Growing and Learning Together in God's Love
We hope that you have all had a lovely half-term. Thank you to those who have already brought in the homework. If you haven’t had a chance to complete it yet, do make use of the weekend! If you have already completed it, please use your homework time to practise your times tables and your spellings.
We look forward to hearing all about your chosen locations on Monday!
Mrs Tunnicliffe, Miss Hardy and Mrs Happy
Battle of the Bands!
The ‘Battle of the Bands’ has been running for 5 days now and it’s great to see so many people playing at home.
Only 2 days left in the competition so how are the scores looking?
Year 2 are currently beating Year 3.
Year 4 are currently beating Year 3.
Year 5 are currently beating Year 4.
Year 5 are currently beating Year 6.
Overall, it seems that Year 2, 4 and 5 are practising lots at home. Year 3 and 6 are going to need to up their game a little in order to beat their opponents!
Log on to gain points for your Year Group’s ‘Band’ whilst also earning yourself lots of coins to spend at the online shop.
Rock on!
We re-launched RockStars a few weeks ago and what a hit it has been!
It looks like most children have logged on to learn their tables and increase their speed but we thought it was worth giving a few children a special mention who have clearly been doing lots of practice! Each time a game is played, the children earn coins so the more coins, the more practice they have had. Here are our top three scorers in each year group – a huge well done!
Year 2
Alfie ‘Tom Bragg’ has earned 10,854 coins
Luke ‘Fats Styler’ has earned 9,652 coins
Heath ‘Royal Rockaroundtheclock’ has earned 8,700 coins
Year 3
Jack ‘Thunder Palace’ has earned 18,647 coins
Igor ‘Billy Alvin’ has earned 14,697 coins
Archie ‘Strike Durst’ has earned 10,103 coins
Year 4
Sophie ‘Sugar Slim’ has earned 56,020 coins
Ethan ‘Royal Dornacker’ has earned 35,904 coins
Edward ‘Ed Cyrus’ has earned 32,966 coins
Year 5
Amalie ‘Roxy Coppola’ has earned 106,708 coins
Amy ‘Fruity Floyd’ has earned 91,639 coins
Carolina ‘C.C. Winter’ has earned 18,506 coins
Year 6
Nayra ‘Ann Manning’ has earned 188,708 coins
Imogen ‘Libby Stitch’ has earned 126,022 coins
Sophie ‘Emily Malkmus’ has earned 61,847 coins
Come and see Miss Goddard to collect your special ‘Highest Earner’ certificate when you are back at school!
Half term is a perfect time to practise times tables and a ‘Battle of the Bands’ competition has just been set up. This is a competition between different year groups – the more you practice, the more points you get for your band (year group).
Children can see their ‘bands’ progress when they log on. Who will win by the end of the half term holiday?
Happy Rocking!
Maths Team
Next half term we are learning about the UK.
We would like you to collect some information about a place in the UK which is special to you and your family. It could be another town or city which you have lived in or visited on holiday or for the day. Perhaps where your grandparents or another family member lives.
You can share your ideas in any form (poster, postcard, factfile etc.) you like but please include a map showing where the place is, so we can locate it on a large map at school.
Please bring your homework to school by Monday 5th November
What an amazing first half term we have had! The children have all settled really well and have enjoyed our learning this half term.
Some highlights include: mummifying teddy bears and writing the instructions to go with this; making our canopic jars and painting them and publishing stories about ancient Egypt.
The children have really been engaged with our Maths this half term and are developing their reasoning skills. They are thoroughly enjoying the problem solving tasks.
From
The Year 4 Team
This week, we have re-launched the very popular ‘Rockstars’ website which St Mark’s have been using for the last year. This platform allows children to practise their times tables in a fun, personalised and competitive way. We have certainly seen a boost in the children’s love of learning their tables as well as children securing these facts much quicker. Here are a few reminders to help you support your children at home.
Logging on
Go to the website: https://play.ttrockstars.com and select the ‘Login’ option.
Firstly, type in the school – St Mark’s CofE Primary School, Basingstoke. It should appear in a drop down menu so you don’t have to type in the whole name. Once the school name is entered correctly, the children will then login with their personal details which have been distributed. Their username will be the first 3 letters of the first name followed by the first 3 letters of their surname. Their password will be 3 random letters.
Practice makes Perfect!
Under the ‘Play’ section, there are many ways for the children to reinforce and learn their times tables. They can select one of the options depending on whether they want to learn their tables, improve their speed or just get competitive! Here is a quick overview of each Play section.
Garage: Times tables set by the child’s class teacher. Set the timer to 1, 2 or 3 minutes and collect 10 coins for every correct answer.
Studio: Times tables set by the child’s class teacher. The timer is set to 1 minute and collect 1 coin for every correct answer. Play in Studio enough and the child’s ‘Rock Status’ will improve!
Sound Check: Times tables set by the child’s class teacher. 20 questions are set and the children have 5 sections to answer each one. 5 coins can be collected for each answer.
Festival: Practise all times tables competing with children from all over the world! Collect 1 coin for every correct answer.
Arena: Practise all times tables competing with children from the same year group (bandmates). Collect 1 coin for every correct answer.
RockSlam: Practise all times tables competing with children from the same year group (bandmates) by selecting or being selecting to challenge others. Collect 1 coin for every correct answer. 
After each game, there will be a breakdown of the performance including number of questions correct, incorrect, speed and coins collected.
Spending Earnings
As a reward of all their hard work, children will collect ‘coins’ when they play games. These can be spent in the ‘Shop’ section where children can buy new items and accessories for their avatar. Of course – the more coins collected, the more exciting the items are which can be purchased.
Class Competitiveness!
Miss Goddard and the Year 6 RockStars ambassadors are going to be busy checking statistics and will be coming around to classes in the next few weeks to reward children for their hard work. They will be giving out certificates for achievements such as ‘Highest Earner’, ‘Most Played’, ‘Rock Status’ and ‘Fastest Speed’. The competition is on!
We hope that children enjoy this exciting resource; please encourage children to have a go at logging in at home to aid their maths. Feel free to pop in and speak to your child’s class teacher if there are any problems or you need further guidance.
Happy Rocking!
Maths Team
TRIP TO THE GORDON BROWN CENTRE REMINDER
Our trip has finally arrived! Tomorrow we will be leaving school at 9am prompt so it is very important that all children are in school for register at 8:45 am.
We will be based in woodland so your child must wear/bring
We are all looking forward to the trip. Thank you all again for your continued support.
The Year 4 Team.
As your children will probably have told you, today we had the most amazing day learning about the Romans.
This morning we had the chance to play a couple of Roman games and learnt about life in Ancient Rome in which we got to look at some artefacts in the gazebo.
Then this afternoon got very exciting when we learnt about the Roman Army, their armour and then finished off with some gladiator fighting.
As you can imagine we took so many more photos than we can put on here, so we are going to create a photo montage on display in the Year 4 corridor. So on Monday’s Open Evening, make sure to look out for these outside 4C.
Thank you so much for all of your contributions towards this fantastic day, and the costumes that you all put together.
Year 4 Team 🙂
We are very excited about our special visitor coming in on the 10th July for our Roman Day. They have requested that the children come into school dressed as Romans, as we have suggested on the letter we sent home, but this can be as simple as an adult sized t-shirt, belt and some sandals. Please note that the children do not need to bring in any props such as swords or shields as they will be Roman citizens and not soldiers.
On the 6th July, the children will be finding out their new classes for next year. As it stated on the newsletter, we will be telling the children on that Friday morning and then go straight to their new classes for some exciting activities. As you can imagine the children have been talking a lot about next year and what to do if they are not put in the same class, such as arranging to meet at break time with their friends. We have been really proud that they have already been doing this after splitting for Maths and Book Club this half term, and we hope this continues next year.
A last reminder, please make sure that all of the children have their PE kits in everyday. We have noticed that there are many children who either forget to bring in their kits, or wear them to an after school club and then don’t bring them in the next day.
Thank you for your support
Year 4 Team
We are continuing to enjoy our Prancing Piranhas topic, and have finally got round to finishing all of our amazing art work.
We have learnt about the pop artist Andy Warhol and his famous image of the soup cans.We have then made our own version creating weird and wonderful flavours of soup. 
Next, we have been graphic designers thinking about how we could use negative space in our name logos. This has been a tricky concept to master, but all children have had a go and designed their own name logo with some fantastic results. This then helped us to create packaging for Uncle Ernie’s Potted Pilchards, using some of these ideas.
Overall a very arty start to the term.
Enjoy the bank holiday weekend.
The Year 4 Team.