to be getting busier and busier!

Year 1

Year 1 have spent the last few days discussing, describing, and writing about Nibbles the Book Monster. Have you seen him?

He has been nibbling at paper in our classroom and he especially likes to nibble pictures of certain objects- Year 1 could tell you all about it! We have even been putting up ‘Wanted’ posters all around the Pre-Prep building to try and locate him. He has also been nibbling his way through fairy tales and changing the way the stories ended; what fun it has been reading about his mischievous antics! The children have also been writing about Nibbles using extended sentences and plenty of punctuation too. We are also securing our knowledge of split digraph sounds and beginning to apply this knowledge to our writing- well done!

In Maths we have been busy making and writing fact families and number bonds. It’s so impressive to see how well the children can write number sentences and write number bonds to 10! Fantastic Year 1! In Art this past week we have created a firework display by carefully using glue and glitter. We have also created printed poppies using painted apples- what fun!

Finally, we enjoyed our Rossall Rotation activity today in the kitchen and made some tasty, monstrous pizzas!

Reception

Remembrance Day is an occasion of national significance, I believe that by helping children to understand why the nation comes to a halt at 11am to remember the war, we can safeguard its future. We completed several activities to help the children understand what we are remembering on Remembrance Day in an age-appropriate way.

We started by asking the children if they have ever done anything they didn’t want to do but that they knew they had to do. Here are some of our replies… “I get asked to tidy up at school and I don’t want to but I know I have to”, “I don’t like going to the dessert as it burns my feet but I have to go so I learn about new places”, “I have to eat my vegetables. They make you big and strong”, “I have to put my coat on when it’s cold. I will get sick if I don’t”, “I couldn’t go to Blackpool Zoo because my brother didn’t want to”, “I sometimes don’t want to come to school because I’m tired but I know I have to”, “I didn’t want to go on the tram but I had to as we were going to Blackpool”.

We then watched an animated short film about the journey of the poppy and what it means. It was written specifically for very young children so was an excellent introduction to the poppy and remembrance. The children stood sensibly and quietly in the Square for our two minute silence and then we came back to class and printed some beautifully poppy pictures using an apple! We also used our Maths skills to count some poppies, traced some poppy outlines and practised our scissor skills by cutting out some poppies.

Nursery

If we are to create peace in the world, we must start with our children”

Mahatma Gandhi

The Sanderlings have been free painting to create their own interpretation of a poppy for Remembrance day, the children used red paint on a large sheet of paper on the floor before adding a black circle for the centre of the poppy. Linking to the intent for the week, the children have been using their song box to practice speech patterns with Mrs Beddis, this is always a popular activity in the Sanderling room with the children actively participating in action songs and joining in with the words where possible. The small world area has been set up for The Sanderlings book of the month, ‘The Gruffallo’, the children have enjoyed playing with the characters from the story and having the story read to them whilst they play. As the weather has been against us this week, the children have enjoyed the outdoors in between breaks in the rainy and windy weather. To ensure the children were kept active during the not so nice weather Miss Heatley and Miss Schofield set up the room as an indoor soft play area where the children climbed, pulled themselves up to standing position, used steps to navigate over the soft play before going down the slide at the end of the course.

The Sandpipers started their week by continuing and building upon their previous learning on dental care, Miss Southern set up the tuff tray with laminated pictures of teeth and toothbrushes, the children brushed the teeth to make sure they were extra clean by removing the dry wipe pen from them. The children have been learning the importance of regular teeth brushing and how we can keep our mouths and teeth healthy. Outdoors the children have been on ‘welly walks’, searching for the biggest and best puddles to splash in. The Sandpipers have painted their own poppies for Remembrance day, in addition to talking about the importance of Remembrance day and what it means for us. Finally, the children have been learning about different families around the world, linking what they are learning to their own families and our own traditions.

The Preschool students have been learning how to subitise, practising subitising enables the children to look at a group of objects and realise how many objects there are without counting (which is a very useful skill) – it was the first time the children have been introduced to this concept and they did exceptionally well. In teacher time the children have also been learning how to rhyme, Miss Ward made it very funny by giving us all a word that rhymes with their name. This week was also the start of talking tins with Mrs Trippier, our reception class teacher. The children take turns filling a tin with goodies from home ready to come in show and tell with the rest of the class. The Preschool students have also been treated to not one but two secret readers this week, thank you to Mr Rund and Mrs Lawton for your time and for reading to us. Preschool have been learning about Remembrance day, the reasons why we mark this important occasion, made wreath and painted poppies in commemoration. On Friday Preschool attended the Remembrance Day service with the school and took part in one minute silence as a mark of respect.

Awards

Year 6

This week awards go to:
Jacob for showing courage
Daisy for showing perseverance
Xanthe for organisational skills and effort.
Michael for determination to do his best.

Year 5

5R’s certificates are presented this week to Poppy, Henry, Archilbald and Amelia.

Year 4

In Year 4 our certificate winners are Alfie for outstanding debating skills in Topic and Oleg for representing the school superbly during the class trip.