4th Grade

As students move to the fourth grade, books become more complex. Readers might be asked to follow multiple plot lines in a story and determine how these plot lines connect. They might be asked to pay close attention to secondary characters and figure out how the characters affect each other. Readers are introduced to author’s craft such as foreshadowing- they are taught to notice it and then ask, ‘why is this important?’ readers think about lessons the character learned and then make broader generalizations about the message the author is sending through his/her story.

Just as in the grade before, fourth graders read both fiction and non-fiction. They read to learn about many different things in the world around them---growing up, history, current affairs, environmental issues, etc. When learning new information, often students work on projects to teach others about the topic they studied. Students become the ‘teacher’ by choosing the best method of presentation, considering their audience (who they will present to—their classmates? Second graders? Ms. Gundersen?) and getting to work on their projects. Projects take many shapes and forms- skits, powerpoint presentations, dioramas, persuasive posters, and illustrated informational books are all different projects taken on by fourth graders.

Reading workshop is a time of the day when students are directly taught how to be a ‘strong’ reader. The period might start with the students looking at a shared text, reading small parts, and thinking together about ‘what is important’ in that part. Then together, students and teacher name what the author did- this ‘naming what the author did’- allows children to create a list of important places to read carefully. For example, the students’ list might include: reading carefully when you notice a strong emotion, reading carefully when the character’s problem pops up, reading carefully when a character interacts with another character, etc. Once independent reading starts, students work on building reading stamina, practicing reading skills. Most fourth graders enter the grade reading levels p and end the year reading levels r/s.

Through individual reading conferences, guided reading groups, and independent practice, students will actively work on becoming stronger readers. Teachers meet with students at least once a week to assess the child through a conference and teach him/her. In a conference, students receive reading ‘jobs’ to focus on until the next conference. Reading jobs are worked on daily, both in school and at home. The student ‘records’ his/her reading job in various ways—in a reading notebook, in a powerpoint presentation, in a packet, in a voice recording- the ways to record a reading job are endless! Students also have the opportunity to create book projects that are a reflection of the book or highlight a specific reading skill they have worked on.

Students who have mastered the focus skills at their independent level will move on to working on other skills such as prediction, inferring, synthesizing, and interpreting the text. When the teacher determines the student is ready, he/she will move on to the next reading level and begin to practice some the skills in the next level.

Reading workshop- september/october

Unit 1- building the world of the story
Focus skills: monitoring for meaning, determining importance

Unit 2- developing ideas about characters
Focus skills: making inferences, supporting inferences with evidence, synthesizing

Unit 3- determining themes & messages in books
Focus skills: making inferences, supporting inferences with evidence, synthesizing, interpreting themes & messages

Unit 4- reading complex texts with meaning
Focus skills: monitoring for meaning, determining importance, close reading, making inferences, supporting inferences with evidence, synthesizing

Unit 5- historical fiction
Focus skills: monitoring for meaning, determining importance, making inferences, supporting inferences with evidence, synthesizing, interpreting themes & messages

To support your child at home, you can ask him/her to:
Show you their reading job & make sure they are practicing and recording their reading job​ in their notebook, on post-its
Talk about their current reading book- who is the main character? What kind of person is he/she? Can you show me parts in the text that support your character idea? What is he/she struggling with? What is his/her problem? Who are the secondary characters? Are they helping or hurting the main character? How? Did your character change by the end of the story? How? Did he/she ‘grow up a little’? Did he/she learn a lesson? What themes are popping up in your book?
Read aloud to you to practice fluency- making their reading sound smooth and filled with expression

Writing workshop is the time of day when students are given instruction on and provided the opportunity to develop their skills as writers. During writing workshop, children choose their own topic or idea within a specific unit of study (personal paragraphs, character & theme essays, persuasive writing, historical fiction journal writing). Students are encouraged to write about topics that are personally meaningful to them, while learning how to write in that particular genre. Teaching also focuses on grammar such as writing in complete sentences, using the appropriate punctuation, and spelling.

Early september- writing about reading
Focus skills: developing an idea, organizing/structuring a paragraph, elaborating- providing details that support your idea, grammar- complete sentences, capitalization, punctuation, spelling

This unit teaches students how to write a clear and concise response to a piece of literature. Writing about literature. In this unit, children learn to answer a question clearly and then use convincing text evidence to support the idea. Students learn different techniques for elaboration. By the end of the unit, students will publish multiple paragraphs on read aloud texts, short texts, and independent texts.

Unit 1- personal paragraphs
Focus skills: developing an idea, organizing/structuring a paragraph, elaborating- providing details that support your idea, grammar- complete sentences, capitalization, punctuation, spelling

This writing unit builds on the work done in unit 1, but in this unit, writers focus on writing paragraphs about topics they care about. Students might write about a special person, a favorite place, or an important object. Children get the opportunity to write new paragraphs everyday, get feedback, then revise them to make them better. By the end of the unit, students will have published multiple paragraphs, setting them up for a successful year of writing.

Unit 2- character essay
Focus skills: developing ideas, organizing/structuring an essay, elaborating- providing details that support your idea, grammar- complete sentences, capitalization, punctuation, spelling

At this point in the year, writers are ready to become essay writers! This unit pairs writing with reading. As students develop ideas about the characters in their independent reading books, they learn how to gather evidence and put their idea and evidence into a character essay.

Unit 3- theme essay
Focus skills: developing ideas about the messages author's send readers, organizing/structuring an essay, elaborating- providing details that support your idea, grammar- complete sentences, capitalization, punctuation, spelling

Early january- persuasive writing
Focus skills: developing a stance (opinion) on a topic, organizing/structuring a paragraph, elaborating- providing details that support your stance (opinion), grammar- complete sentences, capitalization, punctuation, spelling

Unit 4- essay writing about a pair of texts
Focus skills: developing ideas about similarities or differences between two texts , organizing/structuring an essay, elaborating- providing details from two texts that support your idea, grammar- complete sentences, capitalization, punctuation, spelling

Unit 5- narrative writing- historical fiction journals
Focus skills: developing a story with a beginning, middle, and end, elaborating- showing, not telling, using precise word choice grammar- complete sentences, capitalization, punctuation, spelling

To support your child at home, you can ask him/her to:
Share his/her writing with you- encourage him/her to read their writing aloud to look for mistakes they can fix (missed words, punctuation)
Write about everyday events together (going to the park, visiting family)
Make writing a part of everyday home life (write letters/emails to family, make a family journal, write lists)

The fourth grade social studies curriculum provides students with an opportunity to learn about the different cultural groups who lived in new york state centuries in the past. Each unit will culminate with a research-based project and exam.

In september, we will begin with a mini-unit focused on geography. During this unit, students will learn about geographical terms, explore different types of maps, and create their own map of new york.

Next, we will begin our native american unit. During this time, students will learn about various groups of native americans who lived in the northeastern woodlands of the united states. As the unit continues, we will begin to focus on the iroquois, a group of native americans that lived in new york state. Using both primary and secondary resources, students will develop an understanding for what life was like for the iroquois. The unit will last approximately one month and will end with a culminating research project. Working in the classroom, students will come up with their own research question and will learn how to use non-fiction texts and internet resources to carry out their research. Students will then display their findings in a creative way of their choosing. Some of their options will be to create an informative poster, a board game, slideshow, blog, or a method of presentation the student may come up with on their own.

Students may also continue their research at home by using our class website: http://www.Portaportal.Com/ students may scroll down to the social studies section of the website in order to help with their research. See login information below:

Username: 4302
Password: ps172

Module 1: place value, rounding, and algorithms for addition and subtraction
In this unit, students extend their work with whole numbers. They begin with large numbers using familiar units (hundreds and thousands) and develop their understanding of millions by building knowledge of the pattern of times ten in the base ten system on the place value chart. They recognize that each sequence of three digits is read as hundreds, tens, and ones followed by the naming of the corresponding base thousand unit (thousand, million, billion)

Module 2: multi-digit multiplication and division
In this unit, students will use place value understanding and visual representations to solve multiplication and division problems with multi-digit numbers. Students develop the ability to reason about the methods and models chosen to solve problems with multi-digit factors and dividends.

Module 3: fraction equivalence, ordering, and operations
In this unit students explore fraction equivalence and extend this understanding to mixed numbers. This leads to the comparison of fractions and mixed numbers and the representation of both in a variety of models. Students will be able to generalize and reason about relative fraction and mixed number sizes through the use of benchmark fractions. Students will then learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions.

Module 4: angle measure and plane figures
In this unit students will be introduced the geometry. Students will work with points, lines, line segments, rays, and angles. Students will construct, recognize, and define these geometric objects before using their new knowledge and understanding to classify figures and solve problems. Students will learn how to create and measure angles, as well as create and solve equations to find unknown angle measures. In these problems, where the unknown angle is represented by a letter, students explore both measuring the unknown angle with a protractor and reasoning through the solving of an equation.

Module 5: decimal fractions
In this unit, students explore decimal numbers via their relationship to decimal fractions, expressing a given quantity in both fraction and decimal forms. Utilizing the understanding of fractions developed, students apply the same reasoning to decimal numbers.