TT Rock Stars Northern Wrangle Live BBC Breakfast

Well July 25 th was a day to remember and celebrate here at Parklands. We hosted the North of England XTables Rock Wrangle. The event was filmed by BBC Breakfast; BBC Look North with our great friend Harry Gration; Made In Leeds; Radio Aire; Radio Leeds. We are interviewed out ….. but continue we will as after the sleepover at school we are live on national TV from 7-9 BBC Breakfast where we will showcase our XTables to the Nation. What an awesome 36 hours – enjoy the helicopter ride!

Wow! What an amazing day. We knew we were good at times tables at Parklands but little did we realise how good we were. The practice in Friday assemblies had paid off for Ryley, Harvey, Brooklynlouis & Mikiyas. They were the top four quickest children on Times Tables Rockstars, the amazing website that we use to get our times tables the quickest that they can be.

Their reward was a chance to attend the Times Table Rockstars Rock Wrangle an event where our children get to compete against other schools in their times tables both division and multiplication facts. The prize if they won was the ride of a lifetime over Leeds in a helicopter. Our guys were feeling confident but there were some really fast time tablers, a lot of them from High Schools, with beards!

The heats were performed and our fabulous four were interviewed for BBC Breakfast and filmed with Harry Gration for Look North. Their attitude was amazing and they all performed out of their skins; we were so proud of them. In the end Riley was only 10 questions away from qualifying and this was against children 4 or 5 years older than him.

So there was to be no helicopter ride; or so the children thought. Mr Dyson had other ideas…he had secured our children a special ride in the helicopter. They soared high above the Leeds skyline and what an experience. A truly wonderful day and reward for hard work.

The children were sleeping soundly as I welcomed BBC Breakfast at 445am to set up for the filming that was to be live from 6am. The children blurry eyed were a woken at 530 before washing, changing and getting ready to enter the hall at 6am for a briefing…..

The filming live began at 620am after a warming rendition of ‘Sweet Caroline’ from Neil Diamond ….. this was followed by a 720 am slot with the ace BBC reporter Tim Muffett…. The children impressed and dazzled the nation – a nation of 20 million people eagerly tuned in. A big slot went live at 740am and another at 820am…. before finally the biggest slot(due to the high amount of feedback to BBC HQ) went live at 855am. The children entertained the crew between slots with singing all their favourite songs….. it was truly a magical morning – showcasing not a few great X Tables Children – but the whole school. The feedback the children have received from around the country has been quite simply amazing…… Rock on ….

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/pupils-rock-times-tables-live-breakfast-tv