Elementary Standards and Resources
A Note to Fourth Grade Parents
In fourth grade children take on new types of work and social experiences.
Fourth graders will learn to follow the many directions and long-range
planning that their school assignments require. They will collaborate with
their peers on group projects. The curriculum gets harder and they need
to manage it more independently - that includes homework assignments in
multiple subjects, as well as keeping track of those assignments and tasks.
Books,
books, and more books fill the curriculum as fourth graders become sophisticated
readers. They can use root words (words that are the basis for other words,
such as "act" in "action"), context clues (looking
for clues in the surrounding text and images in the story), and word endings
to figure out
new words. Teachers introduce genres such as myths and legends, fantasy and
adventure. Fourth graders relate characters and other story elements to
their own lives,
and empathize with the characters most like them. They are beginning to use
multiple strategies (such as making connections and predicting) when reading,
and are
often able to explain how those strategies help them comprehend the reading
selection.
Fourth graders begin to use research tools, such as a dictionary,
encyclopedia, library and the Internet, to gather information independently
on a topic. Most
importantly, they start to learn to organize this information into paragraphs,
essays, projects, and presentations that help students synthesize their learning
- although their work is appropriately far from "perfect." They
develop a writing style where their personality comes through as well as
skills to
help them edit their work.
Fourth graders read, write, compare, add, subtract,
multiply, and divide with very large whole numbers. They do more equations
with fractions and
decimals,
and they apply these skills to the real world.
Click on the links below
in order to see specifically what skills your child will be learning
this year:
Resources:
Parents: Kindergarten - First - Second - Third - Fourth - Fifth Students: Kindergarten - First - Second - Third - Fourth - Fifth
Content collected and organized by Sheryl Sanders |
