Year 4 English: what your child learns
Many children speak well but lose marks when they write: spelling, capital letters, full stops and grammar. Our English practice works on exactly that. Spelling words return again and again until they stick; sentence practice builds the habit of capital letters and correct punctuation; reading questions check understanding. Practice is matched to your child’s year and the National Curriculum, from Year 1 phonics to Year 6 SATs spelling, punctuation and grammar.
What Your Child Will Learn in Year 4 English
Spelling
Spelling gap-fill practice, homophones, and suffixes and prefixes.
Homophones and word-building through prefixes and suffixes are core Year 4 national curriculum spelling requirements.
Grammar & punctuation
Sentence-level grammar and punctuation practice for Year 4.
Grammar covered here builds directly towards what’s tested in the Year 6 KS2 SATs.
Writing sentences
Finding and correcting mistakes in sentences.
Accurate sentence construction continues to be a core Year 4 writing skill.
Reading & comprehension
Comprehension passages with retrieval questions, plus vocabulary-building word-bank practice.
Reading comprehension skills practised now feed directly into the Year 6 KS2 SATs reading paper.
How You Can Help at Home
Play ‘spot the homophone’
When reading together, pause on words like ‘their/there’ or ‘which/witch’ and ask which one fits — it’s exactly what’s practised in Homophones.
Encourage checking over written work
Before handing in homework, ask your child to read their sentence back — it builds the self-correction skill tested in Sentence correction.
Use the dashboard to catch quiet gaps
A child can seem fine day-to-day while one topic quietly falls behind — the parent dashboard makes that visible.
Year 4 & KS2 SATs Relevance
There are no SATs in Year 4 for English (Year 4’s national test is the Multiplication Tables Check, which is maths-only). The spelling and grammar skills built this year continue building towards Year 6.
Example Homework Questions
Question
Choose the correct word: Please ___ the door. (shut / shutt)
Expected Answer
shut
Skill Tested
Spelling
Question
Choose the correct word: I ___ a letter yesterday. (wrote / rote)
Expected Answer
wrote
Skill Tested
Homophones
Question
Add the prefix to make the opposite: ___happy
Expected Answer
unhappy
Skill Tested
Prefixes
Keep Year 4 English on Track for Year 6
See which spelling and grammar topics are solid and which need a little more practice, so nothing is left to catch up on later.