During 4th grade, students will develop the stamina and skills to support more complex reading and thinking about text, as well as writing about what they have read. Your child will:

• Use different strategies to read unknown words and words that have many syllables;

• Listen to, read, talk and write about 4th-grade fiction and nonfiction using clues from the text to help make sense of and analyze what they have read;

• Practice writing various types of products, including opinion pieces, informational products and stories using evidence to support points and ideas;

• Speak and write appropriately using parts of speech, capitalization and punctuation, as well as language that shows a growing vocabulary; and

• Use print and digital resources to clarify pronunciation, spelling and meaning.

During 4th grade, students will develop the ability to add and subtract whole numbers greater than nine using an algorithm (a set of rules). Your child will:

• Use all four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) with whole numbers;

• Recognize the relationship between fractions and decimals and generate factors and multiples for numbers; and

• Strengthen previous understanding of properties of 2D objects and the use of them to solve problems involving symmetry.

During 4th grade, your child will be an active learner who will be doing science to learn science. They will learn skills that promote analysis and interpretation of data, critical thinking and problem solving similar to professionals in the field while making connections across the different areas of science to develop a deeper understanding of the science concepts. Your child will:

• Develop an understanding that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat and electric currents or from object to object through collisions;

• Develop a model to describe the height and wavelength of waves and show how wave patterns carry energy and can cause objects to move;

• Develop an understanding of the specific functions of plant and animal anatomy that support survival;

• Learn how energy is transferred and how it connects to speed;

• Identify which organisms lives in various environments long ago based on fossil records and understand how the landscape has changed over time using rock formations and fossil locations; and

• Describe that energy and fuels come from renewable and nonrenewable natural resources.

In 4th grade, students will discover how and why people move from one place to another in their study of the migration and settlement of Colonial America. Your child will:

• Describe forms of self-government used by various groups in Colonial America while assessing the ability of various forms of government to foster civic virtues and uphold democratic principles;

• Compare and contrast different ways that the government interacts with the economy;

• Compare the distinctive cultural characteristics of groups that immigrated or were brought forcibly to the United States from other nations or regions; and

• Explain examples of conflict and collaboration among diverse groups of people as they encountered one another.