National Poetry Day!
Yesterday, we celebrated National Poetry Day by exploring lots of poetry in class and having a special poetry assembly. Year 4 have been practising our poem by Paul Cookson all week and the children delivered it in front of the school beautifully.
They projected their voices fantastically and recited the poem with great prosody. They even learnt it off by heart – well done Year 4!
Help at home: visit the children’s poetry archive and explore their brilliant website. Which is your favourite poem?
Writing: character descriptions
This week, Year 4 are writing their character descriptions of Podkin One-Ear. This is the main character from our class novel by Kieran Larwood.
Purpose: to give the reader information about a character.
Audience: children and adults
We’ve spent the last few weeks exploring Podkin One-Ear. We’ve discussed how we could describe both his appearance and his personality to somebody who hasn’t read the book. Our aim has been for the reader to get a detailed and clear picture of Podkin in their heads, without needing to see a picture.
As a class, your children came up with some fantastic adjectives to describe Podkin which they are using in their writing.
Stay tuned to find out how they go…
Help at home: close your eyes and ask your children to describe Podkin for you in as much detail as possible. Can you picture him?
Maths: column subtraction
This week, we’ve moved onto column subtraction in maths.
We used Base 10 in a fun maths game yesterday to represent our subtractions.
The children represented 49 on on their whiteboards with Base 10 (4 tens and 9 ones). They then had to roll a dice and subtract that number from their Base 10 with the aim of getting down to zero. However, this became a problem when they ran out of ones and only had tens left!
They had to exchange 1 ten for 10 ones.
This game allowed the children to really visualise and understand the process of exchanging in column subtraction.
Help at home: use this website (https://www.coolmath4kids.com/manipulatives/base-ten-blocks) to play the game with your children at home.
Leeds Rhinos play offs
PLAY OFF ACTION RETURNS TO AMT HEADINGLEY
Following the conclusion of the regular season Leeds Rhinos will take on St Helens in a mouth-watering elimination play off at AMT Headingley Stadium on Saturday 27 September 2025, kicking off at 8pm.
Tickets are on sale now at Leeds Rhinos – Online ticket sales
We hope that you will join us for what promises to be a fantastic occasion as we aim to get within 80 minutes of the Grand Final at Old Trafford.
Further info can be found here Play Off Eliminator tickets on sale now
Living and Learning: rights and responsibilities
This week, our L&L statement was: I know that rights come with responsibilities.
We had a brilliant discussion about how we all have rights, however these come with certain responsibilities. As a class we came up with some rights we have within school and the responsibilities that come with these:
- We have a right to playtime but a responsibility to play safely and respectfully.
- We have a right to learn but a responsibility to be great learners.
- We have a right to eat lunch but a responsibility to be respectful and polite to the lunchtime staff.
- We have a right to use the classroom equipment but a responsibility to look after it.
- We have a right to share our opinions in circle time but a responsibility to do so respectfully.
After, we looked into some children’s rights in the UK:
Help at home: Watch this video: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zqgm7yc#zmghp4j and ask your child what rights and responsibilities they have at home (eg. they have the right to play with their toys but a responsibility to do this safely).
Science: We are biologists!
This half-term in Science, Year 4 are biologists and will be learning all about living things and their habitats.
Biology is the study of living things.
We’ve been grouping and classifying animals and have used classification keys to help us do so.
All animals can be classified as either vertebrates (animals with a spine) or invertebrates (animals without a spine).
There are five types of vertebrates that we’ve explored:
- mammals
- birds
- fish
- reptiles
- amphibians
A classification key helps scientists identify things using closed questions (‘yes’ or ‘no’). We’ve been using classification keys to classify a variety of vertebrates and invertebrates.
We’ve discussed what makes a good classification key question. For example, ‘Is it scary?’ isn’t useful because people find different things scary which could lead to misclassified animals. Instead, our questions should be simple, observable and objective. Your children had a chance to write their own…
Help at home: complete this classification key with your children:
Autumn term after-school clubs – places available
As we start week two of our new after-school club schedule, there are some clubs with spaces available and it is not too late for your child to join a club.
Monday
- Y3/4 Table tennis 1 space
- Y3-6 Chess spaces
- Y4-6 Dodgeball 1 space
Tuesday
- Y1-3 Foot-tech football 1 space
- Y1-3 City of Leeds Basketball spaces
- Y5-6 now open to Year 4 Table tennis spaces
Wednesday
- Y1-3 Fun and games spaces
- Y4-6 City of Leeds Basketball spaces
Thursday
- Y5/6 Coding 2 spaces
- Y5-6 now open to Year 4 Netball spaces
Class Novel: The Legend of Podkin One-Ear
In Year 4, our current class novel is The Legend of Podkin One-Ear by Kieran Larwood.
“Podkin is the son of a warrior chieftain. He knows that one day it will be up to him to lead his warren and guard it in times of danger. But for now, he’s quite happy to laze around annoying his older sister Paz, and playing with his baby brother Pook. Then Podkin’s home is brutally attacked, and the young rabbits are forced to flee. The terrifying Gorm are on the rampage, and no one and nowhere is safe. With danger all around them, Podkin must protect his family, uncover his destiny, and attempt to defeat the most horrifying enemy rabbitkind has ever known.”
We’re not very far in but we’re all really enjoying it so far! We can’t wait to find out what happened to Podkin.
Your children have been sharing their opinions and making some predictions…
I predict that Podkin lost his ear in a battle.
I think that Podkin is a hero and he will save his warren from the evil enemies.
I predict that the bard knows Podkin and they used to fight together.
I’m excited to keep reading it because I want to know how Podkin lost his ear.
Help at home: ask your child to summarise what they’ve read so far. You can also explore some of the other books from Kieran Larwood.
Maths: column addition
We’ve started maths in Year 4 by reviewing the column addition they learnt in Year 3. I’ve been really impressed with how quickly your children have picked this back up.
We initially used Base 10 to help us represent the addition and when we were confident we moved onto just using the column method.
We revisited exchanging and discussed how we know when to regroup in column addition.
If the column sum is equal to 10 or more, we must regroup.
Help at home: ask your children to identify which of the following calculations will need regrouping? How do they know?
329 + 132
322 + 125
573 + 143
242 + 635
Living and Learning: Rules
This week, in Living and Learning, we’ve been focussing on rules. As we’re settling back into school, it’s important we remind ourselves of our three school rules so we’ve looked closely at them and discussed why they’re important. We also discussed how we can demonstrate them around school.
We should have silent voices, empty hands and eyes on the speaker to show we’re ready and respectful.
We should always use our manners and say please and thank you to everyone.
We need to walk slowly and sensibly around the school 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 was great to hear your children’s ideas during our circle time session based around rules.
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?