Summer Term 1 - English

This term, Year 4 will be reading ‘The Great Chocoplot’ by Chris Callaghan.

Jelly and her family live in Chompton-on-de-Lyte, where everyone loves a Chocablocka bar or two - so when the end of chocolate is announced, she can't believe it.

Determined to investigate, Jelly and her gran follow a trail of clues to a posh chocolate shop and its owner, the pompous Garibaldi Chocolati. Gari's suspiciously smug, despite his failing business and yucky chocolate.

Is it really the chocopocalypse, or is there a chocoplot afoot?

In our writing sessions, we will be writing our own ‘quest’ story based on our text and other class readers that we have covered this year.  We will be reinforcing the grammar skills that we have learned so far this year, focusing on descriptive detail and speech punctuation. We will also be practising our persuasive skills by writing a letter to Ms Hanson to persuade her to allow us to eat chocolate once a week for our snack.

Spring 2

This term, we will reading George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl.  George Kranky's Grandma is a miserable grouch. George really hates that horrid old witchy woman.  One Saturday morning, George is in charge of giving Grandma her medicine. So-ho! Ah-ha! Ho-hum! George knows exactly what to do.  A magic medicine it will be!  One that will either cure her completely of her horrible grouchiness . . . or blow off the top of her head!

We will be using this text to help us understand how to answer multiple choice questions which is our reading focus for this half term. 

Linking with Science, we will investigate, plan and write explanation texts to provide information on why we need our different types of teeth and also how our digestive system works. During these units of writing, we will be recapping a variety of grammatically features such as fronted adverbials, linking adverbs and conjunctions to reinforce this learning. 

To develop our oracy skills, and to link with our computing lessons, we will then be using our explanation text about teeth to record a podcast about keeping our teeth healthy.

Spring 1

This half term, we are learning all about Greek Myths. We will using the book 'Beasts of Olympus: Beast Keeper' by Lucy Coats. This is about a boy who is reunited with his father who is the Greek God Pan. He is taken to the kingdom of the Gods to see if he can become the new beast keeper. The story introduces the children to different Gods and Goddesses. We will be writing character description of the children's own Gods which they will design based on adjectives. We will also teach the children how to use and build expanded noun phrases and appositives. 

To develop the children's oracy skills, we will have a debate to decide who's God or Goddess is the best. The children will need to use their persuasive language and high level vocabulary to persuade others that their God or Goddess should rule the kingdom!

The children will then be writing their own Greek Myths based on Theseus and the Minotaur. We will be recapping the of use fronted adverbials and how to use more than one for effect.

For our reading lessons, we will be focusing on the reading skill of True or False. The children will need to use their skimming and scanning skills to decide whether information in the questions are true or false. They will be learning to use the text to explain how they know and build on using evidence in their answers.

Autumn 2

This half term, the children are reading 'Scribbleboy' written by Philip Ridley. The reading skills for this half term is matching information together. The children will continue to use skimming and scanning skills to find and match information together that is relevant. 

During our writing lessons, we will be writing a newspaper report based on a mystery scribbler at Woodbridge. The children will learn how to structure a newspaper report. They will learn the importance of an effective headline and how to incorporate speech into a report. The children will also use their Rainbow Grammar lessons to learn how to use fronted adverbials to uplevel their sentences further.

We will also be writing a letter to Ziggy Fuzz (a character in the book) to ask whether we can join his Scribbleboy Fan Club. The children will learn how to structure a letter as well as reinforcing the skill of using fronted adverbials.

English - Autumn Term 1

To start the half term we are writing non-chronological reports about Rabbits; in these we will be using fronted adverbials, possessive apostrophes and subordinating conjunctions.

Our reading text this term is ‘Street Child’ by Berlie Doherty.  This is the story of Jim and his journey after his escaped from a workhouse.

Throughout the term, we will develop our skimming and scanning skills to find facts about the characters as well as infer their characteristics, thoughts and feelings.  The text will also be used as a stimulus for writing a narrative based on 'the wanderer' story receipe.

In our rainbow grammar sessions, we will be learning how to use coordinating conjunctions, adverbial phrases and how to punctuate speech accurately.