Year 4 Class News

Topic: Why do tourists visit Venice?

Today, we were critical and safe users of the internet during our geography lesson. We wanted to conduct some research on the iPads to answer the question…

Why do tourists visit Venice?

We must be careful when conducting research as geographers as not all online sites are helpful, safe or appropriate for our research question. As a class, we discussed four different web pages about Venice and which would be best to answer our question.

This website will provide information about what to do in Venice. However, it’s audience is not children and therefore is not the safest website to use.

This website’s audience is children and it’s full of brilliant facts all about Venice. This is a safe and helpful website to use.

Although BBC Bitesize is a great website that we use a lot in school, this page was not about the city of Venice but rather the Shakespeare play. We must always check that it answers our question.

A blog will contain someone’s opinion and we know this may not always be trustworthy. It may not contain as many facts.

Help at home: research things to do in York as a tourist. As you’re going through the websites, discuss with your child which you should use and why.

Multiplication Tables Check

Coming up the first week after half-term, Year 4 will be completing their Multiplication Tables Check (MTC).

They will have to answer 25 times table facts and will have 6 seconds for each question. It will be completed on the iPads.

I’m so proud of all the progress Year 4 have made with their times tables this year. They’ve put in so much time and effort and this is reflected in their fluency.

In preparation for the MTC, ensure your children are practising their times tables up to 12s at home. Here are some ideas:

• Visit https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/477/Multiplication-Tables-Check to complete a practice MTC.
• Go on TTRS and do Garage and Soundcheck.
• Ask your child a different times table fact at each meal time.
• Play a game to see who can answer 10 times table facts the quickest.
• Stick some post-it notes around the house with different multiplication facts on.

Herd Farm 2026!

We’ve just got back from our Year 4 residential to Herd Farm and it was brilliant! One of the reasons we like to take the children on a residential visit is to find out more about the children outside of school as well as the obvious opportunity to experience the adventurous activities. This year was no different – we see a whole different side of the children and love having a laugh with them outside the classroom!

It was an amazing visit and the children were fabulous. There were hesitations and nerves about some activities but everybody gave it a go and a lot of them surprised themselves. This is what they got up to…

We hope you had some very happy (and tired!) children tell you all about it!

Living and Learning: Staying safe themed week 18 May

Our next whole school themed week, based around Staying Safe, will be taking place from Monday 18 May 2026.  The key message is how to be safe in a range of situations – at home, at school, online and in the environment.

A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of education including road safety (Leeds City Council); water safety (Canal and River Trust and RNLI); fire safety (West Yorkshire Fire Service); first aid; safety in our community (PCSOs), martial arts (BMMA) and drug education (d:side). Some of the events require parental permission and these letters have been sent out separately.

There are also some opportunities for parents and carers, from all year groups, to get involved in the week.

Thursday 14 May from 8:30am West Yorkshire Police bike register event

Pupils are invited to bring along their bikes to be registered at this bike security marking event at school. Registering your bike helps police and retailers identify and verify the legitimate owner of bikes that have been stolen or are being resold.

Tuesday 19 May 3pm – 3:30pm d:side drug education drop in information session (playground)

A representative from d:side, a health education provider, will be available to discuss details of your child’s drug education learning in the themed week.

The themed week is a good opportunity to continue to think about healthy, active and safe ways to travel to school.  Children are encouraged to travel to school in a sustainable way, keeping safe along the way.

For a chance to win one of three £10 vouchers, we’d love to see their active travel staying safe photos, maybe using a traffic crossing or wearing their bike helmet (send photos to moortownoffice@spherefederation.org). Photos should be sent by 10am on Thursday 21 May and winners will be announced on the same day.

Due to the rising costs of visitors to school, this year, we are requesting a voluntary contribution of £2 per pupil to go towards paying for visitors. This can be made on Arbor. Thank you for your support with this.

Finally, can you help? Does your job involve an aspect of safety?  If you are able to support our Staying Safe themed week by coming into school to speak to the children, please contact me via the office or your child’s class teacher.

We will keep you up to date about events during the week on the class news pages on our website.

Thank you for your support to keep Moortown a happy, healthy and safe school.

PE: basketball

This half-term in PE, we’re doing basketball!

Basketball is a fantastic sport for your children to practise a variety of different skills (e.g., passing, catching, shooting, defending etc.).

Last week, we began exploring some different ways we can pass the ball in basketball – chest pass and bounce pass. We recapped our ‘pass and point‘ technique which we used last year in netball and rugby. When you release a ball during a pass, your fingers should end pointing towards where you are aiming. This is a great technique to ensure an accurate pass.

This week, we’ve looked more closely at catching. When preparing to catch a ball, we need to get into the ready position:

• feet shoulder width apart
• knees slightly bent
• diamond hands

The ready position allows us to safely and effectively catch the ball.

Help at home: if you have a ball at home (any ball will do) practise some chest and bounce passes with your child.  They must show you the ready position before catching the ball.

Living & Learning: Speak out. Stay safe.

This week is our second week on being safe in L&L. Today, your children learnt all about speaking out to stay safe with NSPCC.

We discussed children’s rights and the importance of the NSPCCs message of ‘Speak out. Stay safe’.

All children have the right to:

• speak out and have their views taken seriously,
• be kept safe,
• get help when they need it.

As part of this lesson, your children identified their trusted adults that they’d confidently ask anything to. We discussed the importance of having these trusted adults and why we should always speak out rather than bottling things up.

Alongside this, we spoke about how our trusted adults make us feel. Your children were really confident and comfortable speaking to their trusted adults about any worries or concerns.

Our Living & Learning box, in the classroom, is another way the children can speak out and write down any worries.

Help at home: visit the Childline website with your children (https://www.childline.org.uk/kids). Explore the games, interactive tools and age-appropriate advice.

Year 3/4 football final

Well done to our Year 3/4 football team who competed in the Leeds Well School Partnership final at the West Riding FA. The team worked together to play some great football including some fantastic saves from our goalkeeper. The children should feel extremely proud they qualified for this final along with the six other best schools across Leeds.

Summer term after-school clubs

Rhinos Rugbees

Book Club: Group Reading

Hello!

This week, we’re beginning group reading again.

The class have been divided into groups and each group has been given a book to read at home. This will last for this half term.

During our Book Club sessions each Friday, each group will discuss what they have read so far and share their reading record activities related to their book. This will be a fantastic opportunity for the children to explore characters and storylines more than they might do normally!

Every Friday during Book Club, each group will be given a new page to read to by the following Friday.

What to remember:

• Your child has a book that they need to read every week (up to a chosen point marked with a post-it notes).
• Make the reading work for your child. Feel free to share the reading with them or even you read it to them here and there.
• The reading record activity needs to be completed using their new book.
• A comment from a grown up needs to be written in their reading record.
• Group reading books and reading records need to be brought in every Friday.

Help at home: ensure your child is reading up to the post-it note each week. Listen to your child read their new book and ask questions about the book to help prepare them for class discussions.