Overview & Highlights

Curriculum Highlights

Religion

The fourth grade religion curriculum “One in Christ” comes from Concordia Publishing House (CPH) and follows Bible stories, workbooks, and memorization skills on a daily basis.

Memory

Along with memorizing various prayers and their meanings, students will memorize weekly selected Bible verses, along with the books of the Bible.

Handwriting

Students should have a clear understanding of cursive and most subjects are completed in cursive with the exception of Spelling. Students have a 4th grade Handwriting book.

Social Studies

The Harcourt Social Studies book (2010), “States and Regions” is used and aligns with Common Core State Standards. In 4th grade, students concentrate on all the different regions of the United States learning all the states and capitals. For each region, they learn about the environment, its heritage, customs and the people who have come from or influenced that area. There is an assigned project per region where students will pick a state in the region, complete a report and present it to the class. Students will also participate in a Social Studies Fair during certain years.

Science

The 4th grade HMH Science Dimensions curriculum (2018) covers Units including Engineering and Technology (which includes the Lego project in STEM working on simple machines), Energy, Waves and Information Transfer, Plant Structure and Function, Animal Structure and Function, Changes to Earth’s Surface, Rocks and Fossils, and Natural Resources and Hazards. Class also has the opportunity to see chicks hatch during our Embryology program every other year in the spring. The class also covers the systems of the human body. Certain years will have students participating in a Science Fair.

Math

Our math series Envision Math (Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley) aligns with Common Core State Standards and begins with a review of 4th grade numeration, and quickly moves into addition and subtraction of whole numbers. Several chapters are dedicated to the application of multiplication and division concepts, divisors, and remainders. Students will also gain an understanding of lines, angles, shapes, fractions, decimals, area and perimeter, measurement, time and temperature, data and graphs, equations, transformation, congruency, symmetry and probability.

Language Arts

The 4th grade language arts series aligns with Common Core State Standards with the Journey’s by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Students will continue to familiarize themselves with Grammar, including parts of speech, punctuation, and sentence types, Daily Oral Language, and journal writing with the purpose of practicing proofreading skills, handwriting skills in cursive and revision of their works. The students will read examples of writing such as the personal narrative, persuasion, and writing to explain, inform and entertain.

Reading

Students read works from the reading series and poetry. The novels include but are not limited to Stone Fox, Granny Torrelli Makes Soup, Charlotte’s Web, and Ralph S. Mouse. Students also decipher between different reading concepts. Some of these include drawing conclusions, summarizing, using context clues, cause and effect, comparing and contrasting, setting and picking out plots.

Accelerated Reader:  Accelerated Reader (A.R.) is designed to build a student’s comprehension of stories. Accelerated Reader books are worth a certain amount of points; students earn points once they have completed and passed a quiz on a book. At the beginning of each trimester, students take a Star Reading Test to determine their reading level and their goal is set. The A.R. program is incorporated into our silent reading each day for 30 minutes and students should be reading 30 minutes as home each night. Meeting the A.R. goal is 20% of their reading grade.

Physical Education

Our Physical Education program covers all of the major sports while concentrating of gross motor skills, good sportsmanship, and team-building – feel free to speak with our P.E. instructor. In the winter, students will participate in a bowling unit utilizing carpet bowling lanes from Wood Dale Bowl. This unit is ended with a fieldtrip to the Wood Dale Bowl while we celebrate Valentine’s Day!

Field Trips

We enhance classroom learning with field trips several times a year. In the past, we have visited the Itasca Nature Center, plays such as “Anne of Green Gables” and “Fly Guy”, traveled to the Morton Arboretum and Apple Orchard, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and make a yearly school trip to the Brookfield Zoo.

Students also have Art class, Music Class, Choir and Computers during each week as well. Students each have a laptop in our classroom and are used almost daily.