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ENGLISH

Year 4

TEACHERS: Karen Haining and Roz Comport

TERM: 4

STAGE: 2

Integration:

Mathematics, HSIE, PDHPE, Science and Technology, Creative and Practical Arts

SUBSTRAND

OVERVIEW

OUTCOMES

Talking and Listening

• Group work
• Class discussions
• News
• Poetry recitals

• Interacts effectively in groups and pairs, adopting a range of roles using various listening strategies for different situations
• Communicates in informal and formal classroom activities for an increasing range of purposes on a variety of topics across the curriculum
• Identifies common organisational patterns and some characteristic language features of a few types of predictable spoken texts.

Reading

• Guided Reading sessions
• Whole class reading of The Christmas Mystery, plus myths and legends, as well as other fiction and non-fiction texts which relate to other KLAs
• Research in library time including the Internet and CD- ROMs

• Reads independently a wide range of texts on increasingly challenging topics and justifies own interpretation of ideas, information and events
• Uses efficiently an integrated range of skills and strategies when reading and interpreting written texts
• Discusses how writers relate to their readers in different ways, how they create a variety of worlds through language and how they use language features to achieve a wide range of purposes
• Discusses the text structure of text types and those grammatical features that are characteristic of those text types.

Writing

• Study of myths and legends through deconstruction.à reconstruction à individual construction
• Spalding lessons
• Personal spelling dictionary
• Handwriting lessons in Spalding notebook

• Drafts, revises, proofreads and publishes well-structured texts that are more demanding in terms of topic, audience, and written language features
• Produces texts clearly, effectively and accurately using the sentence structure, grammatical features and punctuation conventions of the text type
• Discusses how own texts have been structured to achieve their purpose and the grammatical features characteristic of the various text types used
• Uses knowledge of letter-sound correspondences, common letter patterns and a range of strategies to spell familiar and unfamiliar words
• Uses joined letters when writing in Foundation style.

SUBSTRAND

GENERIC SKILLS

DETAILS OF LEARNING EXPERIENCES

Talking and Listening

• Discussing
• Task Management
• Group work
• Research

• Guided Reading sessions will be held 3 times a week, where students interact in small ability based groups, discussing the events, features, etc related to their novel. They will be required to respond to different viewpoints, act as the reporter to summarise the main points of discussion and retell events in sequence.
• Class discussions in all KLAs will also provide many opportunities for the students to present ideas and information orally
• The students will research and then teach the class on a topic of their choice. This will happen weekly in small groups. The 'teachers' can chose their topic and the audience can also choose the group to attend.

Reading

• Group work
• Research

GUIDED READING

• Guided Reading group sessions will be conducted 3 times a week to develop and enhance reading skills. Through reading with small groups, the girls will:

1. read aloud, using appropriate stress, pause and intonation
2. monitor others reading as well as using self correction strategies (rereading, reading on, pausing etc)
3. use knowledge of content, context, graphics, headings, etc to work out the meaning of unknown words
4. contribute to a group summary after reading

• The aim for this term is to read for enjoyment and time will also be allocated to DEAR
• Reading of non-fiction texts for HSIE during library research will develop information skills and strategies in finding information for specific purposes from databases, the internet and CD-ROMs. See HSIE for more details.
• Whole class reading of The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder for Christian Studies.

SUBSTRAND

GENERIC SKILLS

LEARNING EXPERIENCES

Writing

• Discussing
• Analysis
• Evaluation
• Applying

This term our focus will be on Myths and Legends. Instruction will follow a sequence of steps over the term that will include whole class responses and group activities.

• Deconstruction of myths and legends:

1. Students discuss what they think Myths and legends are. List all the Myths and Legends the class can think of and try to classify them into the two categories.
2. Students identify who, what, when, where, why of each myth and legend read. (refer to Myths and Legends Pack)

• Reconstruction of Myths:

1. Groups re-sort the jumbled, comic style myths from the book Greek Myths for Young Children. The groups identify the introduction, complication, resolution and coda before reporting and retelling the story to the rest of the class.
2. Using just the pictures from other myths in the same book, girls in pairs or threes write their own story to match the pictures without knowing the original. Compare their versions with the original.

• Construction:

1. Create and draw mythical creatures that will later become a character in their own myths that may either help or hinder the main character.
2. Decide on a phenomenon to explain.
3. Include a well known God or Goddess
4. Write their own myth using the page "Compose a Myth" (see p.34 Activities with Myths)

• Deconstruction of Legends:

1. Dramatise various legends using mime and speech
2. Write a newspaper report outlining the main events of Saint George and the Dragon or present a television report; or
3. Write in the diary of George or the princess on the day that of the rescue.

• Construction of a legend:

1. Create a modern day legend with themselves or another class member as the heroine, which will make them legends in the future. The girls will need to consider what trials and dangers they faced, what heroics they performed, other human characters that were involved, what special skills were required, what tool/tools were used, and how their bravery was rewarded.
2. Edit, redraft and publish, using the word processor

• Extension Activities: Below is a list of extension activities that can be completed by the students.

1. Compare and contrast the heroes from at least two different myths or legends using the Hero worksheet.
2. Research a myth or legend that features a part-human/part-animal creature eg mermaid, minotaur. Design a custom-made item for a mythical creature eg eyeglasses for the Cyclops, a saddle for Pegasus.
3. Choose a legend and design an invention that would have been useful to its hero.
4. Retell a myth or legend to the class.
5. Hercules was given a series of impossible tasks to perform. Students write a modern story of a hero who has to perform a series of impossible tasks.

Additional Activities

• Reasoning
• Task Management
• Following instructions

• Guided Reading responses: It has been decided that the writing tasks for this term will be focused around our Ancient Civilisations/Myths and Legends topic, as it is such a short term and such an exciting topic.

Grammar

• A grammar focus will be included in our study of Myths and Legends. Students will identify grammatical features in the myths and legends they read and through the editing process will add these into their own writing to improve the first draft. (See syllabus for grammatical features of narratives)
• This will be supplemented by a weekly unit from the text Grammar Once a Week.

Spelling

• Task Management
• Following instructions
• Analysis

• Spalding lessons will consist of the following:

1. Mon: 10 theme plus 5 focus words from the rule pages section of the notebook analysed and marked using the Spalding method, will be written into homework books and practiced nightly.
2. Tues: 10 personal words will be revised. These words are collected from the girls own writing and reading during the week and collated in a personal spelling dictionary which is used as a word bank and a reference book.
3. Wed: Oral and written phonogram review
4. Thurs: Rule pages reviewed and written into the front of the notebooks

• Early bird classes for those who need it will be conducted before school.

Handwriting

• Foundation handwriting will be modelled and practiced during Spalding lessons.
• Connected foundation writing is used in all workbooks.