D:Side Visit
Today, Year 4 were lucky to have a workshop from D:Side all about staying safe online – particularly when playing online games.
Not everything we see online is trustworthy and your children were great at identifying that! With the rise in AI, it’s more important than ever that we’re critical consumers of online content. We also discussed how not everyone online is who they say they are so we must always speak to a trusted adult if we are unsure or feel unsafe online.
Although the internet is great for many things, we must make sure we are using it safely. For example, your children love playing lots of online games (which can be great fun) but sometimes they also introduce some risks. That is why they have age restrictions based on what content is included in the games.
In Year 4, we should only be playing games that are rated ages 3 or 7. This is because they have content that is appropriate for our age.
We were all really impressed with your children’s knowledge of how to stay safe online. It was great to hear all their contributions for how we can also make sure we’re being safe and responsible online.
Help at home: ask your child what they could do to check if something they see online is true.
Skipping Festival Final!
Yesterday, Year 4 went to Morley to participate in the Leeds Skipping Festival Final and they did an absolutely incredible job! We’re all so proud of them. The determination, passion, teamwork and support they showed between one another was outstanding. They cheered each other on when some were feeling a bit nervous and celebrated all the super skippers.
We won some medals on the individual skips and for our whole class skip dance! Everybody did a fantastic job and it was a really fun day out.
I’m super proud of all of Year 4 for trying their best and representing Moortown so brilliantly.
What have we learnt in Geography?
This week, we finished our Geography topic – explorers. As a chance for your children to show off all they’ve learnt throughout this topic, they created a poster filled with their knowledge. I was so impressed with these – it’s clear they’ve loved this topic!
Help at home: ask your child their top three facts they’ve learnt in this topic.
Writing: revolting instructions
We’re starting our final half-term in Year 4 by writing instructions. We’ll be writing our own set of instructions on how to make a revolting salad and dressing.
purpose: to tell the reader how to do something
audience: an 8 year old cooking for their family at home
A set of instructions should be clear, easy to follow but with enough detail that you know exactly what you’re doing. Therefore, we began the week by reading an example of a good set of instructions and discussed its features. We’ll be using these when writing our own instructions in a couple of weeks.
- present tense
- imperative ‘bossy’ verbs (e.g. cut, slice, boil, mix, combine)
- adverbs (e.g. carefully, softly, gently)
- step-by-step order
- time connectives (e.g. first, after, then, meanwhile)
- list of equipment
Help at home: ask your child to write you a simple set of instructions for how to make a jam sandwich. Remember to use the R2s!
Staying Safe Week!
This week was our themed week: Staying Safe. Year 4 were very busy learning how to stay safe in a range of different scenarios and situations.
On Monday, we kicked off the week with a road safety assembly. In this, the children recapped how to stay safe in each type of travel (car, bike/scooter, bus, train and walking).
- A seatbelt must be worn every journey – whether that be a long or short drive.
- You must not distract the driver.
- If there is a seat available on a bus or train you must sit down.
- Travel with an adult.
- Green Cross Code: Think, Stop, Look and Listen.
We even got to meet the road safety mascot Arlo!
Throughout the week, we also learnt about sun safety, food safety and water safety.
There are 5 ways to protect yourself from UV rays: SLIP, SLOP, SLAP, SLIDE, SHADE.
- Slip on clothing to cover your skin.
- Slop on suncream (20 minutes before the sun and every 2 hours to reapply).
- Slap on a hat to protect your face and scalp.
- Slide on sunglasses to protect your eyes.
- Seek shade whether that be natural or human-made.
We then were lucky enough to have a visit from British Military Martial Arts (BMMA). Your children played lots of fun games and got to showcase their new skills. They loved giving martial arts a go and exploring a new way of keeping fit.
We also had a visitor come to deliver a workshop all about personal hygiene. Keeping our personal hygiene up is really important to stop spreading bacteria and virus’ and to keep each other safe. We saw how soap helps to stop this spread. Black pepper acted as our germs…
Overall, we had a brilliant week filled with lots of important learning about staying safe.
Help at home: How many dangers or unsafe choices can your child see in this picture?
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.