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.