Year 4 Class News

Being healthy themed week: bike safety

Thank you to Stu and Alex from Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative, based in Chapel Allerton, for visiting this during our Being Healthy week.

They were kept busy by checking lots of bikes to ensure they were safe to use. Thank you to everyone who brought their bike into school.

Then, Year 5 and 6 learnt some different bike maintenance tips to do on their own bikes.

Health Week – what a week!

This week has been a themed week at Moortown – Health Week. This means that the whole school have been focused on being healthy in our bodies and our minds!

Year 4 have been very fortunate to have experienced a range of different activities and talks that relate to health.

Monday began with a visit from Leeds Beckett University. We were outside being active while learning about Orienteering! The children began with a quick warm up activity where they had to find certain areas in the playground that related to a picture. This then led onto map reading and navigating their groups around the school to find letters to spell words. It was a great and unique way of getting our bodies and minds working.

On Tuesday, we had D:side in to talk to us about alcohol and how to be safe around it. We spoke about how to identify if something has alcohol in it. For example, comparing WKDs to J20s. We also spoke about how alcohol affects people such as, changing how their minds and body work. Here are some of the class with the ‘alcohol’ glasses on.

On Friday, we had a martial-arts session. Some of our children already attend a martial-arts club after school so they were prepared and ready for what was to come. Others were starting as beginners but we all worked together as a team so help one another. Here’s some great snaps of us doing some kick-boxing:

Help at home by asking your child what different types of food fit into these categories:

Carbohydrates, Fruit and Vegetables, Dairy, Fats and Sugars, Protein.

Design and Technology: Go-Karts!

Hello!

As you would have seen on our last post, Year 4 have been busy designing, creating and evaluating their go-kart prototypes!

Today, they had their final session to complete any finishing touches. We had some last minute changes to make sure that they could move freely and hold a model figure. Therefore, some go-karts don’t have a motor and some do!

Here are some of our groups with their go-karts. They were absolutely fantastic and Mrs Charlesworth and I were incredibly impressed.

Well done to Year 4 for working well together as a team and using their skills to create and change go-karts for the better!

Being healthy themed week: staff vs pupils netball

At our final netball after-school club, and as it is our being healthy themed week, we enjoyed a hard fought match between the pupils and staff.
The children have progressed really well with their netball skills this term and we hope the Year 6 netballers continue to enjoy this sport as they move to high school.

Being Healthy themed week 10 July

Our next whole school themed week, based around Being Healthy, will be taking place from Monday 10th July. This is the second of two themed weeks in the year.

Design and Technology

Our topic this half term is Design and Technology.

Design brief:

To design and build a prototype go-kart.

Design criteria: 

• must move freely
• must be able to hold a model figure
• must use an electrical circuit for motor

Challenge: 

To use a steering mechanism.

The children designed their go karts using annotated sketches. These included dimensions and components. This week, they began building and they made a fantastic start.

They each had a role within their team:

• an organiser of the components
• a builder
• a design checker

They worked amazingly in their groups using great listening and teamwork skills.

Living and Learning – RSE

Over the last 3 weeks in Year 4, we have explored relationships and change.

We discussed the fact that we have relationships with lots of people. For example, our family, friends, people we meet through clubs like leaders etc. These relationships should be happy and healthy. We talked about this might look like:

• We trust each other.
• We are kind to each other.
• We listen to each other.
• We try to help each other if we can.

But what happens if this becomes unhappy and unhealthy? If you can’t resolve the problems between you in a respectful way, then you can ask a trusted adult to help!

Sometimes we might need a change and change can seem scary when it’s new. We looked at the different stages of human life and the class discussed how our lives change over time. For example, when we are born, we have no responsibilities and our grown ups look after us constantly. As we grow older, we have more freedom and we realised that with freedom comes more responsibilities like cooking for yourself, having a job and learning to drive.

We decided that change is good because it takes us outside our comfort zone and lets us try new things!

Help at home by discussing a change that is coming up soon. How do you feeling about moving up to Year 5?

Writing – generating ideas!

Today, Year 4 had a fantastic lesson generating ideas for their next spooky narrative! We worked in groups to get as many ideas down as possible so that tomorrow, we are ready to begin planning our individual stories.

The purpose of a narrative is to interest and entertain the reader by telling a story. Our narratives are going to jump straight into the action by beginning with dialogue. We’ve spent a long time perfecting writing direct speech so Year 4 are excited!

The scene will be set in a dark, forbidden forest during the night and either themselves and a friend or fictional characters will be trying to navigate their way through the forest safely… However, there might be some scary plot twists along the way.

Have a look at what we thought of!

New spelling list!

This half-term, instead of learning eight different words each week, we’d like you to learn these 40 words over the whole half-term. Lots of research suggests that learning more spellings over a longer time leads to better remembering how to spell them in the long term. 

How you decide to do this is up to you. You might decide to focus on the trickiest words first. Or, you might decide to learn 8 words a week and really focus on these whilst still practising the others, too. For some of you, you might already feel confident with some of the words so might choose to not practise these at all.

However you decide to do it, is up to you. The important thing is that you’re learning them and learning how you like to learn them best. 

Each week, we’ll choose eight random words to test you on. These tests aren’t pressured. They might just help you figure out which words you need to practise more. 

Learning spellings in this way might feel quite different – or even scary – but it shouldn’t. In fact, you’ve actually got less words to learn this half-term than you normally would. 

We’ll keep thinking about this in school and we’ll regularly talk about how we can best practise these words at home. 

If you need some ideas for practical things to do, check out the Super Spelling Strategies Guide on the school website. 

Year 4 Multiplication Tables Check

During the week beginning  the 12th of June, Year 4 will be completing their statutory Multiplication Tables Check.

This check:

• tests them on their facts up to 12 x 12.
• gives them 6 seconds to answer each question.
• gives 3 seconds in between each question.
• can only be completed once.

Year 4 have been working their socks off all year learning their facts by using times table grids, TTRS and Maths Frame. Please encourage your child/children to practise all their times table facts this week and onwards to ensure they achieve their best scores. TTRS sound check mimicks the official check so this is a great way to practise!

As a challenge for those who are confident on all the facts, see if you can type the answer, delete it and type it again in the space of 6 seconds to make sure you aren’t rushing!

Help at home by timing yourself when completing the times table grids. Then try to beat your time!