Reading

In Year 4, we continue to nurture a love of reading while developing pupils’ fluency, comprehension, and confidence as independent readers. Our approach combines daily reading practice, guided reading sessions, and opportunities to discuss and enjoy a wide range of high-quality texts. Through regular exposure to different authors, genres, and styles, pupils deepen their understanding of language and begin to develop their own preferences as readers.

Faster Reading Scheme

As part of our Faster Reading programme, pupils read for twenty minutes, four times a week. This structured approach helps to build stamina, fluency, and comprehension skills. During each session, we read a section of the text together and discuss key vocabulary, characters, and events. At the end of the session, the class summarises what has been read to ensure understanding and recall.

Each week concludes with a short comprehension activity, allowing pupils to reflect on the week’s reading and demonstrate their understanding through discussion and written responses.

During the academic year, pupils will be exploring a variety of engaging novels, including:

• The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo

• Friend or Foe by Michael Morpurgo

• The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo
• The Firework-Maker’s Daughter by Philip Pullman
• Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
• Who Let the Gods Out?  by Maz Evans

These stories offer rich opportunities to explore themes such as friendship, courage, and empathy while strengthening key reading and inference skills.

Developing Reading Skills

Throughout the year, we focus on helping pupils to:

• Read aloud with expression, accuracy, and understanding

• Use strategies such as predicting, summarising, and questioning to support comprehension

• Discuss characters, settings, and themes using evidence from the text

• Identify and explain the meaning of unfamiliar words in context

• Express personal opinions about what they read and justify these with examples

We encourage all pupils to read regularly at home, both independently and with an adult, to reinforce classroom learning and foster a lifelong enjoyment of books.

Handwriting, Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation

In Year 4, we continue to strengthen pupils’ key literacy skills through a balanced focus on handwriting, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Our aim is to help every child write with increasing fluency, accuracy, and confidence, while taking pride in the presentation of their work. These skills are taught both discretely and through cross-curricular writing opportunities, helping pupils apply what they learn in meaningful contexts.

Handwriting

Pupils develop a fluent, joined style of handwriting using diagonal and horizontal strokes to link letters. They also learn which letters are best not joined when adjacent, improving the clarity and consistency of their writing.
Children are encouraged to take pride in their presentation by:

• Underlining titles and dates neatly and consistently

• Starting writing from the margin

• Maintaining a legible and uniform style across all subjects

These habits help pupils develop care, discipline, and confidence in their written work.

Spelling

Our spelling programme helps pupils become more accurate, thoughtful, and independent writers. Throughout the year, children will:

• Explore prefixes and suffixes (Appendix 1)

• Learn about homophones and other commonly misspelled or tricky words

• Use the possessive apostrophe correctly

• Use dictionaries to check spellings, focusing on the first two or three letters of a word

• Practise writing sentences from memory and through teacher dictation

For example:

“Printing ink is terribly messy!” exclaimed the disgruntled teaching assistant.

Regular, structured practice enables children to recognise spelling patterns, understand word meanings, and apply correct spellings in their independent writing.

Grammar and Punctuation

Pupils build on their knowledge of key grammatical concepts outlined in Appendix 2 of the National Curriculum. By the end of Year 4, they will:

• Use the present perfect tense accurately, contrasting it with the past tense

• Choose nouns and pronouns carefully to ensure clarity and cohesion

• Use conjunctions, adverbs, and prepositions to express time and cause

• Begin to use fronted adverbials to make their writing more engaging and varied

These skills enable pupils to write with greater precision, variety, and control, preparing them well for the demands of upper Key Stage 2.

Writing

In Year 4, pupils continue to develop their writing skills, focusing on composition, structure, and accuracy. They are encouraged to plan, draft, and refine their work, drawing on a wide range of vocabulary and grammatical structures to communicate ideas clearly and creatively.

Composition and Planning

Pupils learn to plan their writing by:

• Discussing high-quality texts similar to the writing they are planning, helping them understand structure, vocabulary, and grammar

• Recording ideas and organising thoughts before writing

• Composing and rehearsing sentences orally, including dialogue, to build fluency and confidence

This approach allows children to gradually develop a richer vocabulary, a wider range of sentence structures, and more sophisticated ideas in their writing.

Writing

During the drafting process, pupils focus on:

• Organising paragraphs around a central theme

• In narratives, creating engaging settings, characters, and plots

• Using simple organisational devices, such as headings and subheadings, to structure their work effectively

These strategies help pupils to produce coherent, structured writing across different genres, from imaginative stories to factual reports.

Evaluating and Editing

Pupils are encouraged to take an active role in improving their writing by:

• Assessing the effectiveness of their own and others’ work and suggesting improvements

• Proposing changes to grammar and vocabulary to enhance clarity and consistency, including the correct use of pronouns

• Proofreading carefully for spelling, punctuation, and presentation

Reading Aloud

Pupils are supported to read their own writing aloud to a group or the whole class, using appropriate intonation, tone, and volume to ensure the meaning is clear. This helps develop confidence, communication skills, and a deeper understanding of how their writing sounds to a reader.

Writing Genres

Year 4 pupils explore a wide range of writing genres:

Fiction:

• Playscripts

• Myths and legends

• Fairy stories

• Narratives

Poetry:

• Writing and performing poems and playscripts aloud

• Exploring different forms, including free verse, narrative, nonsense poems, choral verse, kennings, and haiku

Non-fiction:

• Instructional texts

• Non-chronological reports

• Recounts

• Explanations

• Persuasive writing

Through exposure to diverse genres, pupils develop versatility in writing, adapting style and structure to suit purpose and audience.