Reading
Our Class Text and Comprehension
In term 3 and 4, our reading comprehension lessons will be based upon our class text, “The Firework Makers Daughter”, which is an award-winning novel written by Phillip Pullman. The story centres around a young girl called Lila who longs to become a Firework-Maker, like her father. Against his wishes, she runs away to the volcano, Mount Merapi, to find Royal Sulphur, a task all Firework-Makers must complete. Lila meets many challenges during her journey up the mountain. Her encounter with the Fire-Fiend determines once and for all whether she will become a Firework-Maker.
To find out more about this text, view our “Firework-Maker’s Daughter Knowledge Organiser.”
For further information about the reading skills we will focus upon this term, please view “Pankhurst’s Sequential Reading Curriculum”
Independent Reading
In class, we will continue to use the Accelerated Reader program. For further information about this, please view a Parent’s Guide to Accelerated Reader. (https://help.renlearn.co.uk/AR/ARParentGuide) If you need your child’s AR password, please contact me (Mrs Reeves).
Writing
Over the course of the term, we will be writing character descriptions; non-chronological reports; poetry; newspaper reports; diaries and playscripts.
Firstly, we will be writing descriptions of the main characters in, ‘The Firework-Maker’s Daughter’, with a focus on extending vocabulary and making our writing detailed and interesting for the reader.
Following on from this, we will be writing a diary entry from the perspective of the main character in our class text. When writing a diary entry, we will be; writing in the past tense; in the first person, including details in chronological order and including personal feelings and emotions.
‘The Firework-Makers Daughter’ will be the starting point to study playscripts and their features and even have a go at writing our own version of a playscript.
We will also be writing a non-chronological report about the Earth’s crust, using presentational features. Non-chronological report writing will teach the children how to select relevant information and group related ideas into paragraphs. The children will carry out research into the Earth’s crust to write non-chronological reports that use topic-specific vocabulary and presentational features, such as subheadings and images.
After that, we will be writing a shape poem about a volcano, using expanded noun phrases and using this opportunity to encourage children’s creativity and develop their use of language. At the end of the task pupils will read their poems aloud to check for sense and rhythm.
Later in the term we will be writing Newspaper reports; grouping ideas into paragraphs and write in a clear, concise style. Eyewitnesses reports of the earthquake and quotations will be used in their newspaper reports. We will edit and redraft the reports, using them to create a class newspaper about the earthquake.
Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling
Punctuation
This term we will learn to use the apostrophe for regular plural nouns; edit deliberate punctuation errors; to know how to use the comma before closing inverted commas, in direct speech.
Grammar
This term we will revise coordinating and subordinating conjunctions; revisit commas in a list; introduce prepositions; recap adverbials; introduce prepositions; use a variety of conjunctions.
Spellings
During our spelling lessons this term, we will introduce the suffixes “ment, -ness, -ful, -less, -ly”; diagraph and trigraph focus; focus on words beginning with “w”; introduce words with: “-le”, “-el”, “-al” and “-il” at the end; adding “-es” to verbs and nouns ending in “y”. To view our weekly breakdown of our spellings, please view our Term 3 and Term 4 Homework Grid.
In addition to these weekly spelling rules, we will continue to learn and spell words from the Year 3 and 4 statutory spelling list. For an overview of these spellings, please view the Spelling word list for Year 3 and Year 4.