Curso 4
Grade 4 English Tutoring
Live online Grade 4 English in groups of four: possessive apostrophes, their there and they're, similes and word choice, and planning a page of writing.
La respuesta corta
Grade 4 English is where a piece of writing becomes about a page long and has to be planned. The year covers silent letters, prefixes and suffixes, homophones, historical and fantasy stories, playscripts, possessive apostrophes, direct speech, verb tenses, similes and alliteration, and diary, news and explanation writing.
Lo que cubrimos en Inglés de 4º curso
- Spelling: silent letters, prefixes and suffixes
- Homophones: their, there and they're
- Reading historical, fantasy and issue-based stories
- Playscripts and stage directions
- Commas, and apostrophes for possession
- Punctuating direct speech
- Multi-clause sentences and a wider range of connectives
- Past, present and future verb forms
- Similes, alliteration and word choice for effect
- Writing diary entries, news reports and explanations
Al final del año
- Read a range of fiction and non-fiction and explain how a writer's word choices affect the reader.
- Use commas, apostrophes and speech marks accurately in an extended piece of writing.
- Plan, draft and edit a piece of writing of around a page for a specific purpose and audience.
Dónde se atascan los alumnos
- Possessive apostrophes versus plurals, and the their / there / they're trio.
- Writing that is all plot and no description — difficulty expanding a sentence with adverbials and detail.
Possession, plurals and the their/there/they're trio
Grade 3 taught the apostrophe for contractions. Grade 4 adds possession, and the two rules now compete for the same mark on the page, which is why accuracy often gets worse before it gets better.
The homophones are a separate problem and need a separate method. Their, there and they're sound identical, so no amount of reading aloud will catch the error — the student has to check by substitution, replacing 'they're' with 'they are' and seeing whether the sentence still works.
Plot without description
A Grade 4 story often reads as a list of events: he went, then he saw, then he ran. Everything necessary is there and nothing is worth reading, and the student cannot see the difference because to them the story is vivid.
Expanding a sentence is a teachable skill rather than a talent. Where did he run, how, and what did it feel like — three questions asked of one sentence at a time — builds the habit faster than being asked for 'more description'.
Plan, draft, edit
A page is long enough that a student who starts writing without a plan will lose control of it around the middle. This is the year planning stops being an optional teacher instruction and starts being the thing that makes the writing work.
Editing is the harder half, because it requires reading your own work as though someone else wrote it. We ask for one specific improvement per read rather than a general tidy — check the apostrophes, then check the tense, then check whether each paragraph earns its place.
- Stages Grade 4 writing is expected to go through: plan, draft, edit
- 3Stages Grade 4 writing is expected to go through: plan, draft, edit[1]
- Session length
- 45 minSession length
- Maximum students in a group
- 4Maximum students in a group
Preguntas frecuentes
What English should a Grade 4 student know?
Reading fiction and non-fiction and explaining how a writer's word choices land, using commas, apostrophes and speech marks accurately across a longer piece, and planning, drafting and editing about a page of writing for a stated purpose and audience.
How do I stop my child mixing up their, there and they're?
Substitution rather than rules. If 'they are' fits, it is they're; if you could point at a place, it is there; if something belongs to them, it is their. Reading aloud will never catch this one because all three sound the same.
My child's stories are boring but technically correct. What now?
Work on one sentence at a time rather than asking for more description. Take a plain sentence and ask where, how and what it felt like, then rewrite it. Doing that three times in a lesson teaches expansion in a way that a general instruction does not.
Fuentes
- Cambridge Primary English curriculum — Cambridge Assessment International Education
- Cambridge Primary English Curriculum Framework 0058 — Cambridge Assessment International Education
- National curriculum in England: English programmes of study — Department for Education
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