What your child learns in fourth grade

Religion

Your child will learn about:

• God as our Father and his message to us in the Bible
• The life of Jesus
• The liturgical seasons throughout the year
• Saints
• The Church as community
• Parts of the liturgy
• The Ten Commandments
• The Beatitudes

Language Arts

Your child will learn to:

• Identify parts of a sentence (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions)
• Identify the subject and predicate of a sentence
• Recognize homographs, homophones, synonyms, antonyms, and analogies
• Research and locate information using various resources
• Follow written directions
• Apply spelling patterns to everyday sentences
• Identify independent and dependent clauses
• Write simple, complex, and compound sentences

Math

Your child will learn to:

• Compute addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division with multi-digit numbers, including money and regrouping
• Write number sentences for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division situations
• Identify, compare, and order numbers to 1,000,000 and simple common fractions
• Apply strategies (guess and check, draw a diagram, make a list, work backwards) to solve story problems
• Tell time to the minute and add and subtract time
• Identify geometric shapes, find area and perimeter, and recognize symmetry and congruency
• Read and interpret charts, tables, and graphs to make predictions and compute range, median, and mode
• Add and subtract fractions

Writing

Your child will learn to:

• Write expository text (writing to explain)
• Write narrative text (writing to tell a story)
• Understand and apply the six traits of writing (ideas and content, organization, word choice, voice, conventions, sentence fluency)
• Understand and apply the writing process (prewriting, drafting, revising, proofreading, publishing)

Reading

Your child will learn to:

• Read for purpose and meaning
• Draw conclusions from text
• Predict outcomes
• Make inferences and judgments
• Summarize and paraphrase text
• Decode using context clues, prefixes, and suffixes
• Recognize narrative elements
• Apply these skills to improve comprehension of fiction and nonfiction

Social Studies

Your child will learn about:

• The geography, history, and natural resources of Washington State
• Map skills using maps of Washington and the United States

Science

Your child will learn about:

• Land and water earth science
• Electrical circuits
• Evidence that we live on a changing earth
• Maintaining science notebooks
• Predicting, hypothesizing, and experimenting

Physical Education

Students receive 30 minutes of P.E. twice a week, focused on gross and fine motor skills, learning new games, participation, and respect for others.

Music

Students have music twice a week for 30 minutes, reviewing concepts and exploring moderate folk, sacred, and secular pieces through rhythm, melody, form, and texture and expression. They experiment with pitched and unpitched percussion and may take part in band or strings.

Activities

• Beginning strings
• Beginning band
• Kostka Club weekly liturgies

Computer Technology

Your child will use word processing to create, edit, and publish, practice math and reading skills with computer programs, and use technology to support research.

Message to parents

The fourth grade curriculum is taught in line with our school mission and the benchmarks set by the State of Washington. Our values of respect, responsibility, love, faithfulness, and excellence let students work in a positive learning environment while receiving an education built on high expectations and standards.