This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.
Dear All,
It was a pleasure to welcome so many of you to our Parents’ Open Afternoon on Monday. The children were exceptionally proud to show their books, to articulate their learning, and to talk about their work that was up on displays. It was also lovely to simply welcome parents back into School!
We were delighted to welcome a representative from Brian House to a special assembly on Tuesday. Discussing the childrens’ hospice provided a much better understanding of why we need to do so much to support this very worthy charity. Both the sale of our Christmas baubles and our Elf Run will support Brian House.
Speaking of charity, the School Council organised Children in Need event today was an enjoyable one for the pupils. Wearing non-uniform with a spotty and yellow theme, proved to be a great deal of fun. The Smartie tubes that were filled with coins have been collected and I will inform you of the total money raised, next week.
Sport was once again and mainstay on Wednesday. Our rugby team travelled to Giggleswick School for their festival, winning three and losing one narrowly – a fabulous performance!
We were equally delighted to welcome local primary schools to our festival of hockey. Children from across the local area joined in with a series of hockey skills sessions, all organised by Mrs Santamera. They had a wonderful time and I am positive that some of those who had never picked up a hockey stick before, will be encouraged to join a local club. My sincere thanks to all involved, including some wonderful senior school ambassadors!
We have two fabulous upcoming events – the Christmas Market on Sunday (10am-4pm) promises to be a wonderful start to the festive period. With 45 stalls and Santa’s Grotto to attend, I am positive that we will all enjoy this super event. Of course we also have the Prep Christmas Tree Light Switch-On on Friday 25th November, exactly one month before the big day; baubles at the ready!
Have a wonderful weekend and I hope to see you at the Rossall Christmas Markets.
Mr M Turner
Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery
Rossall Rhinos Rugby Team on the Rampage at the Giggleswick 7s
The Rossall Rhinos played some scintillating rugby at the Giggleswick Rugby Festival this week. It was well worth the long journey, with the team playing four competitive matches and winning three. This was an outstanding team performance, and the progress made throughout the day was superb. There were some fantastic tries scored, and it was a wonderful experience for the team to play against schools from all over the North West. Well done, Rossall!
Rossall Prep Hockey Festival
Rossall Prep played host to the first ever Y3/4 hockey festival on Wednesday afternoon. It was a glorious day, which really set the tone of the afternoon. Eighty children from many Fleetwood &Thornton Cleveleys primary schools took part in a variety of hockey activities down on Rossall’s astro turf pitch. Each school team was aiming to score as many points as possible on each activity. Every child made an outstanding amount of progress throughout the festival, regardless of their previous hockey experience. Well done to all the children who took part with smiles on their faces, and made it such a memorable day. We even managed to squeeze in a dance off, and a hot chocolate! Well done to Sacred Heart School who were the overall winners!
Year 6
It has been a pleasure to read the powerful persuasive arguments and reports from different perspectives that the children have written this week inspired by the book ‘Can We Save the Tiger?’ From researching endangered species to discovering world biomes and ecosystems in our Topic work, the enthusiasm and passion for learning has been outstanding.
The class thoroughly enjoyed working in small groups across the two classes to deliver expert presentations on their chosen biome. The confidence shown delivering the information on their research posters was superb, and the supportive comments of encouragement clearly demonstrated a close bond and appreciation of one another in the group.
This camaraderie was clearly evident in this week’s Rossall Rotation, where Year 6 joined ‘Old MacCondon’ on the Farm for a spot of planting, as well as caring for the various animals with Old MacWhitehead and Old MacMorton. The children loved the activities, particularly holding the fluffy new chicks-What an amazing learning environment we have at Rossall.
Year 5
In Maths this week, we have started looking at addition and subtraction with four or more digits. During our lessons, we have revisited the column method and addressed misconceptions for each operation. We discussed the correct vocabulary of exchange and not borrow and have applied this to many formal methods and problem solving questions. Year 5 have also taken on the challenge of working out the area of rectangles and triangles; focusing on the formula.
During our English lessons, we have continued to use amazing descriptive vocabulary to describe characters and settings within ‘The Lost Happy Endings’ book. With particular focus on describing the withered old woman, Year 5 then inferred what her personality was like through using their acting skills. They created freeze frames to reenact the scene between Jub and the old woman. Their creations were fantastic!
In Science we have continued to experiment with forces with the theme being air resistance this time. The Year 5’s have made their own mini parachutes of different sizes to test which one hits the floor the quickest. They enjoyed creating their parachutes along with making each of their tests fair.
Year 4
Anyone entering our classroom on Monday afternoon hearing the peals of laughter may have wondered what evoked such hilarity, especially if I told you it involved a ferocious crocodile and a string of sausages. However be assured that the age-old Punch and Judy show (350 years old actually) appeals to this current generation of children as it did to their grandparents and possibly great grandparents before them. Our topic on ‘The History of Entertainment’ this week concentrated on the Blackpool area and how holidaying in the town became popular in Victorian times aided by the development of the railways. Punch and Judy was just one form of entertainment that has endured the test of time. The children also researched the broad spectrum of entertainment found in the area including many iconic buildings – The Winter Gardens, Blackpool Tower and the three piers.
Our musical themed Science lessons continued this week as the children looked at vibrations made by drums, elastic bands and rulers. These simple practical activities helped to make abstract ideas more concrete by enabling the children to actually see the results of vibrations on various objects.
Carry, Larry and Barry were back making another appearance in our Maths lessons and have been busy stealing numbers to help the children visualise how to subtract smaller numbers from larger ones. This could then be applied to their column subtraction which is going from strength to strength.
The children have put their punctuation skills to the test in English by using possessive apostrophes to correctly punctuate sentences. Of course the sentences had to fit with our Circus topic which led to some fantastic suggestions as the children got to grips with some of the complexities of the English Language.
Another highlight of the week occurred when the children were able to attend swimming lessons for the first time since term began. After a busy first few weeks this was an ideal pursuit for the children to boost their vital endorphin and serotonin levels to improve brain health.
Year 3
This week in Year 3 we are all a bit worried about having our heads chopped off in the Tower of London! We have been learning all about Henry VIII and his 6 wives in our topic ‘Riotous Royals’. The children researched facts about the infamous Tudor king in fact files. We then did further research in Computing, and learnt how to copy-paste with facts about him. We even finished off the week making Tudor Roses in Art!
In English, we have continued Winter’s Child and have met a very magical, icy character. We wrote a ‘role on the wall’ description of the Winter’s Child character, and then learnt how to write with conjunctions.
In Maths we have finished off our unit on addition and subtraction by looking at word problems and applying our skills and strategies. Next stop: multiplication and division!
In Science we have continued our learning about Magnets! We learnt about the features of magnets and investigated how they interact with each other. We also learnt about magnetic fields, and discovered that magnets can work through other materials like plastic and even water!
We have also been loving our dance lessons with Ms Harris. We have been working on learning and returning the actions to the song Twelve Days of Christmas. Over the last two weeks wehave also been learning a commercial dance piece to Smooth like butter!
We also learnt about Anti-Bullying week in PSHE, and the importance of ‘reaching out’.
Well done for a fab week Year 3!
Year 2
The Pre-Prep Nativity practices are now in full swing, we have been learning all the songs and the children have been honing their acting skills.
I have been incredibly impressed with the manner in which the class have applied themselves in our English lessons this week. We have been learning all about Plop the owl, this has led to the children creating not only mind maps, but also their own information booklets that they will be sharing with reception children.
In Mathematics we have been working with addition and subtraction of three numbers, the children have been thinking about all the different ways that they can work with numbers, techniques we have used have included number lines, part-whole models, arrays, bar models. In Science the children completed some super work on food chains and even had the opportunity to create their own, of which quite a few included an owl as the predator.
This week’s artwork has been related to our topic on dinosaurs and I am sure you will agree the end products were quite impressive, thank you Mrs Payne for your help with this!
Year 1
There has been such a buzz of excitement and energy in our class this week where our children have been practising their Christmas Nativity with the Year 2 children. The acting of our children is impressive, as well as their hard work into learning new songs and singing beautifully- it’s fantastic to see our Christmas Nativity coming together nearly ready for our family and friends to enjoy!
In English we have been writing about Nibbles the Book Monster and we are still trying our best to find him. In the meantime, Year 1 have written diary entries from the perspective of the Giant (from Jack and the Beanstalk) and even a recount as Nibbles on his holidays too. We have also almost filled our English books this week with all of the writing we have produced!
In Maths we are working hard to secure our learning of the Part-Whole method for addition, and we are even able to work out the missing parts. We are becoming Mathematical professionals when it comes to writing number sentences and fact families too. We really like writing number bonds in Year 1 and it’s been a busy week of learning number bonds to 10 and memorising them too.
Keep it up Year 1!
Reception
This week we have enjoyed taking part in World Nursery Rhyme Week and have been joined by Pre School for some of our sing-alongs. Over 5 million children from 113 countries have taken part since 2013. Nursery rhymes play an important role in early childhood development and education. As well as being fun they are excellent teaching tools: Nursery rhymes and children’s songs boost vocabulary and language development. They help children to develop literacy skills and provide a fun way to support early numeracy skills. Nursery rhymes also help children to develop social, physical and emotional skills.
Each year, they choose 5 rhymes and encourage children to take part in a ‘Rhyme a Day’ challenge by singing nursery rhymes and taking part in supporting activities. The 5 official rhymes for 2022 are: The Big Ship Sails, 1,2,3,4,5, Five Little Speckled Frogs, BINGO and Twinkle Twinkle.
We have enjoyed a variety of follow-up activities including: pirate puppets, ship pencil control activities, mazes, dotty fish, hopping frogs, ordering frogs on logs, circle games, creating actions to the rhymes, learning numbers 1 to 5 in other languages, collage stars, counting stars and spot the difference. The continuous provision has been enhanced by boats, pirates, frogs, slimy frogspawn, playdough fish, a small world farm, fishing nets and rods, stars in the sand and small world fish.
We’ve had some much fun this week, the children want to carry on learning through Nursery Rhymes… so watch this space!
Nursery
“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything”
Plato
This week our Nursery has been very musical in celebration of World Nursery rhyme week; each room has planned their own activities for the Nursery rhymes and linked a daily theme to them.
On Monday, The Sanderlings took a trip to the beach to look for ships, back in the setting Miss Schofield set up small world boats in the water, linking to the nursery rhyme ‘The big ship sails on the ally-ally-oh’. Mrs Beddis and Miss Heatley set up a sensory activity involving sea creatures and playdough, the children used their imagination to make the sea creature dive into the playdough and use their pincer grip to release them. Following on from this activity The Sanderlings watched live action fish videos on the ipad, Miss Schofield encouraged the use of describing words for the colours and sounds that they could hear. On Wednesday, the babies took part in another hands on activity using ‘oobleck’ (you can make this at home), the oobleck was made into a frog green colour with toy frogs replicating the nursery rhyme ‘five little speckled frogs’ to reinforce counting and number recognition. The next nursery rhyme of the week is a firm favourite in The Sanderling room – ‘3 little ducks’, the babies sang along during story and song time. Finally, to support Children in need the babies came in dressed in yellow and spots. The babies then made yellow stars, played outdoors looking for any stars in the sky and rounded Nursery rhyme week nicely by singing ‘twinkle, twinkle little star’.
The Sandpipers began the week by going to the beach to search for ships on the horizon. Next, the children tested their critical thinking and reasoning by predicting what they thought would happen when different colours are mixed together, the children decided on what colour they thought they would create before testing out their hypothesis. The Sandpipers have also been practising their self-help skills and have tried very hard to put on their puddle suits and wellies, the children did such a good job they were rewarded with a puddle walk involving lots of splishing and splashing around the school grounds. On Wednesday, The Sandpipers went on a walk with Preschool to the Rossall pond to look for ‘five little speckled frogs’ and when the children arrived back they replicated the pond in their water tray with lots of frogs to count and sing to. Following the children’s interests, The Sandpipers have been learning about the world and all the different, interesting places that we can visit; the children even brought in their own holiday pictures to talk about. After a very wet week – Thursday involved dancing in the rain and colour matching rainbows. Finally, the children made their own interpretations of their families in a cutting and sticking activity.
The Preschool have also participated in nursery rhyme week, Miss Ward took the children to the beach with The Sandpipers children to find boats. The Preschool students were feeling festive so they decided to decorate their Christmas tree. It was a team effort, you will see a beautiful tree if you were to look through the preschool door. Our secret reader was Mr Cropper this week, who entertained the children with a new book called ‘The NinjaBread man’ by C.J Leigh. Children really enjoyed the spinoff of the classic Gingerbread Man story, where Sensei makes an age-old recipe for ninjabread. But the cookie escapes from the oven and runs loose! The children definitely had lots of laughs. In Preschool cooking class with Mrs James the children made puff pastry Spanish cheese straws, they looked delicious! The Preschool have been on a welly walk to jump in the puddles in the school grounds, the children found lots of puddles and enjoyed using words to describe the puddles and the sounds that the water splashing made when they could make by jumping in the puddles from different distances. Finally, on Friday the children dressed up in yellow for children in need.
Awards
Year 6
This week awards go to:
6S
Lincoln- Outstanding courage and determination on the rugby field
Roman-Outstanding independent learner
6R
Dawood- Excellent collaboration in Drama
Finley- Excellent artwork
Year 5
5R certificates are: Rio for excellent poetry work in English and Karanjot for wonderful courage in Maths.
5S’s certificates are presented this week to Seluleko and Sam for fantastic courage during our acting in English this week.
Year 4
In Year 4 our certificate winners this week are Ethan for excellent sportsmanship and Sebastian for outstanding effort in Maths.
Year 3
This week’s certificates go to Isla and Roman for both taking responsibility and helping others.
Year 2
Certificates this week go to Junior for Outstanding contribution to classroom discussion and Khaled for Fabulous effort in English lessons.
Year 1
This week’s achievement certificates in Year 1 go to:
Aria for challenging her ability everyday in Maths this week, especially when using Numbots.
Anand for pushing his ability, working above and beyond and enjoying writing fact families in Maths this week.
Reception
This week’s certificate of achievement go to Lexie and Chika.
Lexie has been very kind and helpful this week, looking after another child in the class.
Chika has tried very hard with her handwriting this week, forming letters accurately and neatly.
