Fourth Grade - Curriculum Overview
Reading
Through reading longer and more complex chapter books, students begin to understand how story elements like setting, characters and plot contribute to the meaning of the text. They solidify the use of comprehension strategies to help critically interpret texts.
Student-led book clubs foster a love for reading and provide an opportunity to share and discuss books with a reading community of peers. An extensive classroom library allows students the opportunity to engage with many different literary genres. Memoir and historical fiction are highlighted.
Writing
Taking inspiration from literature, students explore various ways to write about the same topic, becoming more sophisticated editors and publishing their writing in a variety of genres. In studying the craft of authors such as Jane Yolen and Nikki Grimes, students learn to "read as writers" and use touchstone texts as models for their own writing. Through the Words Their Way spelling program, students learn to recognize spelling patterns and use spelling strategies. Cursive practice continues.
Mathematics
Using both written and mental strategies, skills, and concepts to solve problems, students work independently and collaboratively, and take risks as mathematicians. Working in groups, they solve problems and share their thinking with the whole class during math congresses. They create illustrative posters to explain their mathematical thinking.
Computational fluency grows out of an established number sense. Based on a strong conceptual understanding of fractions, students add and subtract common fractions, and learn to convert simple fractions into decimals and percents, tying these skills into the study of probability.
Social Studies
Themes of power and conflict emerge as students study the history and geography of California, beginning with Native Californians, through Spanish colonization, to the Gold Rush and immigration. They begin to analyze history and current events through the interaction of culture, power, environment, and diversity using primary sources, historical fiction, local field trips, and an extended Living History field trip. Student consider different perspectives of Californians involved in water rights issues and role play them in a historical debate over the extension of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. California geography comes to life in a relief map-making project.
Science
Life Science:
- Microscope Investigations
- Native Plants
- Marsh Habitats
Earth Science:
- Watersheds & Pollution
- Water Cycle & Properties of Water
- Solar System
Physical Science:
- Electricity & Magnetism
Scientific Method:
- Designing experiments using dependent & independent variables
- Partner investigations
Human Growth & Development
- Human Anatomy
- Puberty
- Human Reproduction