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

In English this half term, we will be complimenting our topic question of 'Can we find art in the street?' by writing a biography and a newspaper report. 

We will be exploring the history, what we know of him, of Banksy and his infamous artistry. We will draw inspiration from his art work by choosing one of his characters to create a fictional biography. We will be practising using adverbial clauses, linking adverbs and organisation devices to create our reports. 

Our second unit will explore newspaper reports and this will be inspired by the book 'Scribbleboy' by Philip Ridley. In this unit we will explore creating effective headlines, reporting direct speech and appositives to up-level our writing. 

Our reading skill this half term will be 'matching'. We will build on the skills honed during Autumn 1 to skim and scan textx to enable us to match correct information to statements. 

Autumn 1

Writing

This term in English, we will spend the first three weeks creating a non-chronological report about Badgers and Rabbits. We will build on the skills we learned in year three to explore features such as headings, subheadings, paragraphs, co-ordinating conjunctions, the use of pronouns and key information about each animal. We will begin evaluating other non-chronological reports to deepen our understanding of what makes a report a really effective one. 

Our second writing unit this term will be based on the book "The boy who harnessed the wind". We will be exploring the culture of Malawi and the importance of renewable energy and using our writing skills to create our own version of this book. We will be looking at speech, expanded noun phrases, prepositions and adverbial phrases to elevate our writing. 

Reading 

This half term, we will be focusing on learning how to retrieve information from a text. We will learn how to skim, scan and close read a text to help our understanding. We will use different text types to help us develop our comprehension skills.

We will also be reading 'Scavenger Boy' by Theresa Tomlinson as a class reader.

GAPS - Grammar, punctuation and Spelling

We will be using Rainbow Grammar to help us understand how to structure sentences. We will revisit what a subject, predicate and stop is. Then we will move on to learning about subordinating conjunctions, fronted adverbials, embedded clauses, appositives and non-finite clauses. We will also embed the knowledge on how to use inverted commas to show speech in our writing.

This half term we will continue our spelling journey by developing our knowledge of suffixes and prefixes and learning new spelling patterns to help us in our writing. 

The spelling words to learn set by the National Curriculum can be seen below. This is a list of words to learn by the end of year 4.