4th Grade English Language Arts: Complete Curriculum of Fourth Grade ELA

Fourth Grade English Language Arts is taught to common core standards, covering literature, foundational skills, writing, speaking, and listening. Students practice reading for fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. They will learn to look for the theme, describe characters and settings, draw inferences from the text, and compare the point of view of different characters. There is a strong focus on grammar, which includes subject-verb agreement, using complete sentences and avoiding run-on sentences and fragments, and correctly using commonly confused words. There are also weekly writing assignments with students practicing opinion writing, storytelling, poetry, dialogue, using a dictionary and more. 

I am currently enrolled in my final course through the Gettysburg College-Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History master of arts in American history program. In addition, I have bachelor of arts degrees in English, journalism, and political science. I was the director of a social justice center for three years during which time I routinely taught about and facilitated conversations about historical and current political events for both teen and adults participants. Before that, I was a newspaper editor and reporter for 15 years. I have been teaching history, social studies, and English Language Arts classes for the past five years. I am currently lead teacher at The Foster Woods Folk School, which focuses on education, storytelling, and the arts within an ecosocial justice framework aimed at celebrating and improving our connections as a global community of human and non-human earthlings. In this role, I work with learners of all ages with a primary focus of working with learners in grades three through 12.  

There is daily homework to be completed outside of class time. Homework includes reading and writing assignments, as well as worksheets and other learning projects. 

Weekly homework is assessed as follows: 
Reading Quiz: 15 Percent
Spelling Word Project: 15 Percent
Grammar Quiz: 15 Percent
Grammar Project/Worksheet: 15 Percent
Class Participation: 15 Percent
Writing Assignment: 25 Percent

Learners earning a C (70 percent) or greater will receive a letter of completion that reflects their final grade. 

1 hour 40 minutes per week in class, and an estimated 2 - 4 hours per week outside of class.

Students will need either a paper or digital copy of Lynne Kelly's "Song for a Whale."

I will provide PDF readers for materials covered in Units 2-4. 

For the Unit 2 reader, I have adapted some of the traditional literature we will be reading to be appropriate for a fourth-grade audience. Sources from which traditional literature will be taken or that I have used in adaptations include: 
“The Pot of Wisdom: Ananse stories” by Adwoa Badoe
“A Listening Wind: Native Literature from the Southeast” edited by Marcia Haag
“Sky Loom: Native American Myth, Story, and Song” edited by Brian Swann
Grimm’s Complete Fairytales
“The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen” edited by Maria Tatar
"African-American Folktales for Young Readers," edited by Judy Dockrey Young and Richard Alan Young
"The Handy Mythology Answer Book," by David A. Leeming
"Thirty-Three Multicultural Tales to Tell," by Pleasant DeSpain 
"Unikkaaqtuat: An Introduction to Inuit Myths and Legends," edited by Neil Christopher
"Old Indian Legends," by Zitkala-Sa
"Year Full Of Stories," by Angela McAllister

Content in the Unit 4 history reader was compiled by me. Among the many sources I consulted in compiling the information are: 
PBS Learning Media
BlackPast.org
World History Encyclopedia 
World Atlas 
National Geographic
Smithsonian Magazine 
"Dynasties of China," by Core Knowledge 
"Early Islamic Civilizations and African Kingdoms," by Core Knowledge 
 "Aksum and Nubia: Warfare, Commerce, and Political Fictions in Ancient Northeast Africa" by George Hatke
"A Military History of China," by David A. Graff

Content in the Unit 4 social studies reader was compiled by me. Among the many sources I consulted in compiling the information are: 
ushistory.org
UXL Civics, 1st Edition 
"United States Studies," MI Open Book Project 

Reading assignments for the news article and biography sections will be drawn from NewsELA articles.