Fourth Grade Language Arts- Class 1

This is a class for students who have mastered fundamental language skills (foundational reading for comprehension, with fluency) and are ready to build on these skills to become fluent readers and comprehend what they are reading. 

In this course, we will focus on reading, vocabulary, and writing. 

We will read both fiction and nonfiction texts (including: biographies; autobiographies; books about history, social studies, science, and the arts; technical texts; and literary nonfiction.) This text will increase in complexity over the course of the class. We will practice close reading which will require students to get truly involved with the text they are reading. The purpose is to teach them to notice features and language used by the author. Students will be required to think thoroughly and methodically about the details in a text. The students will be asked text-dependent questions to show comprehension and understanding.

Over the course of this class, students will gain vocabulary skills. They will learn words related to the text that we are studying. New words will be introduced, read, written and defined each week. These rich vocabulary words are more precise or subtle forms of familiar words and include multiple meaning words. Instead of walk for example, saunter could be used. 

Writing practice will also be a key part of this class. Students will learn to write effectively and proficiently. Students will practice writing for a variety of purposes, citing evidence from text, researching and presenting knowledge on a topic, and producing and publishing writing in a variety of formats. We will focus on three writing categories:  explanatory/informational, narrative, and opinion/argument.

Each week, your child will be sent two PDFs to be printed. In the first class, I will introduce the text and we will do some close reading, discussing the material and discovering new vocabulary. For homework, students will study the vocabulary and do some prewriting for the next class. In the second class of the week, we will complete a writing assignment and complete comprehension, rereading the text, as necessary. Students do not need to buy books for this class, as the reading material is included in the PDFs. Students may need a pencil, scissors, gluestick, a notebook, a stapler, a highlighter, and something to color with like markers or colored pencils.