Fourth Grade

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Fourth Grade Curriculum Overview

At Monticello Academy, we believe in academic excellence as well as the emotional and social development of a student.  The academic curriculum that we implement in our program is based on the California State Standards.  Being a developmental based program, our curriculum is gauged in accordance to the educational level of each individual class every year as they progress from one grade level to the next.  Our curriculum will vary year to year depending on the developmental ability and level of the upcoming grade.  This overview will allow you to have a general understanding of what your child will learn throughout the school year.

Language Arts

Reading

At the fourth grade level, students will continue to focus on decoding words fluently and accurately in that they are required to read aloud narrative and expository text fluently and accurately with the appropriate pacing, intonation, and expression. 

Vocabulary Development

Students will learn to understand and explain words, including using figurative and metaphorical words in context and abstract roots and affixes derived from Greek and Latin to analyze the meaning of complex words.  Students will continue to emphasize on the use of internal, morphological, etymological, and historical word cues.  They will continue to extensively engage in independent reading as a primary means of increasing vocabulary knowledge.   

Reading Comprehension

The primary focus at this level is on the structural features of informational materials, comprehension, and analysis of grade-level text, and expository critique.  They are expected to understand how text structures make information accessible and usable in sequential or chronological order.  Students will be introduced to expository critique that requires them to distinguish facts, support inferences, and opinion in text.

Literary Response and Analysis

Students will continue to learn about the fundamental elements of literature, including identifying, explaining, and analyzing the characteristics of poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction.  There will be an emphasis on elements of narrative text, and they will learn to evaluate the meaning of archetypal patterns/symbols and the author’s use of various techniques to influence the reader’s perspectives. 

Writing

Students in this grade level will continue to progress through the stages of writing as a process in that they create multiple-paragraph, narrative, and expository compositions.  They will learn to use the research and technology to collect and organize relevant information.  Students will continue with the writing process that includes evaluation and revision as they are expected to write narrative, expository, persuasive, and descriptive texts of at least 500 to 700 words for each text.  They will continue to further develop their sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. 

Listening and Speaking

Students at this level are continuing to develop their listening and responsive skills when oral communications are given.  They will engage as listeners and speakers, interpret speaker’s messages, purposes, and perspectives, and making inferences.  They will learn to analyze, identify, and critique persuasive techniques.  Students will also take an active role in analyzing the media as source of information, entertainment, persuasive, interpretation of events, and transmission of culture.  They will also engage in speaking strategies to deliver narrative and informative presentations and oral responses to literature.

Science

Science in the fourth grade emerges to a higher level of understanding as students learn to formulate and justify predictions based on cause and effect relationships, differentiate observation from inference, and test their predictions through experiments.  They will learn about electromagnet and electrical energy in physical science.  In life science, they expand their knowledge about the food chain and web in relation to producers, consumers, and decomposers.  As their understanding develops, they begin to realize about the process of pollination and seed dispersal.  As for their earth science, students begin their in depth study about rocks, minerals, weathering, and erosion.  Through reading context about science and experimenting, students will learn to analyze problems by identifying relationships, distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information, sequencing and prioritizing information, observe patterns, conduct scientific investigations with multiple directions, and provide written communication about their findings.

Mathematics

When students are done with the fourth grade program, they will increase their facility with the four basic arithmetic operations applied to fractions and decimals and learn how to add and subtract positive and negative numbers.  Students will understand and use common measuring units to find the length and area.  They further know and use formulas to determine the volume of a simple geometric figure.  Students will also learn the concept of angle measurement and use a protractor and compass to solve mathematical problems.  With a firm mathematical knowledge, they learn the use of grids, tables, graphs and charts to record and analyze data.

History-Social Science

The main focus for the fourth grade curriculum is California in relation to how it is a changing state.  At this level, students are learning about their home state by exploring about its vast and varied geography, its many waves of immigration beginning with pre-Columbian societies, its continuous diversity, its economic energy, and its rapid growth through the years.  Student will gain further understanding about California by examining the state in relation to the rest of the nation with an emphasis on the U.S. Constitution and relationship between the state and the federal government.  

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