This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.
Dear Parents
What a wonderful week it has been with a fantastic science show from BAE systems, a successful AJIS athletics meeting, and a brilliant performance from our girls in the U-11 girls’ cricket competition. On top of all of the ‘extras’, our pupils have been preparing for next week’s Sports Day, an event that we are all praying will be blessed with good weather! Final details of the afternoon event will be issued on Monday.
Also next week, we look forward to U9 athletics and U11 Mixed Rounders, not to mention Rossall’s Got Talent on Saturday and the Colour Run on Sunday; it is fair to say it is a rather busy week ahead!
Finally, our Ocean Day went off with a bang today, as the children dressed in blue to support the RNLI and the Marine Conservation Society. Activities included visiting the beach, collecting litter, completing quizzes and watching an assembly created by the School Council. The edible ocean based art designs were truly amazing and looked too good to eat! I also know that the Year 6 children loved designing and making obstacle courses and games for Pre-Prep to play when they visited later in the day.
Mr M Turner
Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery
Medals Galore at the AJIS Athletics!
The Prep School Athletics squad hit the ground running on Tuesday after the half term break. With an early start, we set off to Victoria Park Athletics Arena in Warrington. There were 25 teams from across the North West competing in this annual AJIS competition, and the standard was very high. This only inspired the Rossall athletes and team morale was excellent. There were many outstanding performances both in track and field. To top off a fantastic day, we were utterly delighted when Amelia and Rocco received their individual Bronze medals in the 80 metres sprint events. Well done to all the athletes that took part. The McFlurries to celebrate went down a treat too!
World Ocean Day
This week the Prep School celebrated World Ocean Day. This year’s theme is ‘What makes a good blue human?’, based on three concepts: Marine identity (who we are in relation to the ocean), Marine citizenship (what we are doing in relation to the ocean) and place attachment (how we are connecting with the ocean).
At Rossall Prep School we use the beach regularly as part of our Beach School activities. During our sessions children are encouraged to think about what we can do to help protect the ocean, and our local beach, to help us become future ocean advocates.
During Ocean Day, some of the activities we took part in included visiting the beach, collecting litter, completing quizzes and watching an assembly created by the School Council.
We also announced the winners of our Ocean Day edible art competition. The standard of the entries were truly amazing and it was a very difficult decision for our School Council to make. Well done to everybody who entered.
The winners are
Pre-Prep – Lexi – Mermaid
Year 3/4 – Emma – Sweet Beach Coast
Year 5/6 – Sophie F
Year 6
In English this week, we have continued our exploration of Shakespeare, focusing on the famous Sonnet 18 – “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” We have identified the rules of a sonnet and embarked on the challenging task of writing our own, with a special focus on Rossall Prep School. Writing a Shakespearean sonnet is no mean feat, requiring not only a specific rhyming pattern but also ten syllables per line. Working collaboratively, we first completed a shared write in groups – an achievement we all admitted came from teamwork and would have been next to impossible alone! After that, we then crafted sonnets in smaller groups.. We eagerly anticipate sharing some of these creative works with you during our Leavers’ Assembly. As Shakespeare might say, “All’s well that ends well!”
In Maths, our journey through the Algebra unit has continued with great success. We have mastered the art of finding the value of unknowns in equations and have progressed to determining possible values when two unknowns are involved. This unit has been both challenging and rewarding, and Mrs. Kenmare and I (Mrs. Scott) are immensely proud of the children’s perseverance and hard work.
Afternoons have been dedicated primarily to preparations for the Year 6 Exhibition. We have been busy filling boards with information about chosen topics, incorporating work from lessons, and adding fun facts. Additionally, we have been developing games to attract visitors to stalls.
As the end of the year approaches, our calendars are rapidly filling up with exciting events. We have begun practicing for our Leavers’ Assembly and singing for Prize Day. With further upcoming events such as the residential trip and Sports Day, it’s shaping up to be a busy yet rewarding conclusion to the school year!
Year 5
Recharged and ready for the final half term of the year, we have returned knowing that in 4 weeks time we will be concluding our Year 5 journey. With this in mind, more so than ever, we are going to make sure we enjoy every moment of the 20 school days to go. There are certainly going to be lots of moments, as we look forward to Sports Day, House Challenge Day, Beach Party, Prize Day, and of course our Residential trip to the Lakes District in only one and a half week’s time!
However, all the other days are just as memorable and this week has been full of varied learning opportunities. We have begun our exploration of Africa, looking at this amazing continent of 54 countries and investigating the incredible landscape and sheer size of this land. Our Science investigation on Lifecycles has continued; we have reflected on our findings from our recent pond dip, and become specialists on the pond habitat.
Our final Rotation has taken us to the Rossall Farm, where we enjoyed tending to the new arrivals, as well as reconnecting with Romeo, Trumpet and Goatee. We also enjoyed a spot of gardening and planting at the front of Prep School to help add a touch of colour for Open Day. Well done to Year 5 for making all these experience so special.
Year 4
We’ve had an incredible first week back as we kick off the final term, which is just four and a half short weeks. Here is what we have been up to:
We continued our journey with our English book ‘Blue John’ by diving into an analysis and annotation of an explanation text titled ‘How are Stalactites and Stalagmites Formed?’. We highlighted the key features of this type of text to help them understand its structure and purpose. This activity has greatly enhanced our comprehension and analytical skills.
This week, we were thrilled to have a visit from The Xtra Factor Science show, which took us on an inspiring journey to meet six amazing women in STEM. Despite their remarkable achievements, these engineers, inventors, and volcanologists are mostly unheard of. We learned about their groundbreaking work and the modern-day equivalents they inspired. The show featured fascinating experiments involving light, gravity, and volcanoes, along with musical moments and crazy paper chains that captivated our imaginations.
With Sports Day fast approaching, we dedicated our Games session this week to practising the various events. We eagerly participated in sprints, relays, jumping, the 250m run, and the throwing event. Our enthusiasm and effort were fantastic, and it was great to see all the children supporting each other and working hard.
Today, we celebrated Ocean Day with a trip to the beach. We participated in a beach clean-up, learning about the importance of taking care of our oceans. We also engaged in a creative art project, making different sea creatures to highlight the beauty and diversity of marine life.
As we look ahead to the remaining weeks of this term, I want to express how excited we are for all the learning and activities yet to come.
Year 3
It’s been a lovely week in Year 3. In our English we have continued reading Zeraffa Giraffa and following Zeraffa and Atir’s journey from Egypt to Paris. We used this to inspire our writing of a diary entry using present perfect and progressive tenses. We also wrote captions for pictures using time conjunctions as sentence starters. The children are really enjoying the book and making connections to our topic!
In our topic lessons this week exploring ancient Egypt we focussed on the River Nile. The children researched information about this famous river and why it was so important to the Ancient Egyptians.
Our Art this week was also connected to Egypt and we designed and created our own pharaoh necklaces. Very fetching!
In Science this week we learnt about light and dark. We did an investigation with objects in feely bags which we could not see. This demonstrated to us that we need light to be able to see and that when there is total darkness we cannot see at all. Of course we also enjoyed the Science show from BAE which was great to make connections to our learning in the classroom and learn about more famous scientists.
Maths this week has been all about shapes. We learnt about parallel, perpendicular, horizontal and vertical lines. We then applied this to our learning about 2D and 3D shapes. It was wonderful to make a connection between the pyramids in Maths and in Ancient Egypt!
We loved our Rossall Rotation this week, in the kitchen cooking up a storm! We made couscous salads which not only practised our cutting skills but were also delicious and healthy.
Finishing of the week with Ocean Day was extra special and we loved going to the beach to do litter picking and beach art, celebrating all things marine.
Well done for a wonderful week Year 3!
Year 2
We have had a lovely first week back. It was amazing to hear the children come in excitedly telling each other about their half term breaks. The children have been so focussed this week and have come back to school, raring to go for the final half term in Year 2. What a way to end the week with Ocean Day. The students looked fantastic in blue and enjoyed our trip to the beach to learn about how we can protect our oceans. Not forgetting the fantastic edible art pieces, we had lots of entries from Year 2, thank you for all of your help at home with this.
This week in English we have been concentrating on our comprehension skills. We have read lots of interesting stories from knights and dragons uniting to become friends, to bears becoming babysitters. The students have also read about how plastic is contaminating our oceans in preparation for Ocean day on Friday.
In Maths this week we started our unit on Time. The students came together to become a giant, human clock to help visualise where the minutes and hour hands go when telling the time to o’clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past.
In Science this week the students learned about the life cycle of a plant. They were experts at this as they had seen this first hand with their own plants that they grew last term. I am told they are all doing very well at home and the students are looking after them well. I can’t wait to see what they become and if any beans grow.
In Topic this week we started our Geography unit on Seas and Coasts. We used an atlas to locate the different continents and oceans in the world. The children knew a lot about different countries and the continents they were in, I was very impressed.
Well done Year 2 on a great first week back.
Year 1
Welcome back to the final term of this academic year. The children have come back to school ready to ‘Blast Off’ with our new space themed unit. On Thursday we took our first visit to the Astronomy Centre, where Dr Lister answered lots of our questions that we had prepared during our earlier Science lesson, including;
What is the most dangerous planet?
Why do planets spin?
Why do the stars shine?
Why can we not live in space?
What colour is the moon?
In Maths we started to learn about money. We looked at different coins and notes, talked about the value of the different denominations and used them to go shopping in our Year 1 shop. We thought the shop prices were very cheap!
In English we started our new class book ‘Toys in Space’ by Mini Grey. We made predictions about what we think has happened and will happen to the toys in the story. We talked about how the toys might feel when they have been left alone, outside in the garden…at night! We have also been learning about the prefix un- and how it changes the meaning of a word and using speech bubbles.
On Friday we celebrated World Ocean Day with some fun activities on the beach, and in the classroom, thinking about ‘What makes a good blue human?’ and how we can protect our blue spaces. We listened to the story ‘Somebody swallowed Stanley’ and then took part in a litter pick. We also had lots of fun playing in the sand.
Reception
World Oceans Day, on June 8th, is all about protecting the ocean. A healthy planet needs a healthy ocean, but our waters face huge risks from overfishing, climate change, and plastic pollution. This Friday every child across the Preparatory school took part in activities learning about the oceans and how to protect marine life.Did you know our oceans hold almost ALL the water on Earth and are responsible for most of the air (oxygen) that we breathe? These amazing underwater habitats are packed with incredible wildlife and play an important role in the wellbeing of our planet.Unfortunately, over 8 million metric tons of plastic enters the world’s oceans each year, which can affect marine life like dolphins, whales and fish. It gets there in a number of ways, including being blown into the sea from ships and beaches. At the beach, Reception read a story ‘Somebody Swallowed Stanley’ by Sarah Roberts. The story is about a plastic bag called Stanley and all the problems he creates in the ocean. All the children then did their part and helped to collect litter from the beach before it could enter our oceans.
The children have also learnt how they can help tackle this pollution by using less plastic and recycling it whenever they can – our marvellous marine life will be glad they did!
This week’s certificates of achievement go to Eliza and Pippa. Both children have worked so hard this week, persevering with challenges and asking for help to extend their learning. Well done!
Nursery
This week in Nursery we have focused on Literacy
This week the Sanderlings focus has been literacy, literacy is such a key part in a child’s language development. In the Sanderlings room the Sanderlings staff regularly read books to the children and talk to them about the world around them. In addition the children regularly engage in rhymes and songs during group time. These all help to develop communication and language as well as their literacy skills. In addition, the babies in the sanderlings room have been developing their fine motor skills by practising their mark making during sensory experiences. They particularly love shaving foam at the moment. This is a great sensory experience for the babies and it allows them to get messy too!
This week the children in the Sandpiper room have been introduced to the new book of the month ‘Billy’s Bucket’ by Kes Gray and Garry Parsons. The children have been doing lots of activities to support this book including crafts activities and making an ‘under the sea’ area within the room that included lots of different textures, things to explore and bubbles! In addition the children have been looking at different sea creatures including a variety of fish, seahorses, jellyfish, octopus and lots more. To build on the children’s interest in this book the staff in the Sandpiper room have purchased pet fish for the room to share with the children. Furthermore the children have visited the library each day, they have been engaged in lots of music time and they have explored the sounds of different instruments.
This week the children in the Pre-school have been engaged in activities related to the ‘Colour Monster’ book by Anna Lienas. This book has been chosen this week to build on the children’s understanding of feelings and emotions.The children have expressed their own feelings and talked about what makes them happy, sad, scared or excited. The children have also decorated their own colour monster using the same colours as the book to represent how they were feeling at that time. In addition the children have been working on their mark making skills both indoors with pens and pencils and outdoors with chalks. Furthermore the children are building on their phonics sounds during teacher time and they have been engaged in activities related to each sound.
Awards
Year 6
6S Millie and Caitlin for their creativity and enthusiasm when writing Shakespearian sonnets
6R Huxley for his excellent contribution to our Sonnet writing and
Ahill for his enthusiasm and leadership in the Exhibition preparations
Year 5
Olivia M- Outstanding creative writing and contribution in class
Benjamin-Outstanding creative writing and contribution in class
Year 4
Our certificate winners in Year 4 this week go to Marcel and Wyatt for their outstanding effort and progress in Maths.
Year 3
Our Year 3 certificates this week go to Rocco for wonderful perseverance across his learning, and to Junior for fantastic insights learning about shape in Maths.
Year 2
Theo- for having a positive attitude towards learning and making good choices.
Olivia- for coming to school everyday with a positive mind set and a ‘can do’ attitude
Year 1
This week’s awards go to Theo and Joshua, for fantastic independent work in Maths.
Reception
This week’s certificates of achievement go to Eliza and Pippa. Both children have worked so hard this week, persevering with challenges and asking for help to extend their learning. Well done!
