Curriculum Overview

Elementary School Curriculum: Fourth Grade

Fine Arts
The students will explore visual art media, technique and processes while continuing emphasis on the elements of art and the principles of design. In conjunction with the social studies curriculum, students will create models and paintings of the California Missions. Students also write their first research paper on a 19th or 20th century master artist, and prepare a painting using the style of the master artist.

  • Lettering - art portfolios
  • Sketching and Painting - from models
  • Native American Art
  • Introduction to 19th and 20th Century Master Artists
  • Ethnic Art - cultural diversity

Language Arts
At the fourth grade level, students are learning to fine-tune their reading and communication skills for pleasure and proficiency. They draw upon a variety of comprehension strategies as needed, such as generation and responding to essential questions, making predictions, and comparing information from several sources. We follow the Houghton Mifflin curriculum in which children explore, through a basal reading book, a variety of skills and concepts. In addition to their regular school reading, students read extensively on their own, including a good representation of grade-level-appropriate narrative and expository text, for example classic and contemporary literature, magazines, newspapers, as well as online information. Students write clear, coherent sentences and paragraphs that develop a central idea, and their writing shows that they consider the audience and purpose. Students progress through the stages of the writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing successive versions. Fourth grade is the first year that students participate in our annual Poetry Contest. In language arts, fourth graders:

  • Select letter patterns and know how to translate them into spoken language by using phonics, syllabication, and word parts
  • Read and respond to a wide variety of significant works of children's literature, distinguishing between the structural features of the text and the literary terms or elements such as theme, plot, setting, and characters.
  • Write compositions that describe and explain familiar objects, events, and experiences, demonstrating command of standard American English and drafting, research, and organizational strategies.
  • Write and speak with a command of standard English conventions appropriate to this grade level, placing particular emphasis on sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling.
  • Deliver brief recitations and oral presentations about familiar experiences or interests that are organized around a coherent thesis statement, demonstrating a command of standard American English and organizational and delivery strategies.
  • Memorize a humorous or serious poem of 35 lines or more and deliver it orally

Music
The fourth grade general music class is a review of the rudiments of notes and rhythm. Students integrate this knowledge into recorder playing and music reading. Singing with proper vocal technique is implemented and proper audience etiquette is encouraged. Instrumentation and two part musical score reading is practiced in a solo and group setting. Composers and their musical time periods are also studied and art projects accompany each. Each student develops creativity and focus through projects by using the fundamentals of music and applying art and dance to each assignment.

  • Review of Basic Theory -- Notation
  • Recorder -technique, songs in 4/4
  • Song Writing- An introduction to writing rhythmic raps in 4/4 and 3/4 time
  • Interpretation- two scores
  • Singing- basic techniques
  • Instrumental playing techniques
  • Composers- Introduction to time period and music
  • Movement- Exploration of the body to various tempos and musical genres.
  • Listening- Focus and development of the "inner"ear to various music from Folk to Jazz.

Math
By the end of the fourth grade, students have become more comfortable and competent with large numbers and addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of whole numbers. They can describe and compare simple fractions and decimals. They understand the properties of and the relationships between plane geometric figures. Fourth graders are able to collect, represent and analyze data to answer questions. A variety of tools and techniques are utilized to teach and reinforce mathematical concepts, such as calculators, computers, manipulatives, games, and puzzles. We use the Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley curriculum at a level above grade level. Fourth graders participate in the Egg Drop Contest, which is designed to encourage creative techniques incorporating math and science. In fourth grade math, students:

  • Understand place value of whole numbers and decimals to two decimal places, how these relate to simple fractions, and use concepts of negative numbers.
  • Extend their use and understanding of whole numbers to addition and subtraction of simple decimals.
  • Estimate and compute the sum or difference of whole numbers and positive decimals to two places and round two place decimals to judge the reasonableness of answer
  • Solve problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of whole numbers, including the addition and subtraction of negative numbers, and understand the relationship among the operations.
  • Use and interpret variable, mathematical symbols and properties to write and simplify expressions and sentences
  • Understand perimeter and area
  • Demonstrate understanding of plan and solid geometric objects, and use this knowledge to show relationships and solve problems
  • Organize, represent and interpret numerical and categorical data, and clearly communicate findings
  • Make predictions for simple probability situations
  • Use strategies, skills, and concepts in finding solutions
  • Move beyond a particular problem by generalizing to other situations

Physical Education
This course is designed to enhance skill development and engage the students in high-level movement task and routines. Emphasis will be place on Lead up games and skills refinement.

  • Increase awareness of physical fitness
  • Team sports concepts developed through games.
  • Track and field skills introduced.
  • Daily calisthenics.
  • Basketball , volleyball, T-ball, softball and leadup skills
  • Soccer activities.

Social Studies
Students in the fourth grade learn the story of their home state, unique in American history in terms of its vast and varied geography, its many waves of immigration, its continuous diversity, economic energy and rapid growth. In addition to the specific treatment of milestones in California history, students examine the state in the context of the rest of the nation, with an emphasis on the U.S. Constitution and the relationship between state and federal government. Information supplied by the text, Oh, California, is supplemented with a variety of hands-on activities such as making a relief map of California, visiting California missions and museums, creating petroglyphs in the style of the Chumash Indians, writing a research report to accompany an art/construction project depicting life in a particular mission of California, and delivering an oral presentation on a selected California mission. The highlight of the year is a three-day trip to the Santa Monica Mountains to study the geography and ecology of the California coastline as it relates to early California settlers. Fourth graders:

  • Demonstrate an understanding of the physical and human geographic features that define places and regions in California
  • Describe the social, political, cultural and economic life among people of California from pre-Columbian societies to the Spanish missions and Mexican rancho periods
  • Discover the economic, social, and political life of California from the establishment of the Bear Flag Republic through the Mexican-American War, the Gold Rush, and California statehood
  • Understand the structure, functions, and powers of the United States local, state, and federal governments as described in the U. S. Constitution.
  • Participate in class field trips to locales relating to the history of early California

Science
Topics studied at this grade level are electricity and magnetism; food chains, food webs, and ecosystems; properties and processes of rock and mineral formation; and changes effected by waves, wind and water on the earth. Houghton Mifflin's Discovery Works series is used to support the curriculum at this grade level. In all components of the fourth grade science program, every effort is made to insure that the concepts will be meaningful to the students. Often, investigations take place in the classroom, which help to make the significance of certain ideas clear. Field trips and research projects are designed to encourage and enhance the learning process. Students are involved in as much hands-on learning as possible. Fourth graders:

  • Formulate predictions and justify predictions based on cause and effect relationships.
  • Follow a set of written instructions for a scientific investigation.
  • Learn about erosion, landslides, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes.
  • Design and build simple series and parallel circuits using components such as wires, batteries, and bulbs.
  • Build a simple compass and use it to detect magnetic effects, including Earth's magnetic field.
  • Discover that electrical energy can be converted to heat, light and motion.
  • Learn about ecosystems, discovering that producers and consumers (herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, and decomposers) are related in food chains and food webs
  • Differentiate among igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks and identify them by their properties and methods of formation (the rock cycle).
  • Investigate that forces such as waves, wind, water, and ice shape and reshape the Earth's land surface.

Spanish
Fourth grade students have a greater usage of verbs, articles and adjectives. More independent work is stressed at this age level and work pages include exercises such as completing sentences, answering specific questions, filling in vowels and consonants and labeling pictures. Students learn to identify the parts of a house and the furniture and various articles in it. Extensive work is done with the seasons of the year and numbers through eighty. A special trip to Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles, where students must speak Spanish to buy food and toys is the highlight of the year.

  • Numbers 1-80
  • Seasons of the Year
  • Usage of verbs, articles and adjectives
  • Conversation