In fourth grade our focus is to prepare students with the 21st Century competency skills. We prepare our fourth graders with skills that are going to be critical in a career and/or university setting: Critical thinking, problem solving, shared decision-making, information sharing, collaboration, and innovation.
The California Common Core Standards focus in fourth grade is to continue mastering the major work of each grade so that students can gain strong math foundations: solid conceptual understanding, a high degree of procedural skill and fluency, and the ability to apply the math they know to solve problems inside and outside the math classroom.
Fourth grade math focus concepts and skills
• Building problem-solving skills and strategies
• Multiplying and dividing with 1-digit numbers and 2-digit numbers
• Adding and subtracting with fractions and decimals
• Understanding relationships between fractions and decimals
• Studying angles, line segments, area and perimeter
In ELA, we ask students to read stories, literature, and informational text.
We provide students with more complex text that provides facts and backgrounds in all academic areas, such as science and social studies. We challenge our students to read critically by asking them thought provoking questions that requires students to refer back to what they’ve read.
Besides asking fourth grade students to write independently, our goals for our fourth grade students is to become more proficient at writing more elaborative five-paragraph essays. We ask our fourth graders to continue to expand upon their knowledge of grammar, spelling, and mechanics, as well as how to evaluate writing and conduct research. By the time students matriculate to fifth grade, fourth grade students should have gained a greater understanding of the writing process as well as mastered how to write clearly and effectively including using complete paragraphs and transitional sentences.
Fourth Grade GATE Cluster
Besides keeping with The California Common Core Standards our Gate students are taught with the added rigor to meet their ability level. Differentiation in our Gate cluster is achieved through a variety of teaching strategies such as Kaplan’s Depth and Complexity Icons, novelty, effective questioning techniques, the use of higher level thinking skills/Bloom’s taxonomy, and acceleration
