Year 4 Writing Curriculum at West Wycombe School

Our Year 4 writing curriculum is designed to equip students with the skills they need to become proficient and confident writers. By focusing on key skills, we ensure that our students meet the expectations of the national curriculum and develop into the type of writers who can effectively communicate their ideas and engage their readers.

Key Skills covered:

Composition

When planning a text: 

• Discuss a piece of writing similar to that I am going to write and learn from its layout, word choices and from the grammatical structures used.   

• Discuss and record ideas when they plan. 

When drafting and writing a text: 

• Compose sentences and dialogue in speech before writing them on paper, using these opportunities to try out new, rich and varied vocabulary and to experiment with different types of sentences. 

• Use paragraphs to organise writing around a theme. 

• Further create settings, characters and plot when writing stories by, for example, using expanded noun phrases and adverbials to add detail.   

• Use headings, sub-headings and other organisational devices when writing non-fiction. 

When evaluating and editing a text: 

• Assess the effectiveness of their own and others’ writing and suggest improvements. 

• Suggest changes that improve consistency in their writing by, for example, suggesting a change in word choice or replacing a noun with a pronoun to avoid repetition. 

• Proof-read for spelling and punctuation errors. 

• Read their own writing aloud to a group or to the whole class, using appropriate expression, control and volume to make their meaning clear. 

Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation

• Understand the difference between the plural -s and the possessive -s (the cat's, the cats'). 

• Write in Standard English most of the time, particularly when selecting the verb forms e.g. 'We were and 'They did' rather than 'They was' and 'We done'. 

• Add detail to their writing by using adjectives and prepositions e.g. 'the man waited' becomes 'the elderly man waited with tears in his eyes'. 

• Begin sentences with adverbial phrases such as 'Later than day,...', 'After a while,...', 'Once we had finished,...' 

• Use paragraphs to organise ideas around a theme. 

• Choose between nouns and pronouns appropriately so that their writing is clear but not repetitive. 

• Use inverted commas and other punctuation to indicate direct speech. For example, "Stop! I want to talk to you," she exclaimed. 

• Begin to use the apostrophe to mark plural possession, recognising the difference between the girl’s name and the girls’ names. 

• Use commas when writing fronted adverbial phrases. For example, 'Later that day,...', 'After a while,...', 'Once we had finished,...' 

Spelling

• Use further prefixes and suffixes and understand how to add them. 

• Spell further homophones. 

• Identify commonly misspelt words and attempt to correct them. 

• Understand how to place the apostrophe within regular and irregular plurals. For example, 'The girls’ and boys’ teacher but 'The children’s teacher'. 

• Use the first two or three letters of a word to check spelling in a dictionary. 

Handwriting

• Use diagonal and horizontal joins and understand which letters are best left un-joined. 

• Write with increasing legibility, consistency and quality in their handwriting. For example, making sure their down strokes are parallel and the same size. 

• Write with increasing legibility, consistency and quality in their handwriting. For example, making sure the lines of writing are spaced so that the letters on different lines do not overlap.