This resource accompanies our Rethink 4th Grade ELA course. It includes ideas for use, ways to support exceptional children, ways to extend learning, digital resources and tools, tips for supporting English Language Learners and students with visual and hearing impairments. There are also ideas for offline learning.  

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 4th Grade English Language Arts. 

Traditional tales often take on a life of their own, traveling the world and finding new interpretations within the cultures they encounter. This collection brings together several stories from different traditions.

Source: This book was compiled by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology and includes passages from multiple sources. Please refer to the passage pages for further source information

In this lesson, students write theme poems using their content knowledge and sensory awareness of a familiar object. Students first learn about the characteristics and format of a theme poem. They then engage in an online interactive activity in which they select a graphic of a familiar object (e.g., the sun, a heart, a balloon), build a word bank of content area and sensory words related to the object, and write poems within the shape of the object. Finished poems are printed and displayed in class.

In this lesson, children's literature is used to provide students with an opportunity to explore the concept that all individuals have strengths, abilities, and talents. Through whole-class and small-group dialogue, students determine what each story means in the context of their classroom and themselves as individuals. Students also develop the necessary skills for cooperative learning.

In this lesson, students will participate in small group Collaborative Reasoning about issues of social justice and diversity. Students will read articles and answer questions that spur them to think critically about issues and discuss with others, using evidence and experiences to support their personal beliefs. Each group will create an online Persuasion Map to share whole class.

In this lesson, students work as a class to chart the use of the three elements of setting in the story, using specific words and examples from the text. Students then discuss the techniques that the book’s author used to develop the setting, making observations and drawing conclusions about how authors make the setting they write about vivid and believable. Next, students work in small groups to analyze the setting in another picture book, using an online graphic organizer. Finally, students apply what they have learned about how authors develop good settings to a piece of their own writing

In this lesson, the first session involves teacher modeling of the prediction strategy. The second is based on guided practice that allows the teacher and students to work together. The third session requires students to use prediction and document the results in response journals. Suggestions for transferring the strategy into later reading activities are included.

In this introductory lesson, students will learn the basics of the aurora through small group discussions, reflection and reading. The lesson includes teacher notes and instructions, student workshops and an online, animated story, and related teacher resources on aurora. This is lesson one of a collection of five activities that can be used individually or as a sequence; concludes with a KWL (Know/Want-to-know/Learned) assessment activity.

Students will read, discuss and write about the novel Wonder by RJ Palacio.

In this lesson, students explore their text, searching for literary elements such as characters, setting, figures of speech, and themes. They use the alphabet to organize their findings. Finally, they publish their work in ABC books, using the Alphabet Organizer student interactive.

In this lesson, students get to flex their writing muscles as they use a variety of writing genres to create a zine of their own: letter writing, persuasive writing, narrative, acrostic poetry, comic writing, and biography/autobiography. Students choose a prominent figure from popular culture as the focus for a multigenre zine and then plan the project using the Facts–Questions–Interpretations method. Students then write in each of the listed genres about their chosen subjects, using a variety of ReadWriteThink.org tools. Finally, students design covers for their projects, and the teacher binds all the printed documents into individual zines.