Language Arts
Students will be reading and responding to various types of literature to include fantasy, fables, mystery, biography, folk tales, fairy tales, realistic fiction, historical fiction, classics, and legends. Some of the stories will come from our language arts program reading series while other stories will come from books, and other various sources. We will integrate a multitude of skills including reading comprehension, vocabulary, questioning, writing, listening, spelling, speaking, grammar, and drama. Your child will be encouraged to think critically, creatively, and logically as they read and respond to literature. This year we will be reading a variety of books in class as well as the assigned reading for home.
Your child will benefit by our class writers’ workshop which is designed to guide the students through the writer’s process. Writing lessons will include sentence and paragraph construction, grammar, narrative essays, expository essays, mystery writing, descriptive writing, character descriptions and development, attention grabbing introductions, closing with strong endings, topic sentences, thesis statements, elaborating choice of words using the thesaurus, and research report writing. We will also use dialog journals. Either I or another student will be responding to journal entries.
Math
We will be following state and district frameworks using our district adopted series and many supplements to actively involve your child in developing and strengthening their math abilities. Incorporating new concepts into real world experience, hands on projects are bountiful! Units of study will include number sense, multiplication, long division, word problems, fractions, decimals, basic geometry, basic algebra, probability, and statistics.
Social Studies
Fourth grade social studies focuses on California History and Geography. I will be incorporating individual and group activities and projects into the curriculum. The understanding of informational text, skimming and scanning for information is integrated into our social studies along with our writing process. Units of study include regions, Native Americans, explorers, missions, ranchos, pioneers, the gold rush, statehood, and the railroad. Each student will be expected to keep a social studies journal for the year to keep papers organized and learn the note taking process.
Science
Students will be provided with a program that explores science concepts through a combination of research, guided discovery, and hands-on activities. Units of study will include interactions of living things, the changing earth, matter, and electricity. Each student will be expected to keep a science journal for the year to keep papers organized and learn the note taking process.