Fourth Grade Curriculum

The elementary visual arts curriculum helps students understand how media, technique and process are used to create works of art; how artworks are structured; how art has a variety of functions; how to identify, analyze and select subject matter, symbols and ideas for personal/cultural expression, how historical and cultural contexts provide meaning for works of art, and how to assess the merits of their own artworks and the artworks of others.

Resources
Adventures in Art, Davis

Topics

• Skills and flexibility in creating two and three-dimensional artworks
• Media and techniques in artworks from around the world
• How materials, techniques and processes in artworks create different visual effects and viewer responses
• Visual elements (line, space, forms and shapes) and color schemes
• Using the elements and principles of design to communicate personal ideas
• Analyzing different interpretations of ideas and themes from various cultures
• Cultural origins, functions, styles and relative ages of artwork from different times and places
• How a variety of artists' experiences influenced their artwork
• How their art reflects their experiences

Guidance

Guidance, which is integrated into other curriculum areas, helps establish goals, expectations, support systems and experience for all students. It is designed to enhance student learning by helping students acquire and use lifelong learning skills in three broad areas of development: academic, career and personal/social. The curriculum employs developmentally appropriate strategies to enhance academics, provide career awareness, encourage self-awareness, foster interpersonal communication skills and convey life success skills for all students. The guidance and health curricula complement each other to provide knowledge and skills in the area of drug prevention.

Resources
Variety of district-selected materials

Topics
Students will acquire knowledge and skills in the following areas:

• Improved academic self-concept
• Improved learning
• Plan to achieve goals
• School success
• Career awareness
• Organization and time management
• Self-knowledge
• Interpersonal relations
• Personal safety

Students learn to take responsibility for aspects of their health. Healthful decision-making is emphasized in all aspects of the curriculum. Topics introduced in the early years are reviewed and discussed in more depth, along with new topics. The human growth and development curriculum covers basic information about reproductive anatomy, physical and emotional changes during puberty and proper hygiene. Parents are invited to attend one of several evening sessions to experience the program with their child. The health and guidance curricula complement each other to provide knowledge and skills in the area of drug prevention.

Resources
Your Health, Harcourt, Inc.
Just Around the Corner for Girls/Boys, March Productions

Topics
Mental/Emotional/Social

• Conflict resolution
• Cooperation
• Respect
• Self management
• Responsibilities

Chemical Health

• Refusal skills
• Tobacco, alcohol and drugs
• Second-hand smoke
• Influence of Media

Safety and First Aid

• Fire protection skills
• Bike safety
• Water safety
• Bus safety
• Fire safety
• Gun safety
• Playground safety
• Poison prevention

Growth and Development

• Skeletal systems
• Changes associated with puberty and their own gender
• Structure of their own reproduction system

Nutrition

• Food Pyramid
• Balanced menu
• Nutrients, vitamins and minerals
• Food labels
• Media influences

Decision-Making

• Choosing healthy behaviors (decision-making model)
• Reinforcing healthy decisions (refusal skills)

Language Arts

Reading, writing, listening, speaking, spelling and handwriting are all-important components of language arts.  Skills and strategies in each area are modeled, taught and practiced, taking into account the unique needs of each learner.  Knowledge and skills are acquired through connected experiences between home, school and community.  Students read from a variety of texts, including fiction (short stories and whole books), poetry and nonfiction (textbooks, newspapers and magazines).  Students read (or are read to) and write daily.  Classroom libraries are available to all students.  These selected books enhance the literacy program.

Resources

• Guided Reading Resources
• Classroom Libraries
• Invitations to Literacy, Houghton Mifflin
• Handwriting- Zaner-Bloser
• Word Study – District developed

Topics

Reading

• Fiction and nonfiction materials
• Main ideas and supporting details
• Main events or ideas in sequence
• Author’s purpose
• Point of view
• Distinguishing between fact from opinion
• Making inferences
• Drawing conclusions
• Improving and expanding vocabulary
• Using graphophonic (sounds), syntactic (language) and semantic (meaning) strategies to understand text

Writing

• Planning, composing and revising pieces of writing
• Editing for grammar, capitalization, punctuation, spelling and sentence structure
• Narratives, persuasive, descriptive and expository essays
• Business letter
• Different forms of poetry

Speaking and Listening

• Listening and discussing informational first-hand experiences
• The use of persuasive language
• Predicting, comparing and analyzing what has been heard

• Word Study (includes spelling, language and vocabulary development)
• Finding the correct spelling of an unknown word
• Patterns within words
• Spelling frequently used words correctly in everyday writing
• Vocabulary development

Handwriting

• Cursive writing

While connecting mathematical experiences to the world around them, young children are challenged to become increasingly sophisticated in dealing with mathematical concepts. The elementary mathematics curriculum builds on students' math understanding, skills, and proficiency at each grade level, as appropriate, by integrating concepts such as number and operations, algebra, geometry, measurement, and data analysis and probability. Students also engage in problem solving, reasoning, and communicating ideas while making connections to the world around them.

Resources
Scott Foresman/Addison Wesley Mathematics
Investigations in Number, Data, and Space - Dale Seymour Publishers

Topics

NUMBERS AND OPERATIONS - Understanding of and proficiency with counting, numbers and arithmetic, as well as an understanding of number systems and their structures

• Place value
• Multiplication and division
• Computational fluency
• Increased understanding of base-ten number system
• Fractions, decimals and percents
• Numbers less than zero

ALGEBRA - Relationships among quantities, including ways of representing mathematical relationships and expression of relationships by using symbolic notation

• Identify, build and represent numerical and geometric patterns with tables or symbols
• Make predictions based on relationships between varying quantities
• Use graphs to describe patterns and make predictions
• Explore number properties
• Use invented notation, standard symbols and variables to express a pattern, generalization or situation

GEOMETRY - Geometric shapes and structures, and how to analyze their characteristics and relationships

• Properties and classification of geometric objects
• Relationships between geometric shapes
• Motion, location and orientation
• Increase capacity to visualize geometric relationships
• Make, test and justify conjectures about geometric relationships

MEASUREMENT - The assignment of a numerical value to an attribute of an object; understanding what a measurable attribute is, becoming familiar with the units and processes used in measuring attributes

• Use concepts and tools of measurement to collect data, and to describe and quantify the world
• Measure attributes such as area, perimeter and angle
• Increase focus on degree of accuracy and variety of measurement tools
• Begin to develop and use formulas for the measurement of certain attributes

DATA ANALYSIS AND PROBABILITY - How to collect, organize and display data in graphs and charts that will be useful in answering questions; methods of analyzing data, and of making inferences and conclusions from data

• See a set of data as a whole, describe its shape and compare data sets
• Describe similarities and differences between data sets
• Formulate conclusions and arguments based on data
• Consider data sets as samples from a larger population
• Use language and symbols to describe simple situations involving probability

PROBLEM SOLVING - Engaging in a task for which the solution method is not known in advance

• Solve problems that arise in mathematics and other contexts
• Apply and adapt a variety of appropriate strategies to solve problems
• Monitor and reflect on the process of mathematical problem solving
• Develop and carry out plans to solve mathematical problems

Music

The music program focuses on making music, and listening to and responding to music others have produced. Students sing, play instruments, move and create music. They learn to read music, and analyze and evaluate the music of others.

Resource
Making Music, Silver Burdett

Topics

• Reading from a two-part song
• Singing countermelodies
• Singing alone with accurate pitch matching
• Recognizing theme and variations, rondo, and suite forms
• Performing melodic and rhythmic patterns, including syncopation
• Reading musical notation in the pentatonic scale
• Improvising a melody using classroom instruments
• Recognizing characteristics of orchestral instruments
• Proper playing techniques for classroom instruments, including the recorder

Physical education is based on learning basic movements and skills, and refining these movements and skills into specific activities. Skills include locomotor movement, non-locomotor movement, perceptual movement and manipulatives. The movements and skills are incorporated into game situations. Examples of the core units are basketball, bowling, floor hockey, tumbling and stunts, rhythms, soccer, touch/flag football, track & field, volleyball and fitness.

Topics

• Physical activities that develop motor skills and physical fitness
• Rules, skills, strategies and team-building associated with individual and team activities
• Age-appropriate physical fitness
• Safety and etiquette in physical activities
• Fitness planning

The curriculum provides opportunities for students to learn science concepts through hands-on activities. Students learn to observe, compare, collect data, organize and analyze information, and communicate what they have learned. The investigations focus on physical, earth, life science and scientific reasoning concepts.

Resources
Full Option Science System (FOSS) kits

Topics
Physics of Sound (physical science)

• Sound as a property of a vibrating object
• How sound waves travel through water, air and solids
• Comparing the ability of different things to conduct sound
• How pitch of a sound can be changed

Human Body (life science)

• human skeletal and muscle systems
• The bones and muscles in their body
• How muscles and bones work together

Water (earth science)

• Observing and comparing water on a variety of surfaces
• Observing and describing water as a liquid and as a solid
• Evaporation and condensation
• Comparing water samples

Ideas and Inventions (scientific reasoning)

• Using techniques to see details about the world that would otherwise be difficult to observe
• Color writing, a rubbing record and carbon printing
• Reflection through the use of mirrors

The social studies curriculum provides the opportunity for each student to acquire knowledge and develop skills necessary for social, political and economic participation in a diverse, interdependent and changing world.

Resources
District-developed units of study
Minnesota (From Sea to Shining Sea), Children's Press
Exploring Regions Near and Far, D.C. Heath

Topics
Physical Geography

• The five themes of geography: location, place, interaction, movement and regions
• Geographic terms and abbreviations used to name and describe landforms and bodies of water
• Maps, globes, almanacs, charts, pictures, graphs and tables
• Geographical locations of regions of the United States and selected regions of the world
• Climates on earth and factors that cause differences
• How people from different cultures deal with their physical environment

Geography of the United States and Canada

• Regions in the United States and Canada
• Location, place, region, movement and human/environmental interaction
• How the people of North America use and modify their physical environment
• Geographic features, economic activities, food, clothing, crafts and rituals of two or more regions of the United States

Minnesota

• Absolute and relative location of cities and waterways within the state
• How regions are defined and regions within Minnesota
• The origins of groups represented in Minnesota
• How Minnesotans in the past and present use, modify or adapt to the physical geography
• Categorizing the state resources as natural, human or capital
• Contributing to the improvement of the community