Year 4 Class News

Leeds Schools Sports Association cross country races

We have received details about the LSSA cross country races for this year. These races take place on a Saturday and children compete against pupils from other Leeds schools.

Please note, parents/carers are responsible for taking and supervising their child/children at these events. There will be a parent representative.

There are opportunities for Year 3 and 4 girls and boys to race 900m and Year 5 and 6 girls and boys to race 1500m.

Race 1 – Saturday 19th October 2024 – Woodhouse Grove School

Race 2 – Saturday 9th November 2024 – Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School

Race 3 –Saturday 14th December 2024 – Prince Henry’s Grammar School

Race 4 – Saturday 18th January 2025 – Middleton Park Subject to confirmation from LCC

More details about race 1 will follow shortly.

Here are some of our Key Stage 2 children taking part in one of the races last year.

Connect Challenge Wednesday 02 October

What is it?

The Connect Challenge is in memory of Rob Burrow CBE. It involves a rugby ball being ‘passed’ between local schools and each school taking part in a physical activity event.

When is it?

The challenge will run from Thursday 26 September, (Rob’s birthday) until Thursday 3 October. Our event is in the morning of Wednesday 2nd October.

Why are we remembering Rob?

Rob Burrow CBE sadly died on 2 June 2024, four and a half years after he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Throughout that time, Rob and his family bravely chose to publicly share their MND journey to raise awareness of the disease.

What is our Connect Challenge?

We will complete seven (Rob’s rugby shirt number) laps of the green and the back playground by travelling in different ways – walking, jogging or skipping. Children should come to school in outdoor PE kit on the day.

We will be raising money at the event, to be split between the Rob Burrow Centre for Motor Neurone Disease Appeal and our school charity, The Children’s Heart Surgery Fund.

We request a donation of at least £1. This can be paid online via school gateway.

Help at home: discuss this challenge at home and the reasons why we are remembering Rob. This challenge is also about friendship. Rob’s ex team mate and friend Kevin Sinfield has now raised over £8 million for MND charities. Ask your child how can they be a better friend?

PE: Hockey

This half-term in PE we’re playing hockey!

This week, we’ve learnt how to correctly hold a hockey stick and explored two types of passes: a hit pass and a push pass. We discussed how to make sure our passes are accurate and controlled, and practised passing in partners.

We then played a game of ‘Piggy in the Middle’, where the children had to pass the ball to their partner without it being intercepted by a defender. This was a fun way for them to practise both their passing and their defending.

They all demonstrated brilliant hockey skills – their passes were controlled, on target and powerful. I’m looking forward to seeing these skills exhibited in a match later this half-term!

Help at home: ask your children to show and explain to you how to correctly hold a hockey stick (you could use a broom or anything you have lying around the house). You could also watch this YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaVNiYGHcC8) and get your children to identify the different passes they can see.

History: Athens vs Sparta!

Today, Year 4 held a debate over which Ancient Greek city state was better – Athens or Sparta.

The children used the city state fact files they’d made in the previous lesson to debate over topics including the economy, education, women’s rights and the government.

We learnt some top tips for debating:

• Have confident body language.
• Prepare arguments to counter your side’s weaknesses.
• Use key debating vocabulary (e.g. “You make a good point. However…”).
• Listen carefully to the other side so you can respond appropriately.
• Project your voice.

Although Athens won the debate, all children demonstrated brilliant debating and oracy (speaking and listening) skills. It was fantastic!

Help at home: Practise the top tips for debating at home. Should children have to go to school on weekends? Should video games be allowed in school?

Autumn term clubs

Living and Learning: Rules

This week, in Living and Learning, we’ve been focussing on rules. We’ve looked closely at our three school rules and discussed why they’re important and how we can demonstrate them around school.

We should look at the speaker to show we’re ready and respectful.

We should always use our manners and say please and thank you.

We need to walk slowly and sensibly around corners so we don’t hurt ourselves or other people.

We’ve had some really interesting discussions this week about why we have rules and what would happen if there were no rules. It’s been great to hear your children’s ideas.

Following our school rules will make our school a happy, healthy and safe place to learn.

Help at home – think about our three school rules and talk with your child about what they might look like or sound like. Compare them with your rules at home. Are they similar? Are they different?

Welcome to Year 4!

The children have had a fantastic start to Year 4 and settled in brilliantly. It has been great to see how well they’ve adapted to the new routines and new teachers. We’re really looking forward to an exciting and successful year!

This week, your child will come home with a reading book and new Reading Record. They’ll need to bring in their Reading Records every Friday for Book Club sessions, where they’ll be set an activity to complete at home (more information on the activities are inside the Reading Record). It’s really important that your child reads daily. This not only develops their fluency but also their love of reading.

Important dates:

• PE – Wednesday and Friday
• Library – Monday
• Spelling test – Friday
• Times tables test – Friday

Any questions, please ask!

Y3/4 Spelling list for half term 1

In Key Stage 2, instead of asking you to learn a short list of spellings each week, you will be given a longer list (roughly 40 words) that we will focus on in that half-term. Don’t worry, we’re not asking you to learn them all in one week. Instead, we’ll ask you to focus on learning these words over the course of the entire half-term. There’s a few reasons for this:

1. We want you take responsibility for your own learning and start to figure out how you learn best (there’s some ideas below). Even if that means making some mistakes along the way.
2. Lots of research suggests that learning more spellings over a longer time leads to better remembering how to spell them in the long-term.
3. Similarly, lots of research suggests that if you learn something for a week and don’t come back to it you’ll likely forget it anyway
4. We won’t have a ‘formal’ test each week. Instead, we’ll mix it up. We might ask you to test each other on the words you’ve been learning. We might test the words at random and then you’ll know which words you need to practise more and which words you’re confident with. We might just think about some of the words and share ideas for how we’re going about learning them.
5. Ultimately, we want this to be about learning – and not just getting them right in a test.

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.

Every Friday, we’ll spend time practising or testing (informally) or discussing all things spelling so be ready (one of our 8 Rs for learning) to join in!

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

Half-term 1

This half-term, our spellings are linked to the rules and strategies we’ll be learning in class:

• alternative ways for writing the ‘ay’ sound
• alternative ways for writing the ‘ee’ sound
• ‘double up for a short vowel sound’
• ‘drop the e for ing’
• ‘drop the y for an i’
• adding the suffixes ed, ing
• homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently)

Each Friday, you’ll be tested on 8 of the words from the list below.

School Games Mark Platinum award

We are delighted to announce that we have achieved the School Games Platinum Mark Award for the 2023/24 academic year.

The School Games Mark is a Government-led award scheme launched in 2012, facilitated by the Youth Sport Trust, to reward schools for their commitment to the development of competition across their school and into the community, and we are delighted to have been recognised for our success.

As part of our application, we were asked to fulfil criteria in the areas of participation, competition, workforce and clubs, and we are pleased that the hard work of everyone at our school has been rewarded this year.

Thank you to all the children who have represented school at different inter school events and competitions, parents for their support and staff for accompanying the children. We look forward to more events this year.

We are very proud of our children for engaging with these physical activities both in and out of school to support our ethos of being a happy and healthy school.

Thank you and goodbye!

On behalf of myself, Mrs Burgess and Mrs Charlesworth, we would all like to thank you for our gifts. It is extremely generous and kind of you.

I would also personally like to say thank you for all your kind words and messages this past week.

It has been a pleasure to teach your children for the past two years and watch them grow. It has also been a pleasure to get to know you all and I am so thankful to have worked with such friendly, supportive parents.

We have had a fabulous last week together and I will remember each and every one of them as I embark on my next chapter.

With love, Miss Needham x