This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.
Message from the Preparatory School Headmaster
Dear Parents,
What a week and what a half term we have all enjoyed across the Preparatory School! Children have been busily finishing off their Topics for the six week period and I know that some have been begging to continue with subjects that have really grabbed their attention and imagination.
The past 10 days has been a wonderful time for sport at Rossall, particularly with the Senior teams reaching finals in national competitions. However, every great oak tree starts with a single acorn and that acorn was well and truly planted and watered this week in the Prep School. The girls came back from the Sedbergh School Netball tournament with silver medals against some stiff opposition, to add to their gold medals in the plate for hockey a week earlier. Not to be outdone, the boys competed in the AJIS Football competition at Cheadle Hulme, bringing back the cup and the gold medals. Add to that the latest round of glow dodgeball (a third place finish for the whole of Wyre & Fylde) and a wonderful personal best for Freddie at the Lancashire County Swimming Championships; what a tremendous week for Prep sport that bodes so well for the future!
We have also been proud to stand with 34 local schools and nurseries to support Neuroblastoma and Isabelle Grundy in holding a whole-school non uniform day today to raise money for her. This will be added to the incredible amount of nearly £500 that was raised last week in our bring and buy toy sale and will be shared between supporting Isabelle and the NSPCC. Thank you to everyone who supported and was involved with these worthy charitable causes.
Have a well-deserved and relaxing half term.
Mr M Turner
Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery
Rossall U11 Footballers Crowned Champions in the AJIS Cup!
Congratulations to the Rossall U11 Football Team for winning the AJIS Cup this week at Cheadle Hulme.
An early departure from Rossall to ensure the team were in Manchester for the start of this prestigious tournament did not affect the performance of this talented team, and they started superbly with a 5-0 victory against Westholme and a 2-1 win versus St Bede’s (Manchester) to sail through to the quarter finals.
The Rhinos then defeated AKS 2-0 and Oldham Hulme 2-1 to advance to the final, where they encountered a highly rated Newcastle-Under-Lyme team.
With a chance of silverware and the opportunity of being crowned champions, the Rossall side gave everything. Outstanding team play led to an early lead, and then Rossall withstood wave after wave of Newcastle pressure to clinch a nail-biting victory and become worthy winners of the tournament.
The team were thrilled with the trophy, medals and title, but most of all the Mcflurries they had for winning the tournament!
Well done, Rossall!
Rossall goes “Nuts for Netball” at Sedbergh Netball Tournament!
Rossall took two teams to Sedbergh on Wednesday for a fantastic afternoon of netball. Both teams played outstanding netball, both in attack and defence. The team spirit was second to none, and the girls grew from strength to strength.
Rossall Reds collected the Silver medals in the Cup Competition after winning six games, losing only to the overall winners…Sedbergh. Thank you to Sedbergh for hosting this tournament and giving so many children the opportunity to play competitive netball. Well done to all the girls!
Year 6
After our sprint through the first five weeks of term, we are now starting to feel the lactic acid seep into our legs, but this is not slowing us down one bit and we are continuing to work and play hard in the year 6 classrooms.
Last Friday saw a fabulous fun day with a real purpose, Number day was brilliant; the children took part in Battleships, Beetle Drives, Orienteering and a Treasure Hunt.
On Tuesday we had Internet Safety Day, this involved a great deal of work and discussion about appropriate behaviour and how to keep safe online.
As we reach the February break we come to the end of our work on The Selfish Giant and Percentages, we have been most impressed with the work the children have completed.
Our final Beach School Rossall Rotation saw us get really practical with our new Mathematics topic on measurement. We are already perimeter and area specialists, so if you’re doing any decorating over half term you have some readymade assistants.
Year 5
Happy Half Term Year 5, you most certainly deserve a rest!
What a busy and productive half term we have had! From fixtures including football, netball, hockey and dodgeball in sport to multiplication and division in Mathematics, to expanded noun phrases, relative clauses and speech in English. We really have never stopped!
I am incredibly proud of the effort and commitment that the children show each and every day. They arrive in school eager, ready to learn and to give their best in whatever activities we are doing. They truly are an inspiration and I feel privileged to help them during their journey through Rossall.
This half Term marks the mid point of their time in Year 5 and when I look back to September, I see what a long way as a team we have come. The children relish a discussion, whether it is about Arthur and his incredible adventures, Henry V111 and his wives or the meaning of the word ‘hero’. Year 5 can now debate in a respectful and calm manner, a skill some adults find impossible and one they initially struggled with. Learning to listen to each other is a vital skill, you never know what you might learn! I certainly am often amazed by the children’s ideas, knowledge and views on a wide range of topics.
Have a wonderful holiday, make sure you get lots of rest and come back ready for another action packed half term!
Year 4
Year 4 reporting live!
The children have been extremely busy finishing off their ‘Escape to Pompeii’ unit, and have worked hard creating news reports on the infamous disaster. Working in groups, they have researched the event, written scripts and presented a TV news report to the rest of the class. They were informative, professional and very entertaining!
To conclude a great unit, we have written some acrostic poems based on volcanoes. The children watched some fascinating videos and David Attenborough clips to give them ideas for their poems. A discussion followed about the purpose of poetry and how we can make our poems as exciting as possible. The children ‘erupted’ with some fabulous vocabulary and have produced some very impressive poems.
In Maths this week we have focused on multiplication and the class have worked hard on their times tables as they quickly realised multiplying becomes a lot quicker if we know our tables well! So practise, practise, practise!
Science has taken us to the water cycle and we addressed the question: ‘How old is water?’ and we were amazed to discover that we are drinking the same water as the dinosaurs did! The children have created their own water cycles and labelled them with the correct scientific processes and are now all masters in anything water related!
From both Miss Thomas and myself, we wish you all a very relaxing half term break and look forward top seeing you all back with renewed vigour!
Year 3
We have had a whirlwind final week of the half-term with the wonderful Ms Santamera, and then Mrs Payne was very happy to be back in school at the end of the week! We have been wrapping up our units this week – we have really relished learning about the Stone Age and about rocks. We finished writing our own Stone Age stories inspired by Stone Age Boy – the children loved being creative and original in their writing, showing off everything they have learned this term such as speech marks, suffixes and new tenses! In Maths, we have finished learning about money and have now moved on to statistics, all about collecting data. The children enjoyed collecting data and creating their own pictograms! To top off our Science unit on rocks, we have created our own Rock Fact Files to show off our geological knowledge. We have finished our Stone Age topic by creating our own quizzes to test our family and friends on their prehistoric knowledge. As it was Internet Safety Day on Tuesday, we all enjoyed creating our own bright eye-catching posters sharing internet safety tips. Finally, we enjoyed our final Forest Schools session for Rossall Rotation making wind chimes. Well done for a fantastic half-term Year 3, now enjoy a fun and restful break!
Year 2
I am so proud of everything Year 2 have achieved this half term. The progress they have all made in their learning is superb and they are always bubbling with enthusiasm to learn more.
The final week of our ‘Turrets and Tiaras’ topic saw the children finishing off their castle tiles and deciding collaboratively where to build the next castle for William, the Duke of Normandy. The children used atlases to label the capital cities of the United Kingdom and chose a location on their map to build a castle.
On Tuesday, it was Internet Safety Day and after a Pre-Prep Assembly on the topic, the children spent the day reflecting on how to be safe online.
In our writing lessons, we finally finished ‘The Dragon Machine’ and were all happy to find out that George ends the story not feeling ‘ignored, overlooked and unseen’. We wrote our own fantasy story based on the plot of the ‘Dragon Machine ’and used exclamation sentences, noun phrases, and past tense to create amazing stories.
In Science, we compared the properties of natural and man-made materials. We went on a hunt to find different natural and man-made materials. This led into a great class discussion about the objects we had found. We discussed and compared the object’s properties and the differences between natural and man-made materials. Finally, we created our own repeating pattern paintings using the objects. It was super messy but lots of fun!
I hope you all have a restful half term.
Year 1
It is hard to believe that we are at the end of half term, and halfway through our school year. We have all worked so hard this term and have been trying to become more independent both in our work and with our organisation.
We have finished our class book and were really happy that Oscar and Timothy, the mammoth, found his baby brother, Teddy, and returned him safe and sound before the magic hour was over. We have written our own stories about Oscar’s return to the museum the following night. We have tried hard to include all of the things we have been learning in our language lessons this half term.
In Topic, we have also imagined that we have spent a day in the Ice Age learning about how our ancestors would have lived and survived during this time. We found out about the animals they may have hunted, how they made clothing, tools and weapons, and discovered fire.
We have also established our own art gallery and used our drawing skills to create a self portrait. We have learnt about colour mixing to change shades, and used these techniques to paint our self-portraits and try to closely match our own skin tone, hair and eye colour.
In Maths, we have been learning about subtraction. We have been learning about different methods that we can use to subtract, and what apparatus we can use to help us.
We also had our last visit of the term to the farm as part of Rossall Rotation. Thank you to Mr Condon and Miss Jones for taking us to visit the farm. The children wanted to share some of their thoughts.
“You get to see nice, cute animals”
“There is a goat called Romeo who is really leapy”
“We got to make bird feeders”
After the holidays we will be doing beach school as our Rossall Rotation, so remember your wellies!
Reception
Traditional tales like The Gingerbread Man, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks play an important part in early literacy. A traditional tale is a story that has been told and re-told for many years, and consequently, becomes a story that almost everyone knows. Traditional tales are also referred to as fairy stories or fairy tales.
Traditional tales present many learning opportunities for our EYFS children and can be used to help develop reading comprehension and early writing skills. Traditional stories and fairy tales are an amazing way to spark children’s imagination and hook them into their learning!
This term, we have created a lovely small world area complete with three little pig puppets and three houses, turned our role play area into Little Red Riding Hood’s Grandma’s cottage and even learnt how to make real tea for Grandma, encouraged the children to take on a role in their play outdoors and even retold traditional tales with story maps. We have made real Gingerbread Men and porridge for The Three Bears and of course, we have read countless versions of various Traditional Tales. The puppets have definitely been a favourite resource, used to retell stories to friends and even to create some new versions of our most popular Traditional Tales.
You can help your child at home by reading traditional stories with them and encouraging them to talk about what they have read. Ask them plenty of questions about the characters to help develop their reading comprehension. All of this exploration of characters’ feelings helps children to think more deeply about the characters that they write about, so can really help them with their writing as well as their reading comprehension.
Nursery
The most special part of nursery life is the friendships made along the way…
This week has been all about adventures with friends, from Preschool’s expedition to the woodland hunting for worms, making magic wands, climbing trees and giggling with one another and generally having lots of fun.
Sandpipers have been working together to make smoothies, create playdough and practice their turn taking skills. It’s lovely to see the children’s social skills develop as their confidence grows.
Sanderlings have been getting creative with lots and lots of mess, making their valentines crafts and exploring using tools along the way.
Award Winners
Year 6
This week our award go to:
Lizzie, Maya, Isabelle; Outstanding attitude towards their education.
Alicia, being a caring and considerate friend
Year 5
The year 5 awards this week go to Finley for fabulous work in all areas of the curriculum and Rio for excellent effort in English
Year 4
Our awards this week go to:
Thomas in 4R for his unconditional help this week!
Amelia in 4S for her dedication and commitment to her handwriting!
Year 3
This week’s certificates in Y3 go to Lara for her amazing work with her home learning and to Ethan for being an inquisitive learner!
Year 2
Congratulations to our award winners this week: Emma – for super creative writing and Zach – for great determination in his Maths learning.
Year 1
This weeks awards are awarded to Fox for excellent progress with his handwriting, and Darius for always following the rules and being a good role model. Well done!
Reception
This weeks certificates of achievement awards go to Nektarios and Jaxon.
Jaxon is an active participant in all class discussions and is trying very hard to wait patiently for his turn.
Nektarios has confidently grasped the use of new apparatus introduced in Maths this term, such as a tens frame, a part-whole model and a numberline.
