4th Grade English Language Arts

Students will actively listen using agreed-upon discussion rules.

Students will actively listen and interpret a speaker’s verbal messages and ask questions to clarify the speaker’s purpose.

Students will work effectively and respectfully in diverse groups by sharing responsibility for collaborative work and recognizing individual contributions made by each group member.

Students will engage in collaborative discussions about what they are reading and writing, expressing their own ideas clearly in pairs, diverse groups, and whole-class settings.

Students will give informal presentations in a group or individually, organizing information and determining content for the audience, speaking audibly and clearly in coherent sentences.

Students will correctly form words in print and cursive and use appropriate spacing for letters, words, and sentences.

Students will decode unfamiliar and multisyllabic words using their combined knowledge of the following phonics skills: letter-sound correspondences, all major syllable types (i.e., closed, consonant +le, open, vowel digraphs, vowel silent e, r-controlled).

Students will decode words by applying knowledge of structural analysis: contractions, abbreviations, common roots and related affixes, morphology, semantics.

Students will use correct spelling when writing unfamiliar and multisyllabic words, using their combined knowledge of the following skills: letter-sound correspondences, all major syllable types (i.e., closed, consonant +le, open, vowel digraphs, vowel silent e, r-controlled).

Students will use structural analysis to correctly spell the following parts of words: contractions, abbreviations, common spelling rules related to adding prefixes and suffixes.

Students will expand their sight word vocabulary by reading regularly- and irregularly-spelled words in isolation and context with increasing automaticity.

Students will orally and accurately read grade-level text at a smooth rate with expression that connotes comprehension.

Students will determine the key details that support the main idea of a text.

Students will compare fiction, poetry, and nonfiction to distinguish various genres.

Students will summarize and sequence the important events of a story.

Students will summarize facts and details from an informational text.

Students will routinely use a recursive process to prewrite, organize, and develop narrative, informative, and opinion drafts that display evidence of paragraphing.

Students will routinely use a recursive process to revise content for clarity, coherence, and organization (e.g., logical order and transitions).

Students will routinely and recursively edit drafts for punctuation, capitalization, and correctly-spelled grade-level words, using resources as needed.

Students will routinely use a recursive process to publish final drafts for an authentic audience (e.g., reading aloud, posting on blog, displaying, entering contest).

Students will determine the author’s purpose (i.e., entertain, inform, persuade) by identifying key details.

Students will determine whether a grade-level literary text is narrated in first- or third-person point of view.

Students will find textual evidence of literary elements: setting, plot, characters (i.e., protagonist, antagonist), characterization, conflict.

Students will find textual evidence of literary devices: metaphor, idiom, personification, hyperbole, simile, alliteration, onomatopoeia.

Students will answer inferential questions using evidence from one or more texts to support answers.

Students will distinguish fact from opinion in an informational text and explain how reasons and facts support specific points.

Students will compose narratives reflecting real or imagined experiences that: include plots with a climax and resolution, include developed characters who overcome conflicts and use dialogue, use a consistent point of view, unfold in chronological sequence, use sentence variety, sensory details, and vivid language to create interest, model literary elements and/or literary devices from mentor texts.

Students will compose informative essays that: introduce and develop a topic, incorporate evidence (e.g., specific facts, examples), maintain an organized structure with transitional words and phrases, use sentence variety and word choice to create interest, model literary devices from mentor texts.

Students will write opinion essays that: introduce a topic and state an opinion, incorporate relevant, text-based evidence to support the opinion, use sentence variety and word choice to create interest, maintain an organized structure with transitional words and phrases.

Students will identify relationships among words, including synonyms, antonyms, analogies, homophones, and homographs.

Students will use context clues to clarify the meaning of words.

Students will use word parts (e.g., affixes, Latin roots, stems) to define and determine the meaning of new words.

Students will consult reference materials (e.g., dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses) to comprehend the words in a text.

Students will acquire new grade-level vocabulary, relate new words to prior knowledge, and apply vocabulary in various contexts.

Students will use grade-level vocabulary in writing to clearly communicate ideas.

Students will use precise and vivid vocabulary in writing for the intended mode and effect on the audience.

Students will recognize simple and compound sentences.

Students will recognize parts of speech in sentences: irregular possessive nouns (e.g., children’s), irregular and past participle verbs and verb tense to identify settings, times, and sequences, subject and verb agreement, comparative and superlative adjectives, prepositional phrases, possessive pronouns and the nouns they replace (i.e., antecedents), coordinating conjunctions, comparative and superlative adverbs, interjections.

Students will compose simple and compound declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences, avoiding and correcting fragments.

Students will use nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and adverbs to add clarity and variety to their writing.

Students will recognize and correct errors in subject and verb agreement.

Students will capitalize familial relations, proper adjectives, conventions of letter writing, and the first letter of a quotation.

Students will use periods with declarative and imperative sentences, question marks with interrogative sentences, and exclamation points with exclamatory sentences.

Students will use apostrophes to show possession of singular and plural nouns and recognize and remove apostrophes used to form plurals.

Students will use commas in greetings and closings in letters and emails, to separate individual words in a series, and to indicate dialogue.

Students will use a colon to introduce a list (e.g., Deb only needed three things from the grocery store: milk, eggs, and bread.).

Students will use quotation marks to indicate dialogue, quoted material, and titles of works.

Students will use underlining or italics to indicate titles of works.

Students will use their own viable research questions to find information about a specific topic.

Students will identify and use text features to understand and interpret informational texts.

Students will begin to determine the relevance and reliability of the information gathered.

Students will generate their own viable research questions and use appropriate sources to gather information.

Students will organize information found during research, using a visual or graphic organizer.

Students will summarize and present information ethically, using the research process.

Students will locate and use information from a variety of alphabetic, aural, visual, spatial, and/or gestural content to compare perspectives about ideas and topics.

Students will communicate their ideas, thoughts, and feelings by combining two or more kinds of content: writing/alphabetic, sound, visual, and/or spatial, movement.

Students will select texts for academic and personal purposes and read independently for extended periods of time.

Students will write independently using a combination of emergent and conventional writing with prompting.