LANGUAGE ARTS
Course Description

In Grade 4, students spend significant blocks of time engaged in reading and writing independently. Fourth grade students are critical listeners and analyze a speaker's intent such as to entertain or to persuade. When speaking, they adapt their language to the audience, purpose, and occasion. Students continue to read classic and contemporary selections. Fourth grade students read with a growing interest in a wide variety of topics and adjust their reading approach to various forms of texts. Students expand their vocabulary systematically across the curriculum. Students read for meaning and can paraphrase texts. Students are able to connect, compare, and contrast ideas. Fourth grade students can identify and follow varied text structures such as chronologies and cause and effect. Students produce summaries of texts and engage in more sophisticated analysis of characters, plots, and settings. Fourth grade students are able to select and use different forms of writing for specific purposes such as to inform, persuade, or entertain. Their writing takes on style and voice. Fourth grade students write in complete sentences. Students vary sentence structure and use adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, and conjunctions. Fourth grade students are proficient spellers. Students edit their writing based on their knowledge of grammar and usage, spelling, punctuation, and other conventions of written language. Students can produce a final, polished copy of a written composition. Fourth grade students understand and use visual media and can compare and contrast visual media to print.

GRADES 3 - 5 MATHEMATIC
Course Description

Within a well-balanced mathematics curriculum, the primary focal points at Grade 3 are multiplying and dividing whole numbers, connecting fraction symbols to fractional quantities, and standardizing language and procedures in geometry and measurement.

Throughout mathematics in Grades 3-5, students build a foundation of basic understandings in number, operation, and quantitative reasoning; patterns, relationships, and algebraic thinking; geometry and spatial reasoning; measurement; and probability and statistics. Students use algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division as generalizations connected to concrete experiences; and they concretely develop basic concepts of fractions and decimals. Students use appropriate language and organizational structures such as tables and charts to represent and communicate relationships, make predictions, and solve problems. Students select and use formal language to describe their reasoning as they identify, compare, and classify two- or three dimensional geometric figures; and they use numbers, standard units, and measurement tools to describe and compare objects, make estimates, and solve application problems. Students organize data, choose an appropriate method to display the data, and interpret the data to make decisions and predictions and solve problems.

Throughout mathematics in Grades 3-5, students develop numerical fluency with conceptual understanding and computational accuracy. Students in Grades 3-5 use knowledge of the base-ten place value system to compose and decompose numbers in order to solve problems requiring precision, estimation, and reasonableness. By the end of Grade 5, students know basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts and are using them to work flexibly, efficiently, and accurately with numbers during addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division computation.

Problem solving, language and communication, connections within and outside mathematics, and formal and informal reasoning underlie all content areas in mathematics. Throughout mathematics in Grades 3-5, students use these processes together with technology and other mathematical tools such as manipulative materials to develop conceptual understanding and solve meaningful problems as they do mathematics.

SCIENCE
Course Description

In Grade 4, the study of science includes planning and implementing field and laboratory investigations using scientific methods, analyzing information, making informed decisions, and using tools such as compasses to collect information. Students also use computers and information technology tools to support scientific investigations.

As students learn science skills, they identify components and processes of the natural world including properties of soil, effects of the oceans on land, and the role of the Sun as our major source of energy. In addition, students identify the physical properties of matter and observe the addition or reduction of heat as an example of what can cause changes in states of matter.

Students learn the roles of living and nonliving components of simple systems and investigate differences between learned characteristics and inherited traits. They learn that adaptations of organisms that lived in the past may have increased some species' ability to survive.

SOCIAL STUDIES
Course Description

In Grade 4, students examine the history of Texas from the early beginnings to the present within the context of influences of the Western Hemisphere.  Historical content focuses on Texas history including the Texas revolution, establishment of the Republic of Texas, and subsequent annexation to the United States.  Students discuss important issues, events, and individuals of the 19th and 20th centuries.  Students conduct a thorough study of regions in Texas and the Western Hemisphere that result from human activity and from physical features.  A focus on the location, distribution, and patterns of economic activities and of settlement in Texas further enhances the concept of regions.  Students describe how early Native Americans in Texas and the Western Hemisphere met their basic economic needs and identify economic motivations for European exploration and colonization and reasons for the establishment of Spanish missions.  Students explain how Native Americans governed themselves and identify characteristics of Spanish and Mexican colonial governments in Texas.  Students recite and explain the meaning of the Pledge to the Texas Flag.  Students identify the contributions of people of various racial, ethnic, and religious groups to Texas and describe the impact of science and technology on life in the state.  Students use critical-thinking skills to identify cause-effect relationships, compare and contrast, and make generalizations and predictions.