This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.
Dear All,
Last Saturday provided us with the opportunity to come together as a community, as we raised a glass or two in order to raise funds for our Rossall Ukrainian Hub at our Black Powder Gin event. My sincere thanks go to all involved, particularly Tony Dalnas and the BlackPowder Gin team who provided our venue and such incredible hospitality and generosity. Also to the businesses and people who donated auction and raffle items; thank you! Finally, to Lewis Raines for taking time out of his busy schedule to provide us with an unforgettable performance. The evening raised in excess of an incredible £10,000!
It has been another brilliantly busy week at Rossall Prep. From a sporting perspective, we hosted Kirkham in both rounders and cricket with some excellent games taking place. We also competed in a netball tournament at Stanley Park. Well done to all pupils involved.
Years 2 to 5 were wowed on Wednesday at a piano concert delivered by the impressive Rose McLachlan. Year 2 also visited Fleetwood Museum to support their Topic work. From the looks of this photo, they were clearly born in the wrong era!
We are all looking forward to our whole of Prep School photo that takes place on Monday. An email about this has been circulated by Ms Lochner earlier today.
Finally, I am so pleased to work at a School where staff do not take themselves too seriously. No better example of this will be demonstrated on Saturday evening; a staff Spice Girls tribute group has been added to the roster that also includes Backstreet Boys (Mr Quartermain, Mr Newson, Mr Dobson, Mr Crombie and myself), as we join the students to perform at Rossall’s Got Talent. If you haven’t already got a ticket, please do join us for what promises to be an ‘interesting’ evening.
Have a lovely weekend,
Mr M Turner
Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery
Rossall U11 v Kirkham U11 Rounders
This week we saw Rossall Prep host two rounders matches against Kirkham. Rossall Reds put on a fine performance both in the field and batting winning the match by 41/2 rounders. What a fantastic result girls, but more importantly what great team spirit there was in the team too!
Rossall Whites also put on a fine display, but on this occasion Rossall were just pipped to the post with the result, however outstanding progress was made during the match.
Well done girls for being such good sports and brilliant hosts to our visitors!
U11 Cricketers Shine in the Sun!
Congratulations to the Rossall U11 and U10 cricketers for an outstanding display of batting, bowling and hosting as we welcomed Kirkham for an afternoon of pairs cricket.
The Rossall Rhinos bowled superbly, taking four wickets and limiting Kirkham to a total of 37-4. In response Rossall batted with attacking flair, reaching an impressive winning total of 60 runs!
Well done to all the players for a fantastic performance.
Year 6
6R have really enjoyed having Miss Hoban in class over the last couple of weeks and appreciated all her hard work and enthusiasm, especially in preparation for the chapel service this week. The class have learnt a great deal about the UN and delivered the information to the rest of the Preparatory School with real confidence and aplomb. Both classes have been working hard developing their display boards for the Exhibition, the research and artwork that has gone into these is splendid, the collaborative approach of the children has impressed Mr Condon and Mr Rund. In Science we have been continuing to learn about electricity and 6S had a great time with Mrs Cohen creating circuits and learning about Van de Graaf generators, this was a great opportunity not only to learn, but to continue the transition process in preparation for Year 7. 6R await their visit next week with excitement and anticipation!
Year 5
Year 5 have once again enjoyed a fantastic week learning about ‘Sustainability’ and what they can do to change the planet. Suggestions included getting rid of single use plastic, utilising biomass energy, and reducing plastic pollution.
In English, the children have thoroughly enjoyed writing descriptions of pictures from their book, ‘The Paperbag Prince’.
Finally in Science, the children have loved researching gestation periods of mammals and concentrating on the human life cycle. As part of their learning into how we change throughout our lives, they had a good laugh at photographs of Mr Turner as a child in Primary School. That was until they realised they had to bring in pictures of themselves as babies in order to play the guess the baby game!
Year 4
As the weather warms and the children enjoy more outside activities, it’s not surprising that our thoughts turn to the environment. This week in our English lessons the children had the opportunity to channel their inner David Attenborough. After watching extracts from wildlife documentaries our budding presenters were given the task of rewriting the voiceover to create even more suspense and drama about the wildlife events. Once written, the children had the challenge of performing their piece in real time, alongside the wildlife clip. It’s safe to say that even Sir David Attenborough would have found himself with stiff competition to rival the energy and enthusiasm that went into each of the children’s performances.
Our Maths lessons have led to the introduction of our latest topic – Money. This involved the creation of our very own Year 4 Ross Shop where many high-end items could be purchased including the hugely popular glue stick! Children were given a sum of ‘money’ to spend on a variety of items in the Year 4 Ross Shop and were fascinated to learn that the dodecagonal £1 coin hasn’t always looked the way it does, leading to a lively discussion about how ‘old’ its predecessor must have been!
In Art the children have been looking closely at the faces of rainforest animals. With a focus on colour, the children looked at a range of animal photos and were surprised to find colours they did not expect to see. Blue and navy were seen on a gorilla, and even purple on a leopard. Having looked closely at the intricate furry details, the children then began to use oil pastels to create a snapshot of their chosen animal, particularly the eyes. The end product has been a major success and I look forward to seeing their work displayed prominently on our walls.
Year 3
This week, Year 3 have really been challenging themselves with their writing. We are enthralled with our book Journey which is inspiring our writing – this week with a focus on dialogue, and describing atmosphere. We have been using some challenging vocabulary – and linking our ideas with our other class reader Tilly Mint Tales.
In Maths it was our final week on fractions – the class are certainly fractions experts now! We looked at addition and subtraction of fractions, where we discovered that when you add/subtract fractions with the same denominator, the denominator does not change! We also did some problem solving, looking at how we can use bar model to help us with fractions problems.
For our Science unit about plants, we have been working as botanists – the type of scientist who studies plants. This week we learnt about a famous botanist called Jane Colden, who was famous for her detailed observational drawings of plants. We got out our magnifying lenses to observe some plants closely, and draw them in a detailed way just like Jane Colden.
In Topic, we are continuing our travels around Europe. This week we learnt about the climate in different parts of Europe. We planned out what we would need to pack if we were going to those countries in winter or summer!
We also finished off our Art project exploring Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers painting. This was a great chance for the class to practice painting techniques – even though it got a little messy! Finishing off the week with our second Rossall Rotation in golf – top stuff!
Year 2
We have had such an exciting week of learning!
Yesterday our trip to Fleetwood Museum was super fun. We learned all about what a holiday was like in a Victorian Boarding House and how steam train engines worked.
We loved having our photo taken in the style of a Victorian and all found it funny that we weren’t allowed to smile!
Our highlight of the trip was watching the Punch and Judy show – we enjoyed it so much that we created our own shows once we got back to school!
In Maths, we have started to learn about the properties of 2D shapes; we have recapped names of shapes, learned how to accurately draw shapes and recapped the properties of shapes.
Year 1
This week we have started to learn about multiplication and learning to count in groups. We have enjoyed playing times-table bingo and singing rhymes to help us remember.
In Language, we have been using adjectives to describe the setting inside Snooty Towers, where Little Bear has gone to escape all of the racket from outside in the city. We have also used speech bubbles, with exclamation marks and question marks, to think about what Little Bear might say when he tries to find some porridge, a nice comfy chair and a bed to sleep in.
In Science, we have continued to learn about different plants and how some seeds travel. Each day we have been surprised to see that our beanstalks have grown a little bit taller, and grown more leaves. The tallest beanstalk at the moment is Ayana’s, measuring a whole 19cm tall! .
In Topic, we have continued to learn about the United Kingdom and the Union Jack. We have also learnt about the tallest mountain in each country and the largest lakes. We have started to create our own mini fact books all about the UK
Reception
“One morning, Lily saw something wonderful in her garden. It was big, brown and hairy. It had four legs, a tail and a big wet nose, and Lily had always wanted one …”
The children have since discovered that what Lily saw in her garden was a bear! Lily decides to take her bear home for tea. The children discussed what they thought the bear would like to eat and how we could find out? We decided to watch a video about black bears.
The children then designed their own meal that they would like to share with the bear. They labelled their design and focused on their spelling and previously taught digraphs and trigraphs. The children then had to explain their meal design to an adult. There was also an opportunity to spend more time finding out about bears and to use this information to inspire writing. The children enjoyed looking in the library for books about bears (both fiction and non-fiction) and finding images in the environment. The iPads were set up with links to short videos about bears and the children used the mud kitchen/home corner to prepare a meal for the bear. The children also decided they should tidy up the mess the bear had made when rummaging through the bins to find something to eat. We filled nearly two bin bags full of rubbish!
If you have any books or other resources that would help the children with their research on bears, we would love your child to bring them in and then share them with their friends.
Nursery
“Every child is a different kind of flower, and altogether make this world a beautiful garden”
Anonymous
Another week has flown by in Nursery and what a wonderful week it has been! All of our rooms have been taking part in exciting activities with lots of focus on our wellbeing as well as sensory exploration and for our older children there has been a big focus on getting ‘ready for school’. We have had lots of fun outdoors now the weather has started to brighten up and the first signs of summer are finally here!
Sanderlings
The Sanderlings have been enjoying immersing themselves in the tuff tray with lots of fruits, this activity is not only sensory but encourages the children to use word patterns and speech such as “splash” and “splosh”. The babies have also explored shaving foam with their hands, used their senses such as smell and touch; our teachers have encouraged us to use our voices whilst exploring texture and talk about what we can feel. After all those calm activities we have also enjoyed running up and down the field to practice and develop our physical development milestones, whilst on the field we were looking at the different birds and trying to copy the sounds they were making.
Sandpipers
The Sandpipers teamed up with The Sparrows for Wellbeing Wednesday, the children all took a walk to the beach with Miss Simms and Miss Southern. Whilst on the beach the children made worry stones and talked about their feelings. The Sandpipers have also been on a walk flower hunting, taking in our picturesque scenery and observing the beautiful flowers around us. Finally, the children have created their own self portraits; looking at what makes us unique with the help of a mirror. We all have different eyes and hair colour and that is something that is very special to us.
Sparrows
The Sparrows have been furthering their school readiness by exploring numbers and shapes, they have talked about the attributes that make shapes different such as the number of sides and connecting this to our number recognition. The children have been using magnifying glasses to hone in on their super detective skills to locate their names with Miss Emsley.
Awards
Year 6
This week’s certificates go to:
Aran – Outstanding approach to his classwork
Henry – Outstanding effort and enthusiasm in all activities
Josh- Outstanding effort in class
Eyad – Outstanding Leadership qualities
Year 5
The awards this week go to Joey for amazing knowledge in Topic and to Kieran for fabulous effort in Spanish.
Year 4
In Year 4 our awards go to: Grace and Huxley for an excellent performance in English and Drama, Nick for outstanding effort in Music and to Jude for excellent Prep.
Year 3
This week’s certificates go to Alfie for his fantastic progress in reading and to Dolly for independent learning in Maths. Year 3 also saw a Headmaster’s Award being given to Ben, for outstanding demonstrations of leadership and encouragement of his peers.
Year 2
This week’s certificates go to Annaiya for great effort in her reading and phonics and Hope for super learning in Maths this week.
Year 1
This week’s awards go to Harry for amazing effort and progress with his handwriting, and Darius for excellent prep and for always taking his learning to the next level. Well done!
Reception
This week’s certificates of achievement awards go to Dylan and Anand.
Dylan has demonstrated a good understanding of ‘counting on’ in Maths activities this week.
Anand has been a very kind and helpful member of the class, often doing tasks without being asked.
