Fourth Grade
Quarter 1
Poetry, Poets, and Becoming Writers
This module uses literature and informational text to introduce students to what inspires people to write. It is intentionally designed to encourage students to embrace a love of literacy and writing. In Unit 1, students begin to build their close reading skills by reading the novel in verse Love That Dog by Sharon Creech and analyzing how the main character, Jack, feels in response to events that happen in the story. Alongside Love That Dog, students closely read and analyze the poems Jack reads and describes, including “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. They analyze the poems to determine a theme and to identify characteristics of poetry in order to effectively summarize the poems.
Quarter 2
Animal Defense Mechanisms:
Researching to Build Knowledge and Teach Others
In this eight-week module, students explore animal defense mechanisms. They build proficiency in writing an informative piece, examining the defense mechanisms of one specific animal about which they build expertise. Students also build proficiency in writing a narrative piece about this animal. In Unit 1, they build background knowledge on general animal defenses through close readings of several informational texts. Students read closely to practice drawing inferences as they begin their research and use a research notebook to make observations and synthesize information. Students will continue to use the research notebook, using the millipede as a whole class model. They begin to research an expert group animal in preparation to write about this animal in Units 2 and 3, again using the research notebook. In Unit 2, students continue to build expertise about their animal and its defense mechanisms, writing the first part of the final performance task—an informative piece describing their animal͛s physical characteristics, habitat, predators, and defense mechanisms. With their new knowledge about animal defenses from Unit 1, students read informational texts closely, using the same research notebook to synthesize information about their animal. In Unit 3, students apply their research from Units 1 and 2 to write a narrative piece about their animal that incorporates their research. This narrative takes the format of a choose-your-own-adventure. For their performance task, students plan, draft, and revise the introduction and one choice ending of the narrative with the support of both peer and teacher feedback. The second choice ending is planned, written, and revised on demand for the end of unit assessment.
Quarter 3
The American Revolution
How does one’s perspective influence his or her opinion? In this module, students consider the answer to this question through the lens of the American Revolution. In Unit 1, students build background knowledge about the Revolutionary War and the different perspectives of colonists. In the second half of the unit, students read about different groups within the Loyalists and Patriots, reading informational texts to determine the main idea, analyze the overall structure of the text, and summarize the texts.
Quarter 4
Ratifying the 19th Amendment:
Responding to Inequality
This module uses literature and informational texts to introduce students to gender and racial inequality issues in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, and to recognize how the process of ratifying the 19th Amendment can teach us about how people were responding to gender and racial inequality at that time. In Unit 1, students begin reading The Hope Chest by Karen Schwabach. As they read about events in The Hope Chest, they also read informational firsthand and secondhand accounts of real-life responses to inequality and compare and contrast the information in both. In Unit 2, students continue to read The Hope Chest, identifying themes in each chapter and summarizing events that show evidence of a theme. They also analyze the meaning of similes, metaphors, idioms, adages, and proverbs. In Unit 3, students connect their learning about the process of ratifying the 19th Amendment to their own lives as they focus on how students can make a difference and contribute to a better world. They research how students around the world have made a difference, before taking action as a class on an issue in their community. At the end of the unit, students write PSAs encouraging other students to make a difference, and they write a press release sharing with the local media what the class did to take action and the impact of their work.