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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

Year 4 English: what your child learns

Girl reading in the library
Unsure what your child gets up to in English lessons? Get clued up with our guide to the Year 4 English curriculum.

Literacy still brings together the three elements of:

  • Reading
  • Writing
  • Speaking and listening

In literacy this year, the children could be studying one or more of the following topics:

Reading in Year 4 – your child will:

  • apply their growing knowledge of root words, prefixes and suffixes to read aloud and understand the meaning of new words they meet
  • read a range of fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction texts
  • re-tell stories orally
  • perform poems and play scripts, showing understanding through intonation and action
  • infer characters' feelings though their actions, justifying their inference with evidence
  • identify main ideas drawn and summarise these

Children should be allowed to choose a book at school to take home with them to read. You may be given an exercise book to write your comments in when you read with them. Children may read with their teacher in groups (this is called guided reading). Alternatively, they may explore texts as a whole class (this is called Whole Class Reading). Different schools will use different approaches. 
 

Try this at home:

  • Bedtime stories are still important – choose something which may be a little tricky for your child to read themselves
  • Take an interest in what your child reads and encourage them to explain why they like a certain book or author
  • If you have a reluctant reader, try something which is funny, such as a comic or joke book
  • Be a role model – let them see you reading!

Writing in Year 4 – your child will:

  • understand how to spell words with a variety of prefixes and suffixes
  • use the possessive apostrophe in words with regular plurals
  • use a wider range of connectives (when, before, after, while, so, because)
  • start using inverted commas to punctuate speech
  • use fronted adverbials with commas (for example: Cautiously, she opened the door...)
  • become more confident in joining their handwriting, increasing its legibility and quality
  • create settings, characters and plot in narratives using a range of descriptive language
  • use paragraphs to organise ideas around a theme
  • assess and improve their writing

Try this at home:

  • When you are away, encourage your child to send postcards to their friends, or help them find a penpal
  • Suggest your child keeps a diary, writing a little every day, or tries another fun writing activity

Year 4 English worksheets offer ideas of activities to try at home to help your child consolidate their learning.

Check your Y4 child's progress in English with our free Y4 English Progress checks, three mini-tests for the autumn, spring and summer terms.


















Explore the Year 4 English and Maths Learning Journey programmes