Year 3/4 production on Wednesday evening
Year 3 and 4 are performing on Wednesday, 1st April at 6pm.
We’ll need all children back in school from 5.30pm to get into their costumes ready for a 6pm start. It’ll be finished by 7pm so please be at school for pick up at no later than 7pm!
Please let us know if this is not possible so we can make other arrangements.
If your child is in wrap around until 5.30pm, we can collect them from there ready for the production.
Thank you!
Miss Birch and Miss Newman
Maths: distributive law
In Maths, Year 4 have been showing off their brilliant mathematical skills by demonstrating the distributive law.
The distributive law is when you multiply parts of a whole separately, then add the partial products together.
The distributive law is a helpful and efficient method to use when faced with multiplication questions that we don’t know fluently. It requires us to partition one of the factors into two parts.
7 x 13 may seem tricky initially but we can partition the 13 into 10 and 3. We can then multiply these parts separately and add them together to find our answer. Simple!
7 x 13 = 7 x 10 + 7 x 3
= 70 + 21
= 91
Help at home: ask your child to complete these multiplication questions using the distributive law…
- 8 x 16 =
- 4 x 14 =
- 3 x 17 =
- 5 x 18 =
Year 3/4 football
UPDATE – the team have qualified for the Leeds final next month.
As part of the Leeds Well Schools Partnership, ten of our Year 3 and 4 children took part in a football competition at Boddington this week.
Throughout the day, they worked hard as a team to play some great football with two wins, two draws and two losses and they managed to top their group of five schools.
Well done to all the children who represented school so well.
Food Technology: pitta pizzas
This morning, Year 4 have been making quick pitta pizzas. We were so impressed with their knowledge and skills at each stage of the recipe.
The main skill we practised was cutting with a knife. Your children used the bridge method to cut the tomatoes and mushrooms. We used a serrated edged knife to cut the tomatoes and a smooth edged knife for mushrooms.
We tore the mozzarella into pieces and placed all of the toppings on top of our wholemeal pittas. I was impressed to see lots of the children who were unsure about mushrooms giving them a go (and enjoying them!).
After we cooked them for 10 minutes, all was left to do was to eat them! They smelt delicious and tasted even better! Your children all loved them.
Help at home: Your children have been sent home with the recipe today. Can you remake the pitta pizzas? Can you add other toppings?
Living & Learning: personal hygiene
In L&L, Year 4 are learning about personal hygiene and how we can keep our bodies healthy.
We began by learning about germs and the different types – bacteria, viruses and fungi. Germs are all around us and while some are very helpful, some can be harmful to our bodies.
Yoghurts have ‘live cultures’ in that are good for our digestive system.
Some viruses can make us feel very poorly.
We discussed how quickly and easily germs can spread. To ensure we are keeping ourselves safe and healthy, we must wash our hands to help prevent this spread. We could use soap or hand sanitiser and to make sure we’ve washed them thoroughly enough.
Top tip: you should sing happy birthday twice while you do it!
Help at home: How do you prevent germs spreading at home? Discuss this with your child.
Skipping Festival 2026!
Today, Year 4 took part in the 2026 Skipping Festival and we won! This means we’re through to the finals in June and we can’t wait.
They did a brilliant job and worked so well as a team – all their practising definitely paid off! It was amazing to watch them all showcase their incredible skipping skills. They also showed great support for each other and the other teams. I was so impressed by their determination, teamwork and respect.
In between the skills, the children had the chance to skip, dance and sing along to the music which they loved. They even got the chance to learn some new skipping skills like the butterfly.
Both the individual skills and the group skips were fantastic. Your children won lots of awards – including five gold medals! We’re all so happy to win and be through to the finals in June.
Well done Year 4 for trying your best and representing Moortown so well – we’re so proud of you! Let’s do it all again in June!
Topic: we’re computer programmers!
This half-term in Topic, we’re computer programmers!
So far, we’ve had a few unplugged lessons where we have discussed what an algorithm is, how to use repetition to be efficient programmers and what logical reasoning is.
This week, we began looking at how a computer can ask questions to sort items. We created a branching database to sort a group of dinosaurs based on their various attributes. However, we had to be careful to only use closed (yes/no) questions.
An attribute is a quality or characteristic that can be used to describe someone to something (e.g size, colour, material).
Next week, we’ll begin building these branching databases on the iPads.
Help at home: choose a selection of kitchen utensils. Can your child sort them using yes/no questions. Is it made of metal? Is it sharp? Can you use it to stir?
World Book Day!
Today was World Book Day and we had a fantastic day celebrating all things reading! The theme for this year was reading for pleasure. We want all our children to develop a love and a passion for reading and we discussed lots of different ways we can encourage this.
We started the day by doing a class swap with Reception. Your children each paired up with a child from Reception to share their love of reading. It was lovely to watch them read together and share their favourite books with each other. It was also a great opportunity for Year 4 to demonstrate their oracy (speaking and listening) skills as they made sure they were reading with prosody and clarity. We were all wowed by Reception’s incredible reading!
We then joined the BBC World Book Day live lesson where we discussed reading for pleasure and sharing how we like to read.
We also had time for your children to discuss their favourite books and favourite characters with their peers and share with the class what they’d dressed up as. Everybody looked amazing!
Overall, we had a fantastic day in Year 4 and look forward to the Book Fair coming 16th-18th March to spend our £1 book tokens!
Help at home: read daily with your children to continue developing their love of reading as well as their fluency.
Cross country
We’ve had two cross country events this week.
First of all, it was the final Saturday morning race at Middleton Park. Well done to all of the children who have taken part in the four races held across the year and for parents who supported at these events.
On Tuesday, five of our Key Stage 2 children represented Leeds at the West Yorkshire cross country final at Temple Newsam in the glorious sunshine.
We are very proud of all our runners who raced in tough, competitive conditions, with the best runners from across West Yorkshire. They all put in 100% effort and were a great support for each other. The children should feel proud of competing at this level.
A special mention to our Year 5 runner who finished 10th place out of 151 runners and has now qualified for the national cross country final later this month. One of our Year 4 runners narrowly missed out on this qualification by two places.
Thank you to parents who helped with transport and supported at the event.
Writing: narrative
This half-term, Year 4 are writing a narrative inspired by The Dragon Slayer.
purpose: to tell stories to interest and entertain
audience: children sat around a campfire listening to stories of legends from the past
Our narratives will..
– describe the main character (and his back story)
– create tension as he rides towards the dragon
When we’re writing, we’ll be thinking about including our R2s (remember tos):
- adverbs
- verbs
- apostrophes for possession
- ENPs (expanded noun phrases)
Keep your eyes peeled to see our writing develop.
Help at home: watch The Dragon Slayer (up to 1 min 53) and discuss the character with your child. What might his background be? What words could you use to describe him? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_f3AtPfuiw