Overview

The fourth grade units assume students have been working in a reading workshop structure for the previous five years. This course deepens students’ higher-order thinking through analyzing characters and strategically reading informational texts. To cope with the increasing demands of more complex texts, students will also learn about text structures and how to problem solve challenging vocabulary. Read-aloud with accountable talk, mini-lessons, guided reading and strategy groups, one-to-one conferences, and partner conferences will continue to be used.

Rationale

The Common Core State Standards expect students to be able to read more deeply, with understanding, as they progress through school. In particular, the Common Core emphasizes the importance of students being competent readers of nonfiction. The fourth grade course introduces students to the structures of informational texts, helping them learn ways to differentiate between narrative informational, hybrid informational, and expository texts. Ultimately they will learn to think about the big ideas the text is teaching and learn to retell their information interjecting their own inferences and thinking to synthesize all the information.

Scope and Sequence

Careful thought has been given to the order in which the fourth grade units are presented. These units are designed to build reading skills and strategies as well as habits of mind and experiences for future success in reading. As a result, certain scaffolds have been created based on this order and schools should take care in moving units from their intended placement in the curriculum. It is always important for teachers to adapt this curriculum in ways that benefit their classroom.

Alignment

The fourth grade course is designed to meet the Common Core State Standards for Reading Literature and Informational Text. The work done in this course is primarily designed to meet the Common Core State Standards in reading, however some of the speaking and listening standards as well as the foundational skills standards are delivered in this course.