Welcome to fourth grade. Come and join us as we travel to the seven continents. Working together, we will learn more about our world’s culture, geography, and history. Our tour guides, our teachers, lead us on our discoveries. As a team of explorers following the Responsive Classroom approach, we value one another’s contributions and differences and enjoy a mutual respect that allows us to grow and take risks. By the journey’s end, we will have amassed a wide range of skills and abilities—our souvenirs.
Our World Tour theme integrates Social Studies and Language Arts curricula. As we travel, we explore the geography of different places while reading novels from these locales. Not only do we learn about a given place, but we also develop inferential reasoning skills alongside reading comprehension. Our journey culminates at the “World Fair.” Here we share with the classroom and school community our written report on a country of our choosing. From this, we gain familiarity not only with the country but also with the research process and all its facets—primary source exploration, note taking, and information compilation. In addition, during our study of different cultures, students help organize and contribute to community service projects to benefit communities around the world.
Through direct instruction in Everyday Mathematics as well as hands-on activities, we internalize math concepts to apply in our everyday lives. We learn to work through multi-step problems, discover patterns in numbers, explore geometric figures, and use math tools to measure and construct.
The adventure continues with composition. Through the Empowering Writers program, we learn the structure and process of narrative and expository writing. We practice each component of the writing process separately, which allows us to concentrate on and develop each individual skill. Upon completion of a piece, we evaluate our own work, honing revision and editing abilities.
In addition to our world tour theme, students practice a range of spelling, vocabulary and handwriting skills. They continue to develop cursive writing skills through Handwriting Without Tears. The fourth grade curriculum is rounded out with specials in art, science, PE, Spanish, band, chorus, and computer lab.