Year 4
At Sacred Heart, we use The Oxford Reading and Writing Criterion to aid us in our assessment of reading and writing skills.
These criteria describe the reading and writing journey that children make, from their first pre-writing behaviours through to a more complex and sophisticated understanding and mastery of writing skills. The reading and Writing Criterion Scales break down children’s development into small steps so that it is easy to identify the point children have reached, and the steps they need to make next in order to progress.
Although the criteria are set out in a rough hierarchy, every child’s reading and writing journey is different, so the Criterion Scales support a ‘best-fit’ teacher judgement against national expectations.
End of year reading expectations:
By the end of Year 4, children should be able to:
Independently apply a range of strategies to establish meaning from texts, including skimming and scanning for clues or evidence.
Read aloud with intonation and expression, taking into account more sophisticated punctuation and presentational devices.
Summarize and/or explain the main points of a text.
Use knowledge of text structures to locate information.
Refer to specific parts of a text in support of thoughts, ideas and opinions. Make simple inferences and interpretations based on clues from the text. Say how and why a writer has created an impact on the reader.
Recognize and discuss the work of some well-known writers.
Essential Year 4 Writing 4 skills:
The following skills must be secured as a priority in Year 4:
Produce close to a side or more of A4 writing that is clear and coherent with some of the features below.
Interpret the stimulus and purpose broadly accurately and demonstrate about 75% accuracy in basic skills.
Show variety in sentence structure, including opening in a range of ways, adding detail and/or description and using a wider range of connectives and punctuation.
Use interesting language with some use of words that are ambitious for their age (occasional misuse or ‘purple prose’ is acceptable).
Use most past and present tense verbs accurately.
Begin to use direct speech and a wider range of connectives (conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions) to show time, place and cause.
Begin to use paragraphs.
Produce handwriting that is neat and mainly joined.
Initiate edits and improvements to their work by proof reading what they have written.
Year 4 – end of year expectations:
By the end of Year 4/P5, children should be able to:
Produce more than a side of A4 writing that is clear and coherent with strong features and accurate interpretation of the stimulus and purpose.
Spell most common words on the Year 3 and 4 word lists correctly, plus all compound words and many complex words.
Show variety in sentence type and structure, including more sophisticated sentence openings, adding detail and/or description and using a wider range of sophisticated connectives.
Use interesting language with a wide range of words that are ambitious for their age (occasional misuse is acceptable).
Use a wide range of punctuation accurately.
Use a wider range of connectives (conjunctions, adverbs and prepositions) to show time, place and cause.
Produce handwriting that is neat and joined.
Organize writing appropriately for the purpose, including using paragraphs.
Initiate edits and improvements to their work by proof reading what they have written.
Children are expected to be a ‘Secure Standard