Year 5

English

To find out exactly what your child will be learning and when in English, scroll to the bottom of this page and read the English medium-term planning.  

Speaking and Listening

Children will be taught to discuss their learning and to develop speaking skills. They will become more familiar with and confident in, using language in a variety of situations, for a range of audiences and purposes. They will, for example:

• Develop their understanding of a subject through discussions, learning to give their opinions and listen to other viewpoints.
• Speak clearly and in different ways for drama, formal presentations and debate.

Reading

This part of the curriculum is broken down into ‘word reading’ and ‘comprehension’. 

In Year 5, pupils will be reading aloud a wider range of poetry and books written at an age-appropriate interest level with accuracy and at a reasonable speaking pace.  Children will be expected to read frequently, outside as well as in school, for pleasure and information.  They will have the opportunity to listen frequently to stories, poems, non-fiction and other writing. At this stage, word reading will not be directly taught, except where individuals need support.  Instead the focus will be on the teaching of comprehension and inference skills.

They will, for example:

• Retrieve, record and present information from a text
• Summarise the main ideas of a text eg ‘loneliness’ or ‘friendship’
• Predict what may happen based on evidence and clues given
• Discuss and evaluate the text and justify their views
• Use clues from the text to work out characters’ feeling, actions or motives
• Distinguish between fact and opinion
• Identify how language, structure and presentation add to the meaning
• Compare  different texts

Writing

Writing is developed through teaching the following:

Spelling: Children should learn to spell new words correctly and have opportunities to practise spelling skills.  They will be taught spelling patterns and conventions, and draw on their knowledge of word families and roots to help them spell new words correctly.  Children will be expected to use a dictionary and thesaurus.

Handwriting: Pupils will continue to be taught handwriting in order to increase speed, fluency and legibility.

Composition (structure): This includes vocabulary, grammar and punctuation. To develop their composition skills, the children will be taught to:

• Plan, draft, compose, edit and evaluate their writing
• Use a wide variety of punctuation and grammar features
• Select the appropriate grammar and vocabulary to develop the effectiveness of their writing
• Use a range of techniques to build detail into their writing and link ideas within and between paragraphs
• Adapt writing for a range of purposes and audiences as part of their work across the curriculum.

Grammar will be taught throughout the writing process and teachers will follow the terms and concepts of Appendix 2 of the National Curriculum.