Allerton Grange Basketball
On Tuesday, Year 4 enjoyed another session with the sports leaders at Allerton Grange. We worked on a number of skills we’d need for a basketball game before playing end ball with basketball rules. We all really enjoyed it and the sports leaders were fab too.
The new, national multiplication tables check
The government is introducing a new, statutory multiplication tables ‘check’ (MTC) for the first time, in June this year. Children in Year 4 will take this check.
The purpose of the check is to determine whether pupils can fluently recall their times tables up to 12, which is essential for future success in mathematics. It will also help your child’s school to identify pupils who may need additional support.
Read more about the check in this leaflet from the Standards and Testing Agency.
Living and Learning: manners
Our manners focus this week, in Living and Learning, is all about covering our mouth to prevent the spread of germs.
You’re just about to sneeze or cough but, oh dear, you don’t have a tissue. What should you do? Cover your mouth and nose with your hands? Surely that’s what polite people do.
But hold it! If you sneeze or cough into your hands (and then fail to wash your hands straight away), you’ll only be spreading colds and flu germs on everything you touch.
And that’s because germs (as long as they stay moist) can live for HOURS on hard surfaces such as tables, phones and door handles. And not just on objects – everybody you touch will be contaminated, too.
And of course, vice versa – if somebody else has sneezed or coughed on their hands, they’re leaving a germ-trail for you to pick up.
So what’s it best to do?
Here it is in action.
World Book Day themed menu
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Thursday 5th March. Please contact the office, in the next few days, if your child would like a school dinner on this day (no action needed if your child normally has a school meal on this day).
Reviewing computing
The end of the half term brings us to an end of our computing topic which lots of us are particularly sad about. The children have really enjoy this learning and many have continued it at by creating their own Scratch accounts.
We’ve learnt lots of new vocabulary through this topic and many of us now feel confident with words which we’d never heard of at the beginning of the half term. Today, we shared our knowledge as a group by creating a concept map of what we understand about our computing vocabulary.
Is your child in Year 4?
The government is introducing a new assessment for Year 4 pupils. In June, each child in Year 4 is set to complete an online multiplication tables check (MTC). Read more about this new assessment.
There will be 25 questions covering the full range of facts children are expected to know, which means questions going up to 12 x 12. However, there’s slightly more weighting towards multiplication facts involving 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 due to these being the most difficult to learn. For example, there will be between 2 and 4 questions involving multiplying by 6.
For each question, children are presented with a multiplication fact and an empty box. This may be written as __ x 6 or as 6 x __ .
If you’d like to practise at home, our own website has lots of spreadsheets you can download.
There are also lots of websites that you can use. This one is very similar to the MTC. It’s possible to alter the settings on this website to focus on particular times tables.
Another exciting way to practise times tables is through the ‘Times Tables Rockstars’ website. Every child has their own individual login details that enables them to access their account at school and at home. Feedback so far is that this is proving an enjoyable way to practise times tables facts at home!
New school dinner menu
Our new spring/summer school meal menu, starting after February half term, is now available on our Meals page. It continues to follow a three week cycle.
The menu has been created in liaison with Catering Leeds to ensure it meets the School Food Standards. We have also incorporated feedback from our school cook, pupils and parents/carers. We will continue to offer a meat free day every week. This will be every Tuesday.
Pupils will continue to make their daily food choices at the start of the day to ensure they receive their first choice of main meal.
If you would like a paper copy of the menu, please ask at the office.
Remember, children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 continue to receive free school meals and we encourage pupils to take up this offer. For families in other year groups, please check if you are eligible to receive free school meals for your child/children.
We welcome feedback on the school dinner menu from pupils and parents/carers.
Revisiting ENPs
In our writing lessons, Year 4 have been working towards writing a non-chronological report about a fictional tree. We’ve got the tree of horrible hands, the pasta tree, the forgetful tree and the sail tree. Ask your child which tree they’ve chosen to write about.
On Friday, we worked with other people who had chosen the same tree as us to create expanded noun phrases to use in our paragraph describing the appearance of our tree. 
We used thesauruses to expand our use of vocabulary and it was a great recap of the learning we did before Christmas on descriptive writing.
Using our science to make games!
Now that we know how to make a circuit and what makes a circuit complete and incomplete, Year 4 have been able to create their very own buzz maze game.
Lewis was able to explain how the game worked really well, using lots of our key words for this topic: components, circuit, conductor, insulator.
Look at these images together at home and see whether your child can explain how the game works.
Next, we’re going to combine this with our computing knowledge to program a machine to keep score of how many buzzes we make in a game.
Living and Learning: Children’s Mental Health Week
Set up by children’s mental health charity Place2Be, Children’s Mental Health Week shines a spotlight on the importance of children and young people’s mental health.
Young Minds is also a great source of information and support about young people’s mental health.
Mental health forms part of our Living and Learning long term plan and we encourage pupils to look after their mental health as well as their physical health. This maybe through the use of mindfulness and calming down techniques, recognising their own and others’ emotions and knowing how to seek help if needed. This guide shares some of the techniques we use.
In addition to Children’s Mental Health Week, Every Mind Matters is a national mental health campaign from Public Health England.
