Fourth Grade is a transitional year. It brings together prior knowledge from all the other grade levels and extends that knowledge towards individual problem solving. This year is a stepping stone to independence and self-motivated learning. Fourth graders are keenly aware of their strengths and weaknesses. It is our joined responsibility as both parents and educators to help guide our young students towards academic independence focusing on celebrating their individual needs. Students are expected to study and read each night. Breaking the information into “smaller chunks” will help make the amount of information more manageable, especially in Social Studies and Science.

Students continue to become more independent readers by refining and using the comprehension strategies that have been taught since kindergarten in both whole groups and small groups. The strategies that the students will be refining are predicting, questioning, making connections, summarizing, and inferring. Students must read fluently and retell what they have read to move from one level to another.

Students refine their use of the 6 Writing Traits including ideas, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, voice, and conventions. They continue to practice the writing process steps which include pre-writing, drafting, editing, revising, and publishing. Fourth grade students are expected to move towards multi-paragraph writing by the end of the school year. Students chose what they will write about during writing workshop. A writing prompt is given each nine weeks to practice for the writing predictor test which is given in March.

Our main focus is on problem solving. Students will solve multi-step problems in all areas of study. These areas of study include addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, geometry, and measurement. Students must be able to learn the basic concepts and then apply those concepts to answer a single or multi-step problem.

We will study several units during the course of the year. We will start with plant life and move into ecosystems. Weather and Force, Motion, and Energy are the next units of study. We will end the year with a study of Electricity and Space. Throughout the year, we will be integrating the steps of scientific investigation into all of our activities and experiments.

Students learn about the history of Virginia. We will start with the geography of Virginia and move on to the history of Virginia. We will discuss the discovery of Jamestown all the way up to modern times. We will take an SOL test in Virginia Studies at the end of the year.

• Look in your child’s homework agenda each night and discuss your child’s day.
• Read twenty minutes nightly.
• Help your child review social studies notes daily.
• Be sure to check your child’s homework folder daily for notices.
• Contact your child’s teacher when you have questions.
• Celebrate your child’s learning frequently in small ways!!