This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.
Dear All,
You can never underestimate the moments of joy in a child’s life. It can be something as simple as hitting the tennis ball for the first time. Or perhaps playing an instrument in front of an audience. Maybe getting that rather tricky spelling correct. Or just opening a bag of McNuggets and finding there are 7 instead of 6! Whatever those moments are, we should absolutely enjoy being there to witness the delight that cannot be matched when a child has a wow moment!
Last Friday evening, I was delighted to meet some of our new families of children who are joining us for Reception in September. Our Rossall Rabbit picnic was a lovely event and provided an opportunity for new parents to see their children’ classroom, meet their teacher, and of course, each other. The Summer term always allows us to both reflect back on the many great things that have occurred throughout the year, but also to look forward to the start of new journeys that are soon to commence.
Our assembly concert earlier today provided another example of just what a talented School of children we have at Rossall Prep. Children as young as Reception right through to Year 6, were provided with the opportunity to perform in front of a live audience who were not disappointed. Congratulations to all those who took part in such a lovely collection of vocal and instrumental pieces.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Mr M Turner
Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery
A Charity Event in Support of Ukraine
Dear All,
As you are aware, Rossall School has been proactive in supporting those affected by the ongoing war in Ukraine. We continue to support families affected by the conflict and have launched the Rossall Ukrainian Hub, which is a social event hosted by our Headmaster and family where Ukrainians living in the local area can meet and make connections with each other.
As part of our ongoing efforts to provide much needed funds, in collaboration with Back Powder Gin in Weeton, we have organised a charity evening on Saturday 7th May. Half of the ticket price of £50 will go towards supporting our charity efforts, alongside all proceeds from the bar.
The evening includes a 3 course meal catered by Twelve Restaurant, a welcome drink on arrival, live entertainment, an auction and a raffle.
Prizes are still coming in and if you are able to offer anything for auction or raffle, we would be delighted to hear from you (please email me directly at [email protected]). Already on offer for the event we have a wonderful Airbnb weekend stay in the Lake District, a luxury Black Powder Gin Hamper, a 6 month gym membership and golf lessons, to name but a few!
Tickets are limited and we welcome individuals, couples, families, businesses; all members of our community to join together for a fabulous evening to support a very worthy cause.
Mr M Turner
Rossall U11 v Sedbergh U11
Wednesday afternoon saw the start of the much awaited rounders season. The Rossall Year 5 & 6 girls could not wait to get out on those pitches to play some competitive games against Sedbergh School. Both of the Rossall teams gave a fine display of their fielding and batting skills. Their understanding of the rules and gameplay improved phenomenally throughout the afternoon. Both matches were very tight; Rossall Reds were just pipped to the post by 7 rounder to 5, and Rossall Whites finished with a well earned draw. Well done to all the girls for representing Rossall so commendably.
Pre Prep Football Skills at Poolfoot Farm
On Tuesday afternoon a squad of ten excited Pre Prep children travelled to Poolfoot Farm to play in a football skills festival.
The event comprised of many activities involving; shooting, dribbling and passing the ball. Once all of the skills activities were completed we played two friendly matches. The children represented Rossall fantastically, showing real team spirit and determination.
Well done to all of those who took part in this brilliant event, and thank you to Lee Cadwallader for organising it so meticulously.
Year 6
Year 6 have dived right into our new topic on underwater exploration and we have been fascinated by the book ‘Manfish’ about the life of the amazing Jacques Cousteau and his pioneering advancements in deep sea diving.
The children have relished the opportunity to come together as a year group to discuss areas of interest for our Year 6 Exhibition, and they are looking forward to working together in small groups on our theme of ‘Exploration’. This is a wonderful opportunity to develop their learning skills culminating in an exhibition for all year groups and Year 6 parents before half term.
On the theme of exploration, the Rossall Rotation is always an enjoyable afternoon every two weeks, and the class launched into space to develop their knowledge of Astronomy; this learning journey is going to be out of this world!
Year 5
We have enjoyed the sunshine this week particularly on Friday afternoon when we ventured to the beach. Year 5 did a fabulous job removing unwanted rubbish from our stunning coastline. Over the course of this week we have begun to investigate our use of plastic. We have watched some documentaries detailing how our reliance on plastic, particularly single use plastic is destroying our seas and the many amazing creatures who live in them.
As Sir David Attenborough said: “We use plastic with total abandon, without any care or concern about where it’s going to and what it might do”
The children debated fiercely in their English lessons whether we should cut our reliance on plastic and how we could do this. I was amazed by not only their knowledge but also the passion that they showed. I was also impressed by the respect that they had towards each other during the debate even when agreements could not be met, future politicians in the making perhaps?
We have continued our mastery of fractions and have moved onto finding fractions of amounts and solving word problems involving these calculations.
In Art we spent a pleasant hour honing our sketching and shading skills. The children enjoyed learning how to draw a still life picture using everyday objects, the end products were rather good!
I hope you have a wonderful weekend and that the sun shines on us all!
Year 4
Now in the second week of the summer term we are getting in shape for an even more action packed agenda of activities and topics for our Year 4 learners.
This term we aim to kindle the children’s ability to learn at a deeper level by focusing on a theme that traverses through many of the subject areas. The children will be encouraged to elevate their thinking skills by analysing and synthesising their knowledge base and being creative in their approach to learning. To do this the main focus of study this half term will centre on ‘Rainforests’ which really does capture the children’s imagination and provides our Year 4’s with the opportunity to immerse themselves thoroughly in a topic through related subject areas.
In English the children have been writing an internal monologue based around the variety of animals in the rainforests. They imagined what life would be like living as a rainforest animal and the conversations they would have with each other. The children were very creative inventing some fascinating conversations – many of which contained food references, e.g. what they would like to eat or what steps they would take to avoid being eaten!
The animal theme also juxtaposed with our Science lesson where the children learnt how animals have adapted to living in their surroundings. The children were fascinated to discover a type of toad that can freeze and stop breathing to survive the winter, while meerkats have black around their eyes to reduce the glare of the sun.
In Topic, the children furthered their understanding of life in the rainforest environment by writing questions they would like to find out about over the course of the half term. In just over a week the children have demonstrated higher level thinking skills and are set to delve more deeply into a subject they clearly find stimulating.
How many types of leaves are there?
How many animals have been discovered in the rainforests?
Do people get lost in rainforests?
The children have also been using computers to design a travel brochure informing people all about the Daintree Rainforest, (the setting of our new English book). Children took to the role of travel agent with gusto and created beautifully presented texts; enough to tempt many tourists to visit the wonders of the rainforest.
In Art we used oil pastels to focus on rainforest animals particularly the eyes. Pastels enabled the children to use an array of intense colours commonly found in the vibrancy of rainforest animals to really appreciate the way animals have adapted their appearance to their environment.
Year 3
River deep, mountain high!
This week in Topic, Year 3 have continued their journey through Europe to discover the different mountain ranges and rivers that run across the continent. We used atlases and tables to locate the sources of rivers and identify the highest peaks.
Speaking of journeys, we started our new book Journey with its wordless pages and beautiful illustrations, and we used this to inspire some diary entry and letter writing. We also revisited using speech marks.
In Maths this week, we finished off our unit on measuring length by looking at solving problems involving length, using a bar model to help us. Now, we are back on fractions and this week we looked at equivalent fractions.
In Science, we extended our learning about pollination to explore the entire life cycle of flowering plants: germination, growing and flowering, pollination, fertilisation and seed dispersal. The children used roleplay to demonstrate the stages in the life cycle and then created diagrams to represent it.
Then in Computing, the children worked in pairs to create their own slideshows to depict the 5 steps. Finishing off the week with our first Rossall Rotation of the term – golf! Great fun! Well done for an awesome week, Year 3.
Year 2
The first full week of the Summer Term was certainly cram packed with so many activities, clubs and learning too!
We started our new book in our Language lessons ‘The Last Wolf’ and have been thinking carefully about what the word ‘last’ is implying. Some of the class were slightly worried that it meant wolves were becoming extinct but not all of us were convinced by this theory. We have also met our main character ‘Red’ who is a brave, independent girl who looks like she would be rather good at catching wolves. We are looking forward to reading the rest of the book to see how the story develops.
In Science this week, we have started to investigate the question ‘Do plants need soil to grow?’ We have planted some seeds but not the normal way; we have used paper towels and sandwich bags and are eager to see if our seeds begin to sprout and what they are going to grow into.
Year 1
In Year 1, we have been learning about weight in Maths. We have enjoyed using practical apparatus to estimate and measure the weight of different objects. We have looked at different objects and compared and ordered them by their weight.
In Science, we have been thinking about what a plant needs to grow. We have planted our own beans to make observations over the next few weeks. We will be thinking about how we can look after our beans and help them to grow. We have also thought about, and will be investigating, what will happen to our beans if they don’t have all the things that they need to help them grow. We have been super scientists and made some excellent predictions.
This was also our first week in the forest for Rossall Rotation. During our session we linked it with our Science work to look at leaves from the trees and plants, and tried to identify what type of tree or plant they were from by observing the shapes and colours of the leaves.
We have also started our new class book ‘Goldilocks and just the one bear’. We have linked our ideas about the book to what we already know about the traditional tale of Goldilocks and the three bears. We have discovered that Little Bear is lost in the city. We have predicted how he has got there, where the other bears, and Goldilocks, could be and talked about what might happen to him in the big, noisy city.
Reception
One night, when it was dark, Miss Finney thought she saw something in our playground. It was big, brown, and hairy. It had four legs, a tail, and a big, wet nose, and it was rummaging through our bins…
Straightaway the children started to guess what it may be? Was it a bear? Was it a dog? Was it a racoon? Was it a dinosaur? The children were very excited and quickly wanted to make posters describing the animal they thought it may be.
We then came in from playtime and found some objects on the carpet, a bear, a scarf, a woolly hat, a hair bow, wellies and a frisbee… whose were these objects? We looked around the classroom for other clues and found a new storybook. The children quickly noticed the objects we found in the classroom were shown in the illustrations on the front cover of the book. After reading the first couple of pages, I had to stop as the children screamed ‘we know what was rummaging in the bin’…
I think I now have a class of budding detectives. What mysteries will they solve next?
Nursery
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
Dr Suess
We’ve had a week full of book based fun in nursery! Miss Heatley read ‘That’s Not My Bunny’ to the babies and then surprised the Sanderlings children with some special visitors. Gizmo the guinea pig and Phoenix the rabbit came for a little play with the children, the staff modelled how to hold the animals and how to be gentle. It was lovely to see the babies watching the animals so intently and they really enjoyed stroking and holding the animals too.
In Sandpipers, Mrs Gaynor has taken the children ‘down in the jungle’ on an adventure! The children listened to the story, then joined in singing ‘walking through the jungle’ and finished with the ‘animal boogie’. Our Sandpipers children love music and movement, as part of their story time. What a fantastic way to develop so many key skills such as; listening, understanding, gross motor movements, rhythm, confidence and so much more.
The Preschool children have continued their exploration of the traditional tale ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ by making their own beanstalk to use as a height chart. We heard lots of mathematical and comparative language such as “I am taller” and “Mrs Farrell is taller than Miss Collins.” Preschool also had their class photo this week and all did so well showing the photographer their best smiles.
Award Winners
Year 6
6R
Aaliyah- Kind and Caring to Visitors to Rossall.
Alicia- Outstanding Contribution to Topic Work.
6S
Toni- An Excellent Start at Rossall.
Isabelle- Outstanding Ideas and Contribution to Our Exhibition.
Year 5
Jacob and Hugo for an excellent start to the Summer Term
Year 4
In 4R our award winners are Mia for excellent creativity in Art and Rhiannon for excellent creativity in English.
Year 3
The Year 3 certificates go to Oleg and Tommy for making such a wonderful start to their Rossall lives and for settling in so beautifully.
Year 2
Anthony – for super progress and confidence in Swimming
Matilda – for displaying a super learning attitude this week
Year 1
This week’s awards are awarded to Rupert for excellent listening and team spirit during the football tournament, and to Ayana for showing perseverance also during the football tournament at Poolfoot Farm.
Reception
This week’s certificates of achievement awards go Nektarios and Olivia.
Nektarios has enjoyed our work with patterns this week and has independently made several repeating patterns using a variety of resources.
Olivia has tried really hard to create a super wanted poster this week and wrote two sentences independently to describe the animal that had been seen rummaging through the bins.
