Primary School
If we can dream it ... we can do it!Big Read
In addition to individual reading, children at Ladywood will take part in weekly Big Read lessons. In year 4 big reading happens every Thursday. During these sessions children have chance to enjoy our class author books as well as a range of different stories and non- fiction text types. These lessons teach specific reading skills to the children. Each skill is taught with the help of the Big Read characters below.
Spring Term
This term we will be reading is How to Train your Dragon by Cressida Cowell,
We found out more about the author Cressida Cowell.
We drew dragon eyes too.
Before reading the book, we found out more about real life dragons - The Komodo Dragon.
We read an extract describing what it was like for Hiccup going into the cave to steal the dragon. We did lots of work on finding meanings of unknown words to describe what it was like.
We read a second extract where Hiccup and his friends go to Madman's Gully. We looked haw the author had used different words and phrases to create a mood.
We then looked an extract where two sea dragons battled. We had a go writing some alternatives to what happened next.
We also read a story Called Gregory Cool by Caroline Binch. It was about a boy who went to visit his grandparents in Tobago.
We also read a book called Grace and Family. This was also about a girl who went to stay with relatives in another country. We compared how she felt at the beginning of the story to the end of the story. We also compared how the two books were similar and different.
Autumn Term
This term, we will be reading the book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J K Rowling.
We started by by learning more about some of the main characters in the story.
We then started to look at some of the words and phrases the author used to create different atmospheres in he story.
We looked at some poetry in the form of the Sorting Hat ceremony and all got sorted into a house.
We looked at the features of instruction texts. We followed some instructions to make some potions of our own. Then we wrote up some instructions more clearly.
We summarised what has happened in each chapter so far.
We read about when the Troll came into Hogwarts and we read descriptions of what the Troll was like. We found any tricky vocabulary and tried to read round to predict what it meant and then checked it in the dictionary.
Summer Term
We are studying the book The Iron man this half term. In chapter 1, we looked at how the author has used vocabulary to create different pictures, feelings and atmospheres and picked out some of this excellent vocabulary.
In chapter 2, wee looked at how the different characters were feeling and thinking about the Iron Man and what they might want to do about him.
We wrote book reviews of the Iron Man
We read a non fiction text called Saving Energy, We wrote about it from memory using technical vocabulary.
We read a book called Grace and Family. We compared it to the book we read in the Spring term called Gregory Cool.
We also read a non-fiction text about a girl called Geeta and learnt more about what life was like for her in a village in India.
