Third and Fourth Classes
Oral Language
As the pupil advances from the Junior classes his command
of spoken language improves rapidly, and the time devoted to oral expression
will decrease slightly, but the importance of oral language will not diminish.
Oral language will still play a vital role in the development and consolidation
of ideas. Every lesson is a language lesson, and each subject area provides
scope for discussion of themes and concepts. Language may therefore be seen as
the integrating influence in the curriculum.
Developing receptiveness to oral language
The child is enabled to:
- Listen to, retell and tape a narrative or a description
- Give and follow instructions
- Use mime to convey
ideas
- Discuss the use and effect of music, sound effects and
non-verbal clues
Developing competence and confidence in using oral
language
The child is enabled to:
- Initiate conversations and respond to the initiatives
of others
- Present ideas in a logical sequence
- Summarise and prioritise ideas
- Discuss the origins and meanings of words
- Become aware of new words
- Play synonym and antonym games
- Become familiar with the functions of words – nouns,
pronouns, verb, adverb, adjective and preposition
- Practise the common social functions in the everyday
context of the class
Developing cognitive abilities through oral language
The child is enabled to:
- Discuss issues that directly affect his life
- Discuss a story being read
- Discuss different possible solutions to problems
- Listen to a presentation
- Learn how to use the basic key questions – why? How?
Where? When? What ? What if?
- Make presentations to class about his interests
- Justify personal likes and dislikes
- Argue a point of view
- Explore historical events through drama
Developing emotional and imaginative life through oral
language
The child is enabled to:
- Describe everyday experiences to the class
- Describe favourite moments
- Express reactions to events and stories
- Dramatise stories
- Experience playful aspects of language
Topics
- Current affairs: local and global
- People: Our families, people who help us
- Special occasions - Christmas, Easter, St Patrick's
Day, birthdays, Lent.
- Stories, poems, incidents in the classroom and in the
school community, Greek legends, the Fiannaiocht and other stories from
history
- Social and Environmental Studies - the weather, the
changes in Swords during the various seasons
- Topics related to the stories from the texts which are
being read.
- Animals of the jungle
- A problem I helped to solve
- Races - the Olympic Games
- Things we keep in a fridge
- People who spend their lives helping others
- Pets which the children keep and how they care for them
- A bad mistake I once made
- Space travel
- The Tidy Towns Competition
- Litter
- Bicycles
- Ghosts
- Musical Instruments
- India
- A Summer Job
Reading
The main goal of the reading programme is to teach the
children how to read, but the ultimate objective is to foster an enjoyment of
reading. The two main aims are subsumed under the headings of reading to learn
and learning to read.
Developing reading strategies
The child is enabled to:
- Identify unfamiliar words by reference to word parts
- Continue to self-correct reading errors
- Become an increasingly independent reader
- Understand the relationship between text and
illustration
Reading for pleasure and information
The child is enabled to:
- Have access to books
- Use library facilities outside school
- Select personal reading material
- Experience different types of text
- Engage with a wide variety of poetry on a regular basis
- Develop basic information retrieval skills – using
table of contents, chapter headings and index
- Use simple dictionaries effectively
Developing interests, attitudes, information retrieval
skills and the ability to think
The child is enabled to:
- Read short books in one sitting
- Explore new interests and perspectives
- Seek recommendations for books to read and recommend
books
- Use IT to enhance reading development
- Know the structure and terminology of books – cover,
spine, illustration, dedication, table of contents, introduction, page,
chapter
- Develop a range of comprehension strategies
- Use a knowledge of printing conventions as an aid to
expression and comprehension – bold type, punctuation marks and capital
letters
- Keep a record of personal reading
Responding to text
The child is enabled to:
- Extend and develop his response to more challenging
reading material
- Talk about books
- Talk about choice of books
- Experience a shared response to fiction through the use
of a class novel
- Share responses with other children and adults to
cultivate a community of readers
Core Reading Books
Third Class
- A Perfect Fit and other stories
- No Room for an Elephant and Other Stories
Other Books
- The Five Hundred
- Jimmy and the Banshee
- Charlie Harte and the Two-Wheeled Tiger
- The King of Wisdom’s Daughter
- The Great Pig Escape
- Albert and the Magician
Writing
Creating and fostering the impulse to write
The child is enabled to:
- Experience a classroom environment that encourages
writing
- Use personal reading as a stimulus to writing
- Write stories in a variety of genres
- Re-read writing
- See his work valued by having it displayed, by having
it included in a class anthology, by reading it aloud
Developing competence, confidence and the ability to
write independently
The child is enabled to:
- Write regularly
- Engage with a piece of writing over a period
- Experience oral language activity as a preparation for
writing
- Learn to ask questions as a mechanism for expanding and
developing a story
- Give sequence to ideas and events in stories
- Develop an appreciation of the difference between
written and oral language
- Learn to revise and re-draft writing
Clarifying thought through writing
The child is enabled to:
- Write in a variety of genres –stories, diaries,
reports, letters, notices, memos
- Read a story and write it in his own words
- Read a narrative and summarise it
- Write about ideas encountered in other areas of
curriculum
- Write a sentence and elaborate on it
- Expand and clarify thoughts through drafting and
re-drafting
- Write down directions on how to perform a particular
process
Developing emotional and imaginative life through
writing
The child is enabled to:
- Express his reaction to particular experiences in
writing
- Write about experiences in dairy form
- Create stories and poems
- Write extended stories in book form
- Write about favourite moments, characters and events in
stories
- Express in writing his reaction to poems
- Use his artwork and that of others as a stimulus to
writing
Topics for Creative Writing
- One day I felt left out of things
- The day I won the race
- The day I won the lottery
- As I was walking along a cliff, I heard a
voice..........
- One day I found a ... and brought him home. I asked my
Mum could I keep him.....
- What I would do if I had a lot of money
- If I had a magic wand
(6 sentences)
- One day the Zogs on our planet got up to mischief
- The day I made the dinner
- My second hand bicycle
- When I was small, I was very frightened of.....
- The day I met a leprechaun
- One day I played a wonderful trick on.....
- A farm is.... (6 sentences)
- If I had a squirrel...
- Reports - daily news, places visited, sports events,
review of library books
- Practice in note taking
- Class magazine - this is a combination of the creative
and the functional aspects, and it will also involve word processing
Handwriting
See Policy Document on Handwriting. Legibility of
handwriting is a minimum requirement at this stage. Practise
headlines each day. Transcription of useful phrases and sentences.
Poetry
Poems are chosen from class texts and from other sources.
Punctuation
- Question mark, exclamation mark.
- Use of capital letters
- to start a sentence
- for the word I
- for the names of people
- for the names of places
- for the names of days
- Commas
- Use a comma when you write a list
Phonics Spellings
[See separate phonic programme]
Fourth Class
Suggestions for Oral Language Topics
- Local, national and international news
- Television, radio programmes; Videos and films.
- Discussion of books read to class by teacher and by
pupils.
- Oral reports on football matches, sports day, tours,
trips.
- Hobbies.
- Related to texts being read:
- Cooking. Favourite recipes.
- Story tellers - seanchai
- Favourite football teams.
- Rescue services
- My ghost story
- Wild animals of the Irish countryside
- The life of an Eskimo
- Tortoises
- An interview with a person returning from a space
voyage
- The vast universe
- Treasure
- Famous painters
- Famous sculptors
- Famous paintings
- Sherlock Holmes
- Detectives
- Criminals
- Advantages and disadvantages of various modes of travel
- DART, train, steam engine
- Cruel sports
- Conservatio
Reading
Core Reading Books
- Its Not Fair and Other Stories
- Flying Free and Other Stories
Other Reading Material
- Seven Spiders Spinning
- Juliet’s Story
- Star Dancer
- In Deep Dark Wood
- The Castle in the Attic
- The House on the Shore
Specific guidance given on the use of a dictionary,
- look up the word "bridge".
- Bridge starts with the letter B. Are B words at the
start, the middle or the end of the alphabet ? Find B part of dictionary.
- R is the second letter, so Br words will come near the
end of the B words.
- Look for the guide words. Guide words are the words in
dark type at the top of each page of the dictionary.
- There is more than one meaning given. Which one is
right?
- Bridge: A crossing over a river or a road
- A platform on a ship
- Part of a violin
- The bony part of the nose
- A card game.
- Go back to the sentence from which we took the word
"bridge" and check the context clues.
Extension of Reading Vocabulary
- Synonyms - words which are similar in meaning - use
thesaurus.
- Antonyms - words which are opposite in meaning - use
thesaurus
- Homonyms - would, wood: isle, aisle; to, too, two;
blue, blew; tale, tail; road, rode.
- Compound words - make one word
- Use of prepositions
- Compile a list of abbreviations
- Make a list of the words used in History and in
Mathematics
- Study of prefixes
- Singular and plural
- Write out fifteen words which begin with a vowel use of
a and an.
- Write out fifteen words which begin with a consonant
- Cloze procedure - discuss suitable words for inclusion
Writing
- Extension of previous years' work - class diaries, news
sheets
- Punctuation - capital letters, commas, full stops,
apostrophes, question mark, exclamation mark.
- Paragraphs: Introductory work.
- Transcription: Small amount to facilitate the
development of a legible hand.
- Reports on matches, television programmes, book
summaries.
- Class magazine - use of computer.
- My Home Town
- A Visit to Swords Castle
- A Walk along the Estuary
- A Trip to Dublin Airport
- My Hobby.
- Write the recipe for a pudding.
- Write a conversation between a butcher and a customer.
- A Monkey finds a Guitar.
- The Ghost that played a Tin Whistle.
- What are you? I'm just a schoolboy.....
- Matuk's land is cold......
- Write a list of questions to be asked of a person
returning from a space flight.
- My Treasure.
- Write a recipe for biscuits.
- The Night the Watchman Slept
- Supersub.
- Brave Boy saves his Younger Brother.
Letter Writing
|
1. |
Address the envelope |
First line: Name
Second line: Street, Road
Third line: Town/city
Fourth line: County |
| 2. |
Introduction to
letter: |
Address
Date
Form of Greeting
Letter
Finish |
Grammar
- The noun
- The verb.
- The adjective.
Poetry
Give the children the opportunity to hear, recite and
write poetry. Explanation of ideas, showing why poet opted for one word instead
of another.
Handwriting
See separate policy document
Phonics and Spellings
See separate policy programme
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