Key Stage 2 · Year 4 · ages 8 or 9
Year 4 English: what your child learns
Year 4 grammar brings plural possessive apostrophes (the girls’ names), fronted adverbials and Standard English verb forms such as “we were”. Children write expanded noun phrases, organise ideas into paragraphs and punctuate direct speech accurately, and read for inference and main ideas. They also edit and proofread their own work, and present and debate their views.
Guides for parents
Year 4 English
Fronted adverbials and noun phrases
How Year 4 children expand noun phrases with adjectives and prepositional phrases, use fronted adverbials, and put the comma in the right place, with a worked example.
Year 4 English
Paragraphs, pronouns and direct speech
How Year 4 children organise writing into paragraphs, use pronouns to avoid repeating nouns, and punctuate direct speech correctly, with a worked example and home ideas.
Year 4 English
Apostrophes and Standard English verbs
How Year 4 children tell plural -s from possessive -s, place the apostrophe in the girl’s and the girls’ names, and use Standard English verb forms such as we were.
Everything in the Year 4 English curriculum
The National Curriculum topics for Year 4, in the order the National Curriculum lists them.
Spoken language
- Listening, questioning and collaborative talk (Years 3 and 4)
- Explaining, justifying and exploring ideas (Years 3 and 4)
- Presenting, performing and debating (Years 3 and 4)
Reading – word reading
- Using root words, prefixes and suffixes to read new words (Years 3 and 4)
Reading – comprehension
- Reading widely: fiction, myths, legends and non-fiction (Years 3 and 4)
- Performing poems and plays; powerful words (Years 3 and 4)
- Inference, questioning and prediction (Years 3 and 4)
- Main ideas, text structure and retrieving information (Years 3 and 4)
Writing – transcription (spelling)
- Prefixes, suffixes, homophones and often-misspelt words (Years 3 and 4)
- Plural possessive apostrophes, dictionaries and dictation (Years 3 and 4)
Writing – handwriting
- Joining letters and improving legibility (Years 3 and 4)
Writing – composition
- Planning by learning from model texts (Years 3 and 4)
- Drafting: sentences, paragraphs, settings, characters and plot (Years 3 and 4)
- Evaluating, editing, proofreading and reading aloud (Years 3 and 4)
Writing – vocabulary, grammar and punctuation
Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation – English Appendix 2
Spelling – English Appendix 1
- Adding suffixes to longer words; –ation and –ly (Years 3 and 4)
- y for /ɪ/, ou for /ʌ/ and more prefixes (Years 3 and 4)
- Endings –sure, –ture, –sion, –ous, –tion, –ssion and –cian (Years 3 and 4)
- Spellings from Greek, French and Latin; ei, eigh and ey (Years 3 and 4)
- Plural possessive apostrophe and homophones (Years 3 and 4)
- Statutory word list years 3 and 4: accident to difficult (Years 3 and 4)
- Statutory word list years 3 and 4: disappear to important (Years 3 and 4)
- Statutory word list years 3 and 4: interest to potatoes (Years 3 and 4)
- Statutory word list years 3 and 4: pressure to woman (Years 3 and 4)