Reading
Unit 1:Getting to Know Yourself as a
Reader
Overview of Unit: In this unit, students will
learn how to author their reading lives by becoming a classroom community of
readers. Students will also obtain
the identity of being a reader by setting goals, creating a life that revolves
around shared books, and helping students develop a sense of personal agency in
their lives.
Priority Standards for unit:
- RL.4.1; RI.4.1: Refer to details
and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and
when drawing inferences from the text.
- RF.4.3: Know and apply grade-level
phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
- RF.4.4: Read with sufficient
accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
- SL.4.1: Engage effectively in a
range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and
teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 4 topics and texts, building
on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.
- SL.4.4: Report on a topic or text,
tell a story, or recount an experience in an organized manner, using
appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas
or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace.
Writing
Unit 1: Getting to Know Ourselves as Writers
Overview of Unit: In this unit, students will
learn how to author their writing lives by becoming a classroom community of
writers. Students will generate many
seed ideas and draft a short, narrative piece to start the year and build
stamina around writing. Additionally grammar, language and conventions
standards will be taught to set up this expectation in all writing across the
year.
Priority Standards for unit:
- W.4.3: Write narratives to develop
real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive
details, and clear event sequences.
- W.4.4: Produce clear and coherent
writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task,
purpose, and audience.
- L.4.1: Demonstrate command of
conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or
speaking.
- L.4.2: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English
capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
- SL.4.1: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions
(one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade
4 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own
clearly.
Reading
Unit 2:Following
Characters into Meaning
Overview of Unit: Readers focus on
developing ideas about characters and their motivations. This unit pays
attention to student stamina, choosing books, and setting goals as readers.
In this unit readers will be focusing on
strengthening their abilities to make interpretations of texts. This is a unit
which teaches students to read with inference and interpretation, developing
text‐based theories about
characters, supporting those theories with evidence from the text, and viewing
characters and their motivations through a different lens. Students will
consider big-life issues that relate to many stories and determine how these
issues affect the message of the stories they are reading. Your students have
already done some of this thinking in prior years, and you’ll want to help them
transfer these skills even as they learn new ones.
In Topic 1 (Bend I) of the unit readers will
read to envision, predict and infer about characters. During these lessons
students will move forward asking themselves how they can get lost in the world
of the story and while doing that get to know the characters so well that they
get lost in their world.
In Topic 2 (Bend II) of the unit readers will
build theories about characters. During these lessons students will focus on
reading to develop precise, defendable, grounded ideas about characters within
and across books.
In Topic 3 (Bend III) of this unit readers will
work to study characters and build interpretations. Students will focus on
finding recurring images, objects and details and demonstrate how they support
or contribute to the overall theme of the text.
Priority Standards for unit:
- RL.4.1 Refer to details and examples in
a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing
inferences from the text.
- RL.4.2 Determine theme of a story,
drama or poem from details in the text; summarize the text
- RL.4.3 Describe in depth a character,
setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the
text (e.g. character’s thoughts, words or actions)
- SL.4.1 Engage effectively in a range of
collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher led) with
diverse partners on grade 4 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas
and expressing their own clearly.
Writing
Unit 2: The Arc of a Story
Overview of Unit: In this unit, students will
be crafting realistic fiction stories as a form of narrative writing. This is the first time in their elementary education that
narrative writing isn’t about a personal narrative, so while you will lean on that
experience to guide the teaching of this unit, students will be thinking about
narrative writing in a whole new way.
Topic 1 (Bend 1): Creating and Developing Stories
and Characters that Feel Real
The goal of this bend is for students to collect
many story ideas and trying a few of them out to see if they can become
possible stories. They will practice
storytelling to a partner in order develop rich language to embed within the
story, understanding the power of voice. They will
then work to develop strong characters who can carry the story.
Topic 2 (Bend 2): Revising and Drafting with an Eye
toward Believability
In this bend students will create story arcs
that plan out their story in two to three scenes. Using this tool they will begin to draft their story in a story
book to give them an authentic feel.
Topic 3 (Bend 3): Preparing for Publication with an
Audience in Mind
In this bend, students will prepare their piece
for an audience through focused drafting, revising, and editing. Students will pay great attention to the power of place, the
character’s struggle, how the problem is dealt with, and a quality resolution. Because of this, revision work will happen early on while many are
still drafting. However, due to the length
of the piece in conjunction with the craft and structural elements they have to
think through, early revision will be necessary so they can be doing it early
on.
Topic 4 (Bend 4): Preparing for Publication with an
Audience in Mind
In this bend, students conceive, develop, plan
and carry out their own independent fiction projects, taking what they have
learned in the previous three bends and applying it to a new story on their
own.
Priority Standards for unit:
- W.4.3: Write narratives to develop
real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique,
descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
- W.4.4: Produce clear and coherent
writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task,
purpose, and audience.
- L.4.3: Use
knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading
or listening.
Take a look at the following links to learn about the Great Flood of 1993. Make a list of effects of the flood in your social studies notebook.
Writing - We began our first week of writing this week. We made a list of our 13 best memories, drew a neighborhood map to help us remember stories from our life, decorated our writing notebooks with pictures of our favorite things, and compiled our writing territories. Hopefully all this idea collecting will eventually help kids when writing their longer pieces this school year. After kids brainstormed ideas, they chose one of their favorites and started drafting the story. 
Reading - We launched Reading Workshop by having many good discussions on how to make reading the best it can be. First students created a timeline of themselves as a reader; thinking about when reading was great for them and when it has been the pits. Students created reading resolutions to focus on for the year. We also discussed when it is ok to abandon a book. Some classes also 
In order to learn more about fourth grade curriculum, grading, and procedures, please view our Virtual Parent Orientation video.
