Literacy:

_____Fourth grade continues to build on the skills and strategies that were implemented in kindergarten through third grade. We do this through a balanced literacy program containing spelling and word building, Mosaic of Thought reading strategies, and the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing. Our weekly literacy block consists of the following elements:
_____Spell It-Write! allows a child to experience an individualized spelling curriculum.  The student text provides practice activities and games as each child works toward personal spelling goals.  The curriculum also supports a weekly Word Building activity to work on their vowel + consonant relationship.
_____Mosaic of Thought provides the backbone for our district reading curriculum.  The strategies concentrate on connections, determining importance, questioning, imagery, inferences, and synthesis to increase comprehension and create a lifelong reader.  There is a consistent time for independent practice during Read and Relax and the blocked Reading time that students can read at their independent level.  Students continue to practice and grow in their skills with Guided Reading, where students discuss on-level books on the current comprehension strategy.  Our teachers also supplement the short, district provided texts with on-level novels.  This allows for continuity of topic and theme that is sometimes sacrificed in small group/short text settings.
_____Writing skills follow the format of the 6 + 1 Traits of Writing curriculum.  We will cover all of the major genres: narrative, expository, persuasive, and poetry while looking at the key pieces to good writing: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions.   The “plus one” is how students will finalize their piece in presentation.  Each component will identify a specific trait of writing, score sample pieces, and model good writing before a student creates a piece searching for mastery of that skill.
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Math:

_____We start out with a review of addition and subtraction before starting our three units: Multiplication, Division, and Geometry.  Each of these skills will be taught using variety of techniques, manipulatives, and interwoven problem solving. Multiplication and division facts are the core of fourth grade curriculum.  Students work towards mastery of basic multiplication and division facts from one to twelve through Array Card Games, take-home practice Cold Facts, and other in-class games to advance memorization.  We finish up the year investigating Geometry and the basic principles surrounding two and three dimensional shapes.  This will integrate area, polygons, solids, coordinates and angles.
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Social Science:

_____Our whole social studies curriculum focuses on the question, "What is a region?" As we move in and out of the five regions: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and West, we will be discussing the place, location, human interaction, and movement between the regions.  Each year we decide upon a creative culminating project covering the nation.
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Science:

_____Science consists of three main units: Mystery Powders, Rocks and Minerals, and Plants, and the Circulatory System.  Students will reconnect with the scientific method as they identify unknown powders through a series of test in Mystery Powders.  Rocks and Minerals offers a glimpse into earth science while students learn to classify and identify different types of rocks.  The class will use the Wisconsin Fast Plants Unit to experience the life cycle of a flowering plant, photosynthesis, and related topics.  At sometime between these units, a fourth grader will also explore their system of the human body, the Circulatory System.
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Health:

_____At sometime between the science units, a fourth grader will also explore their system of the human body, the Circulatory System.  Through district curriculum and the American Heart Association program: Heart Power, students will learn all about the heart, blood, arteries, and veins that keep our bodies running every day.
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Homework:

_____Fourth grade is the induction to homework and letter grades.  Through careful modeling, the students take a new step in responsibility by keeping an assignment notebook and being held responsible for any work not completed at school.  An assignment listed on the Assignment Note Board and not finished at school is required to be finished as homework.  Each classroom at Beebe determines its own homework per day, per subject.
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