This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with the 4th grade ELA content.

Students are given examples and practice to recognize differences between the conventions of spoken and written standard English. Students will also differentiate between contexts that call for formal English and situations where informal English is appropriate.

Students will investigate ways to save animals around the world and create a written opinion piece to share their thoughts and ideas to save the animals. Students will be able to choose a structure that best supports their opinion. They will use correct grammar and spelling to write clear sentences and draft an opinion piece. Optional:  Students will take action by adopting an animal through the World Wildlife Foundation. This lesson was developed by Sara Kull as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.            

In this lesson, students will learn about immigration to the United States using primary sources: children's autobiographical stories and videos. In teams, students will practice their conversation and problem solving skills by reading the texts by determining the most important details for the five identified subtopics of the unit: causes, effects, challenges, emotions, and hopes. Students will document their findings in visual representations of each immigrant child. This is a 1 hour per day/4 day lesson. This lesson was developed by Tsianina Tovar as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.

This lesson will continue to support students' investigation of the world by identifying word connections from the unit's vocabulary in their graphic organizer (lesson 1). They will work collaboratively in teams to classify the words by the subtopics: cause, effect, challenges, emotions and hopes. This is a 1 hour per day/2 day lesson. This lesson was developed by Tsianina Tovar as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.

This lesson will take students to the final phase in this unit, the essay writing. Students have been writing routinely throughout the unit and have had authentic exposure to the language of immigration. Students will write a well-developed, 5-6 paragraph essay articulating their immigration story titled, "I am...." Students will be supported with a graphic organizer, sentence frames and a writing checklist as they write. These subtopics were identified in Lesson 3: cause, effect, challenges, emotions, and hopes. Students' writing will be supported by facts and details and provide a concluding section which expresses their opinion about their family's choice to immigrate to the United States. This lesson was developed by Tsianina Tovar as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.

This lesson introduces Fluency Folders which are used as a daily beginning activity. They include the unit's vocabulary (taken from Lesson 1 activity) categorized by parts of speech and writing log. This establishes a daily routine in order for students to build their self-efficacy by practicing and tracking their time to read the vocabulary fluency list and using the vocabulary to write sentences. This routine also allows for grammar mini-lessons with word work when needed. This daily activity supports language development with classroom anchor charts that identify and define needed unit vocabulary, cognates and sentence types with samples. This unit is a foundational piece intended to be used as a beginning activity for most of the lessons in this unit. This is a 1 hour lesson. This lesson was developed by Tsianina Tovar as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.

In this culmination activity, students will plan, practice and present their immigration autobiography. Their presentations will include: background, causes, effects, challenges, emotions and hopes about their personal or family's immigration story. This lesson's presentation can be showcased in a variety of ways from low tech, by giving a class presentation with pictures, to high tech by making a video using a green screen and movie making software. It is suggested and helpful to utilize the Technology Specialist at the school or district level to support the high tech option. This lesson was developed by Tsianina Tovar as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.

This lesson will involve students in the process of identifying and labeling geography on a "blank" classroom World Map. The students will hear about historical and current immigration with pictorial representation and words to support students' understanding. Using these visuals, students have a deeper understanding of immigration around the world and are able to make inferences about cause and effect, feelings, time (era), and location. This is a 1 hour per day/2 day lesson. This lesson was developed by Tsianina Tovar as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.

After this lesson students will be able to combine word choice and procedural writing; thus enhancing their overall writing skills.

Students are presented with an opportunity to investigate one of North Carolina's great mysteries, the Lost Colony of Roanoke. They are tasked with an application process to research various theories. Throughout the study/unit, students gain an understanding of a key event in their state's history. They are able to share and teach others about this mysterious event. They develop the understanding of looking for key details and clues to make connections with various theories, relating to the work of a CSI detective/forensic scientist.

Students will define allegory and explain the difference between allegory and alligator. Students will then read sentences, draw a circle around the word is used incorrectly, and then rewrite the sentence using the correct word.

Students will see how language changes when they consider purpose and audience. Students will differentiate between contexts that call for formal English and situations where informal discourse is appropriate.

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.

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.