Grade 4 Curriculum

LANGUAGE ARTS
The purpose of the grade four language arts curriculum is to develop and improve reading, language arts, and writing skills.  The literature provides a basis to build skills and strategies in reading, writing, phonics, spelling, vocabulary, grammar, usage and mechanics.  The ultimate goal is to enable the student to read to learn, and to recognize the requirement that rules of written communication apply in all areas of the curriculum.  Reading and writing is not a self-contained area of study.  The concepts learned must be used in all written work.  As a result, a variety of resources is utilized to accomplish this goal.

MATH
In grade 4, the focus is on three critical areas: (1) developing understanding and fluency with multi-digit multiplication, and developing understanding of dividing to find quotients involving multi-digit dividends; (2) developing an understanding of fraction equivalence, addition and subtraction of fractions with like denominators, and multiplication of fractions by whole numbers; (3) understanding that geometric figures can be analyzed and classified based on their properties, such as having parallel sides, perpendicular sides, particular angle measures, and symmetry.

SOCIAL STUDIES
The purpose of the fourth grade social studies curriculum is to study the five geographic regions of the United States, and to focus on geography, socio-economic, and historical factors of the country with added emphasis on current events of the regions. Every student will learn in depth about one of the fifty states by completing a detailed state report. Students are also introduced to the civic responsibility of American citizens as outlined in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and branches of the government. 

SCIENCE
Students are expected to develop understanding of the effects of weathering or the rate of erosion by water, ice, wind, or vegetation. They apply their knowledge of natural Earth processes to generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of such processes on humans. In order to describe patterns of Earth’s features, students analyze and interpret data from maps.

Fourth graders are expected to develop an understanding that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction. By developing a model, they describe that an object can be seen when light reflected from its surface enters the eye. Students are able to use evidence to construct an explanation of the relationship between the speed of an object and the energy of that object. Students are expected to develop an understanding that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents or from object to object through collisions. They apply their understanding of energy to design, test, and refine a device that converts energy from one form to another.

The crosscutting concepts of patterns; cause and effect; energy and matter; systems and system models; interdependence of science, engineering, and technology; and influence of engineering, technology, and science on society and the natural world are called out as organizing concepts for these disciplinary core ideas.