English

Writing

This term, we will be focusing on writing narratives. We will begin with a review of what we learnt about narratives in Term One. Students will review the structure of a narrative, literary features such as alliteration, similes, triples, onomatopoeia, metaphors, personification, emotive language and rhetorical questions and the use of dialogue. The students will complete a cold write assessment and will use the feedback to set goals for improvement.

Through writing sessions, the children will develop their skills in planning and structuring a narrative. They will learn to use a story graph to create an engaging storyline building tension to a problem and solution. Students will also use the story graph to show how a character tracks through the story and experiences a range of emotions during the highs and lows. Students will apply their knowledge of language features to hook in and engage the reader throughout the story.

Students will focus on secretarial skills and apply a proofreading/editing checklist to check their work. To support their writing, they will review nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and will learn how to use quotation marks for direct speech. 

Students will work on a structured spelling program revising misconceptions with vowel blends, digraphs including common homonyms, prefixes and suffixes. They will also focus on word origins and learn to use this as a strategy to read and write more complex words.

Reading

During reading sessions, students will develop their critical thinking skills and they will show their thinking through predicting, clarifying and posing questions. They will practise the skill of using evidence from the text to support their ideas. 

Students will learn skills to identify the main idea and key details of the text they are reading.  They will think about the setting and how it relates to the theme, character and plot. Students will use clues such as the title, setting, interactions with characters and specific events to identify problems in the story and to predict how they may be resolved. 

Students will learn to think critically about a character whilst reading. They will follow the journey of the character and identify how key events in the story impact on the emotions of the character. 

Speaking and Listening

Students will have the opportunity to improve their speaking and listening skills through collaborative group work and through reciprocal reading. They will also have the opportunity to plan and present an oral presentation on a topical issue related to this term’s inquiry unit.