Fourth Grade

Overview of Fourth Grade Curriculum:

Reading: 

We are following a Balanced Literacy approach to teaching the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. This means that your child will be taught through Shared Reading, Guided Reading, and Interactive Read Alouds. Throughout the literacy block, fourth grade students will be writing to further their learning.

The Comprehension Toolkit is utilized to teach reading comprehension skills and strategies.  The units we cover in fourth grade include:

• Monitor Comprehension
• Activate and Connect
• Ask Questions
• Infer Meaning
• Determine Importance
• Summarize and Synthesize
• Navigating Nonfiction

Students use the skills taught in these units when reading fiction and non-fiction, both independently and during shared and guided reading.

The standards in Reading: Literature, Reading: Informational Text, and Reading: Foundational Skills are organized by key ideas and details, craft and structure, integration of knowledge and ideas, and range of reading and level of text complexity.

 

Writing:

Fourth graders learn strategies and skills to write organized and structured opinion pieces, informative/explanatory pieces and narratives.  They understand and progress through stages in the process of writing (prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing).  Students learn proper mechanics, sentence formation and spelling.  Students write over extended time frames and shorter time frames and for a variety of purposes and audiences.  Students also learn conventions of Standard English for writing, reading, speaking and listening, as well as vocabulary acquisition and use.

 

Science:

The science strands for fourth grade are listed below.

Forces & Motion: 

• Explain how various forces affect the motion of an object

Matter:  Properties and Change

• Understand the composition and properties of matter before and after they undergo a change or interaction

Energy: Conservation and Transfer 

• Recognize that energy takes various forms that may be grouped based on their interaction with matter.

Earth in the Universe

• Explain the causes of day and night and phases of the moon.

Earth History

• Understand the use of fossils and changes in the surface of the earth as evidence of the history of Earth and its changing life forms.

Ecosystems

• Understand the effects of environmental changes, adaptations and behaviors that enable animals (including humans) to survive in changing habitats.

Molecular Biology

• Understand food and the benefits of vitamins, minerals and exercise.

 

Math:

Major Clusters in Math:

Operations and Algebraic Thinking

• Use the four operations with whole numbers to solve problems.

Number and Operations in Base Ten

• Generalize place value understanding for multi-digit whole numbers.
• Use place value understanding and properties of operations to perform multi-digit arithmetic.

Number and Operations—Fractions

• Extend understanding of fraction equivalence and ordering
• Build fractions from unit fractions by applying and extending previous understandings of operations on whole numbers.
• Understand decimal notation for fractions, and compare decimal fractions.

Supporting/Additional Clusters:

Operations and Algebraic Thinking

• Gain familiarity with factors and multiples.
• Generate and analyze patterns.

Measurement and Data

• Solve problems involving measurement and conversion of measurements from a larger unit to a smaller unit.
• Represent and interpret data.
• Geometric measurement: understand concepts of angle and measure angles.

Geometry

• Draw and identify lines and angles, and classify shapes by properties of their lines and angles.

 

Social Studies:

In fourth grade, students are formally introduced to North Carolina.  The strands of study are: History, Geography and Environmental Literacy, Economics and Financial Literacy, Civics and Government, and Culture.

Essential Standards of Social Studies:

• Analyze the chronology of key historical events in North Carolina history.
• Understand how notable structures, symbols and place names are significant to North Carolina.
• Understand how human, environmental and technological factors affect the growth and development of North Carolina.
• Understand how a market economy impacts life in North Carolina.
• Understand the economic factors when making personal choices.
• Understand the development, structure and function of North Carolina’s government.
• Analyze the North Carolina Constitution.
• Understand the impact of various cultural groups on North Carolina.