Year 4 Class News

England Schools’ Swimming Association Primary Team Championships

This weekend, our Year 5 and 6 swimmers took part in this prestigious national finals event at Ponds Forge, Sheffield after recently qualifying in the North East regional heat.

Competing against schools from all over the country from Westminster to Guernsey to Devon, and with tough competition, all the team put in 100% in their mixed stroke and freestyle races. For some of our swimmers, this was their first experience of competitive swimming. We are very proud of how well all the children represented Moortown with such a great, supportive team spirit.

A huge thanks go to parents for their support with the team over the two events.

Races can be watched back on the following link.

1:08:00 lane 2 mixed stroke

2:40:50 lane 7 freestyle

Year 4’s observation over time

Last week, Year 4 completed our final investigation in our observation over time.

Over the course of the year, we have observed how the living things in our school grounds have changed.

We ventured into our school grounds and recorded what living things we found.

We then compared our results to what we recorded in autumn and spring.

We found that there were many more insects in summer compared to autumn, particularly bees! We also observed how we didn’t see any flowers in autumn but in summer there were too many for us to count!

Help at home by asking your child what they observed change in our school grounds during our observation over time.

What can you achieve?

Today, Jess Wright, who is a coach with PE Partner and leads one of our after-school clubs, came to speak to the children in an assembly.

At only 17, Jess has been playing football for over ten years and currently plays for Sheffield Wednesday. She also coaches at different levels from children to adults and referees too.

Jess has another role which is to try to get children, especially girls, into football and providing opportunities for children who want to get involved.

Jess shared information of how to get involved in local physical activities. This could be our school after-school clubs, other local physical activities listed in our guide for parents and carers or other opportunities especially around football and getting girls into football.

Leeds City JFC are a local club looking for new members especially in their girls teams.

Wigton Moor JFC are another local club with opportunities.

Catalan Soccer offer classes and camps.

Thank you to Jess for coming into school to inspire the children and to share her experiences around football and the opportunities and skills it provides.

New spelling list for half term 6!

HT6

Year 3,4

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

• alternative graphemes: tion, sion, ssion, cian
• alternative graphemes: i, ie, y, i-e
• homophones: he’ll, heel, plain, plane, groan, grown, rain, rein, reign
• alternative graphemes: sc
• spelling patterns: que
• alternative graphemes: u spelled ou

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

Geography double-page spreads

This half term, we have been geographers.

We have been learning all about the world around us in our ‘Explorers’ Geography unit. This has included lots of learning about Venice and York and looking at their similarities and differences.

Today, Year 4 created some ‘double page spreads’ that showcased all their Geography learning from this half term. Check some examples out below!

Living and Learning: I know that being physically active is healthy mentally and physically.

In Living and Learning, Year 4 have been discussing how to stay healthy mentally and physically.

Physical activity helps us to strength our muscles, develop our coordination, improve our fitness and maintain a healthy weight.

Being active also releases chemicals in your brain that make you feel good – boosting your self-esteem and helping you concentrate as well as sleep well and feel better.

It is recommended that children get one hour of physical activity every day. We spent time going through a typical week and assessing whether we met the criteria each day.

It was reassuring to know that most children in our class meet this target each day – it seems some never sit still!

Help at home and ask your child when they have been active today.

We are physicists!

In Science, we have been learning as physicists about electricity.

The class were given a variety of components and asked to make a lightbulb light up. The children were given two wires, one cell and one lightbulb.

After much trial and error, all the groups were successful!

We discussed how we would stay safe when handling the equipment, particularly the lightbulb as it was made of glass.

Help at home by asking your child how they stayed safe when we did this experiment.

Living and Learning – I know the importance of a balanced diet.

Year 4 have been discussing how we can make sensible choices that help our bodies stay healthy.

One way we can help our bodies stay healthy is having a balanced diet. This means eating a wide variety of foods in the right proportions. 

We discussed our own diets and whether they are balanced or not. Here are some questions for you to discuss with your child at home:

Have we eaten five portions of fruit and vegetables today?

Have we eaten enough protein today from meat or other sources?

Here’s a guide to the amounts of food we should be having:

Help at home: Can you plan your next meal using these proportions to help you?

Triathlon

This week, thirty of our Key Stage 2 pupils took part in the Brownlee Foundation Mini Triathlon event at John Smeaton. This is always a great event and it introduces the children to the elements of triathlon – a swim, a bike ride and a run.

Well done to all the children for taking part.

If your child is interested in triathlons, please see more details in our physical activity guide or have a look at this bike and run offer at the Brownlee Centre.

Residential

We have had an fantastic first day at Herd Farm!

We spent the day busying about doing the Leap of Faith, Crate Stack, Zip-Wire, archery and bushcraft!

Pictures tell 1000 words so here are some smiley snaps from our adventures…

We’re now in for the evening – watching Hercules with hot chocolate and resting before another big day tomorrow!