Reading Record Stars
Every Friday, your children bring their reading records with a completed activity to our Book Club sessions. This week, the children were asked to do a fact file all about a character from their book or the author.
I love getting the chance to see and hear about all the brilliant reading your children have done over the week.
A reminder of the reading record key info:
- Each week, the activity your child must complete is given on the homework sheet. More information on these activities are inside the record. If you are ever unsure which activity it is, please ask or choose a random one!
- The children need to bring their reading record in every Friday for Book Club where we discuss their books and develop their love of reading.
- The children’s grown-ups also need to sign and write a short comment about the lovely reading their child has been doing at home!
Any questions, please ask!
Help at home: continue to read daily with your child and sign their reading record to share this.
Science: conductors and insulators
Today, Year 4 were learning all about electricity in science. We spoke about…
conductors: a material that allows energy to flow through it
insulators: a material that does not allow energy to flow through it.
Your children worked in small groups to sort a variety of objects into conductors of electricity and insulators of electricity. They had some brilliant discussions while trying to reason why an item must be an insulator or conductor.
The plastic cup must be an insulator because we know the outside of a wire is plastic and that’s an insulator.
The metal objects are conductors because the inside of wires are metal and electric fences are made of metal.
What they found…
Conductors:
- coin
- key
- nail
- paperclip
- metal sharpener
Insulators:
- rubber band
- plastic cup
- newspaper
- mug
- glass
Then, we discussed why insulators are so important. They keep us safe and protect us from the electricity flowing through devices. Without insulators, we would get electric shocks when using electrical devices.
Help at home: walk around your kitchen and ask your child to identify different conductors and insulators of electricity. Ask them to explain how they know.
Moortown netballers
Well done to our Year 5/6 netballers who competed in the Bee Netball competition at Allerton High.
In each match, the team showed great teamwork and resilience. It’s great to see their netball skills progressing. Well done!
We’d also like to thank parents for helping with transport for this event.
Through our partnership with Leeds Rhinos, have a look at this special offer to see some more live netball this weekend.
Here are some local netball opportunities too.
Living & Learning: solving problems
This week in L&L, our statement was…
I can find solutions to different problems.
Before we try to solve a problem, we must recognise what emotions that situation is making us feel. Often, these emotions make things difficult for us because our brains are not very good at problem solving when our emotions are very high. Therefore, the first step of problem solving is trying to regulate our emotions.
Some of your children’s suggestions for regulating our emotions:
Take deep and slow breaths.
Listen to some relaxing music.
Do some colouring.
Go for a walk outside for some fresh air.
Talk to a trusted adult.
Write your feelings down.
Once our emotions are regulated, our mind is a little bit clearer and we are able to think of more appropriate and effective solutions to our problems.
Year 4 then became Agony Aunts. They were given two problems and had to work together to come up with suitable solutions to these.
I was really impressed by your children’s mature and responsible solutions to these problems. It was brilliant to see that they all knew the importance of speaking to a trusted adult whenever there’s a problem.
Help at home: practise some emotion regulation techniques with your children. Read through these problems and ask your children to come up with some solutions:
- Jalisha and her best friend Ella, both wanted the part of Cinderella in the play but Ella got the part.
- Daniel’s family are moving to Australia but he is really sad because he is going to miss his friends.
- Tom’s friend did better than him in the spelling test and keeps talking about it at break time.
Old Leos women’s and girls cricket opportunity
Local cricket club, Old Leos, have opportunities for womens and girls cricket. Please contact them for more information.
Computing: What is a sprite?
This half-term, Year 4 are computer programmers!
A computer programmer is someone who writes instructions, called code, that tell a computer what to do.
Your children have been using Scratch on the iPads to demonstrate their programming skills. On Scratch, you can program sprites to do a variety of things like move, change costumes and make sounds.
A sprite is a 2d character in a computer game.
Your children worked with a partner to program three different sprites to move in three different ways. We had some really creative ideas like an astronaut floating through space or a fish swimming underwater. It was great to see your children thinking like computer programmers and building some really effective programs.
I’m looking forward to seeing how their programs develop over the next few weeks!
Help at home: visit the Scratch website (https://scratch.mit.edu/) and practise programming. Can you get your sprite to talk? Walk? Change costume?
Group reading week 3
Here are the target pages for this week’s group reading. These need to be read by Friday 21st March. Your child’s reading record activity needs to be completed based on the pages they’ve read.
65-storey Treehouse: up to page 83
The Accidental Secret Agent: up to page 43.
Chatty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again: up to page 43.
Chatty Chitty Bang Bang Over the Moon: up to page 53.
The Twins at St Clare’s: up to page 23.
An Elephant in the Garden: up to page 56.
Help at home: read these pages with your child and sign their reading record activity.
Food Technology: Bruschetta
This morning, Year 4 have been making Bruschetta in food technology. We were very impressed with their knowledge and skills at each stage of the recipe and the final products were fantastic!
The main skill we were practising in this recipe was cutting safely with a knife. Your children used two different cutting techniques: bridge and the claw. They used these confidently and safely.
- We used the bridge to safely and securely cut the tomatoes into smaller chunks.
- We used the claw to cut the basil leaves up into small pieces.
Then, we peeled the garlic and used a garlic crusher to squeeze it into our tomato and basil mixture and give it a good stir. It’s safe to say the room (and your children) smelt very strong!
Once all the ingredients were combined in a bowl, the final challenge was to spoon the Bruschetta mixture onto the sliced and toasted baguette without making a mess.
Finally, your children got to dig in to their Bruschetta and enjoy all of their hard work! Almost all of them loved it. We had some very happy chefs, rating it a 10/10!
Help at home: remake the recipe at home with your child. Could you add something new: onion, avocado, ham or cheese?
West Yorkshire cross country final
We were very proud of our five Key Stage 2 children who took part in the West Yorkshire Cross Country Final at Temple Newsam today in the glorious sunshine.
In tough, competitive conditions, with the best runners from across West Yorkshire, they all put in 100% effort in their races and were a great support for each other. The children should feel proud of competing at this level. We even had a top 10 finisher out of 146 runners and our Year 3 girls team came 6th place our of 21 schools. What an amazing team effort!
Thank you to parents who helped with transport and supported at the event.
World Book Day 2025!
Today was World Book Day and we had a fantastic day celebrating all things reading!
We started the day by swapping teachers! Each class got the chance to listen to a different teacher read and Year 4 were very happy to have Miss Wilson from Year 6. They absolutely loved listening to Miss Wilson read The Warlock of Firetop Mountain by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.
After that, we did a class swap with Year 1. Your children each paired up with a child from Year 1 to share their love of reading. It was lovely to watch them read together and share their favourite books with each other. It was also a great opportunity for Year 4 to demonstrate their oracy (speaking and listening) skills as they made sure they were reading with prosody and clarity. We were also all wowed by Year 1’s incredible reading!
We then joined the BBC World Book Day live lesson where we learnt a little bit more about fiction and non-fiction books and how to choose what to read next.
There was also time for your children to discuss their favourite books with their peers and share with the class what they love about their choice.
Overall, we had a fantastic day in Year 4 and look forward to the book fair coming 19th-24th March to spend our £1 book tokens!
Help at home: read daily with your children to continue developing their love of reading as well as their fluency.