This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with the 4th grade ELA content. Within the folder you will access Parent Guide PDFs in FIVE Languages: Arabic, English, Hindi, Spanish, and Vietnamese to help on-going communication with caregivers. 

In this lesson, collaborative groups will read a variety of American tall tales, then report elements of their story to the whole class. Students add story information to a collaborative, whole-class character study matrix that summarizes all the stories. In a writing activity, students compare two characters of their choice. The lesson process is applicable to any set of related texts.

A strong plot is a basic requirement of any narrative. Students are sometimes confused, however, by the difference between a series of events that happen in a story and the plot elements, or the events that are significant to the story. In this lesson, students select a topic for a personal narrative and then do the prewriting in comic-strip format to reinforce the plot structure. Finally, they write their own original narratives based on the comic strip prewriting activity, keeping the elements of narrative writing in mind. This lesson uses a version of "The Three Little Pigs" fairy tale to demonstrate the literary element; however, any picture book with a strong plot would work for this lesson.

As a way to support teachers with English Language Arts (ELA) instruction during the pandemic, the NCDPI ELA team created choice boards featuring standards-aligned ELA activities.The intended purpose of these choice boards is to provide a way for students to continue standards-based learning while schools are closed. Each activity can be adapted and modified to be completed with or without the use of digital tools. Many activities can also be repeated with different texts. These standards-based activities are meant to be a low-stress approach to reinforcing and enriching the skills learned during the 2019-2020 school year. The choice boards are to be used flexibly by teachers, parents, and students in order to meet the unique needs of each learner.Exploration activities are provided for a more self-directed or guided approach to independent learning for students. These activities and sites should be used as a way to explore concepts, topics, skills, and social and emotional competencies that interest the learner. 

In this lesson students explore expository texts about natural disasters that focus on cause-and-effect relationships. As a class students record their understandings in a graphic organizer. Students then work in small groups and write paragraphs outlining the cause-and-effect relationships they have found.

In this activity, students will read a piece that is uploaded to SeeSaw by the teacher. The teacher may want to have students use the piece again in the year to measure growth.

Students will work in cooperative learning groups to practice reading one of two reader's theater scripts. Groups will discuss the type of hats worn by the characters and possible reasons they wore the hats. A group scribe (volunteer from the grroup) will make a vocabulary list as the scripts are read. In this list, five difficult vocabulary words are recorded for later learning. The teacher will collect word cards and make a vocabulary list for students to learn and present to the class. Finally, students will perform the reader's theater scripts for their classmates. This lesson was developed by Sarah Owen-Palethore 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 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.

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.

Students will read background information, a passage from Lewis' Carroll's work, sentences, words in context, vocabulary, and a writing prompt. Students will write words, ideas to support a main idea, and an essay. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

Students will read background information, a poem, idioms, vocabulary, definitions, sentences, a graphic organizer, and a prompt. Students will write what idioms mean, words to complete sentences, a main idea, and a story. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

Students will read a description of first and third person narrations. Students will then read background information about a passage, read the passage, and write the passage in order to change it from first to third person narration. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

Students will read a description of first and third person narrations. Students will then read background information, read a passage, and write in order to change the passage from third to first person narration. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

Students will read a passage and examples, and then write to answer questions and apply a strategy based on the passage. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

Students will read a passage and write textual evidence to support a main idea. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

Students will read a passage and use context clues to determine the meanings of words. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

Students will read two passages from a book and infer the author's message about two differente settings. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.