Year 5 English Curriculum Topics

Reading in Year 5 – Your child needs to know:

• continue to read an increasingly wide range of fiction, poetry, plays and non-fiction texts
• read fiction texts both modern and old, and from other cultures and traditions
• prepare poems and plays to read aloud and to perform, showing understanding through intonation and volume
• infer characters’ feelings from their actions and justifying inferences with evidence
• discuss how authors use figurative language
• distinguish between fact and opinion

Writing in Year 5 – Your child needs to know:

• use further prefixes and suffixes and understand the guidance for adding them
• spell some words with silent letters
• learn the spelling of more difficult homophones(words which sound the same but are spelt differently)
• use a dictionary and a thesaurus
• use adverbs and adverbials to explain how something is being done
• write with neat, legible handwriting; write with increasing speed
• use brackets, dashes or commas to indicate parenthesis
• use commas to clarify meaning or avoid ambiguity
• learn to select appropriate grammar and vocabulary
• describe settings, characters and atmosphere in narratives and integrate dialogue
• carefully structure texts with a range of organisational devices, including time connectives, paragraphs, headings, bullet points, underlining
• assess and improve the effectiveness of their writing