Having developed reading competency in previous grades, students in fourth grade begin reading as a means to gain knowledge and understanding. The focus on comprehension carries over to their own writing as they develop their skills in informational and report writing.
Reading
Students make the shift from learning to read to reading to learn with an emphasis on comprehension and nonfiction. They are presented with high interest, theme-based, or genre-related literature and allowed to choose what they read.
Students move between discussion-based read-alouds, reading partnerships, small group literature circles, and self-selected independent reading workshops. Workshops focus on students developing skills in metacognition, predicting, making connections with the text, summarizing, questioning, and determining importance.
Writing
We focus on several writing practices: note-taking, organization, paragraph structure, idea generation, author’s voice, and elaboration. Students learn a variety of writing forms including informational, opinion, and literary analysis. Throughout the writing process, students practice the different stages of writing through rough drafts, editing, revising and publishing.
Using relevant and focused literature as examples, students learn through mini-lessons, one-on-one interactions, and in small groups. Components of writing are incorporated into project-based learning where students use their composition skills to demonstrate understanding and share information.
Vocabulary and morphology are important components of literacy studies.
Word Study
Vocabulary building is part of every aspect of literacy studies. More than simply memorizing new words, students are engaged weekly in the practice of sorting, building, reading, writing, and looking for patterns in their spelling words. They investigate the etymology of words to make meaning of the spelling system.
