English topics explained for parents
English in England runs from phonics and first sentences in Year 1 to Shakespeare and Romantic poetry in Years 10 and 11. Along the way children are taught speaking and listening, reading, spelling, handwriting, grammar and writing, and each stage builds on the one before. These guides set out what is taught in each year, so you can see where your child is now and what comes next.
Key Stage 3 English
- Standard English and register
- Grammar in challenging texts and for effect
- Understanding challenging texts
- Reading critically: language and structure
- Drama, comparison and authors
- Reading widely: Shakespeare and beyond
- Improvising and performing scripts and poetry
- Speeches, presentations and debates
- Organising and rhetorical devices
- Drafting, editing and proofreading
- Writing for different purposes
Key Stage 4 English
- Spoken vs written language and registers
- Grammar and vocabulary for effect
- Purpose, context, themes and characterisation
- Evidence, bias and writers’ choices
- Comparing texts and personal response
- Shakespeare, classics and Romantic poetry
- Presentations, debates and performance
- Group discussion and listening
- Notes, drafting and proofreading
- Writing for purpose and audience
Key Stage 1 English
Year 1 English
- Checking and sharing writing
- Saying and sequencing sentences
- How words make sentences
- Spaces and sentence punctuation
- Plurals, verb endings and un-
- Capital letters and digits
- Pencil grip and letter formation
- Understanding what we read and hear
- Talking about books together
- Enjoying stories, rhymes and poems
- Prefixes, suffixes and dictation
- ff, ll, ss, zz, ck, tch, nk, ve
- Adding -s, -es, -ing, -ed, -er, -est
- Vowel spellings: ai, ay, oi, oy, ee, ea and more
- Vowel spellings: oo, oa, ow, igh, air and more
- Words ending -y; ph, wh and k
- Prefix un-, compound and tricky words
- Spelling with phonics
- Spelling sounds, tricky words and the alphabet
- Capitals for names, days and I
- Spaces and joining with ‘and’
- Word endings, longer words and contractions
- Phonics, blending and tricky words
Year 2 English
- Planning before we write
- Revising and reading aloud
- Writing for different purposes
- Sentence types, noun phrases and joining
- Past and present tense
- Commas in lists and apostrophes
- Suffixes: nouns, adjectives and adverbs
- Letter size, spacing and joining
- Favourite words and poems by heart
- Understanding what we read
- Discussing books and poems
- Stories, poems and non-fiction
- Apostrophes and suffixes
- Endings -le, -el, -al, -il and -y
- Changing y, dropping e, doubling
- a before l, o, -ey and s spellings
- Spellings after w and qu
- Suffixes -ment, -ness, -ful, -less, -ly
- Contractions and apostrophes
- Homophones and tricky words
- Soft c, soft g, kn, gn and wr
- Spelling sounds and homophones
- Noun phrases, tenses and joining words
- Punctuation and types of sentence
- Tricky words and fluent reading
- Longer words and suffixes
Years 3 and 4 English
- Drafting sentences, paragraphs and stories
- Editing, proofreading and reading aloud
- Planning by learning from model texts
- Joined handwriting and legibility
- Performing poems and plays
- Inference, questioning and prediction
- Main ideas and non-fiction
- Reading widely, myths and legends
- Plural apostrophes, dictionaries and dictation
- Prefixes, y and ou spellings
- Endings -tion, -sion, -cian, -ous, -sure
- Greek, French and Latin spellings; ei, eigh, ey
- Plural apostrophes and homophones
- Spelling words: accident to difficult
- Spelling words: disappear to important
- Spelling words: interest to potatoes
- Spelling words: pressure to woman
- Suffixes, –ation and –ly
- Prefixes, suffixes and homophones
- Explaining and justifying ideas
- Presenting, performing and debating
- Listening, questioning and group talk
- Direct speech, commas and apostrophes
- Conjunctions, present perfect, fronted adverbials
- Reading new words from their parts
Year 3 English
Year 4 English
Years 5 and 6 English
- Drafting: grammar, narrative and précis
- Cohesion and organisational devices
- Editing for effect, tense, agreement and register
- Proofreading and performing writing
- Planning for audience and purpose
- Handwriting and speed
- Themes, comparisons and poetry
- Inference, prediction and summarising
- Figurative language, fact and opinion
- Discussing and debating books
- Reading widely and recommending books
- Dictionaries and thesaurus
- Spelling list: queue to yacht
- Endings -ant, -ance, -ent, -ence
- Endings -able, -ible, -ably, -ibly
- -fer words and hyphens
- ei after c and ough words
- Silent letters and confused words
- Spelling words: accommodate to convenience
- Spelling words: correspond to hindrance
- Spelling list: identity to pronunciation
- Endings -cious, -tious, -cial and -tial
- Prefixes, suffixes and silent letters
- Arguing, hypothesising and evaluating
- Public speaking, performance and register
- Active listening and discussion
- Noun phrases, modal verbs, relative clauses
- Semicolons, colons, hyphens and brackets
- Formal language, passive and perfect forms
- Roots, prefixes and suffixes in reading