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. 

 This is a multi-day culminating activity for Wonders Unit 5 weeks 1&2.  Students will use the Wonders materials provided in the Reading/Writing Companion, as well as their Literature Anthology to identify and describe the water cycle. Students will work together in small groups to make a diagram of the water cycle on construction paper. Students will then use a Makey Makey kit to record a definition and description of each element of the water cycle. Each student in the group will be responsible for coding and recording their specific water cycle element. Groups will need to have four students each, as there are four elements to the water cycle: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection or transpiration.

Wonderopolis is a free informational site that asks and answers interesting questions about the world. Wonders of the Day questions are posted daily, and each is designed to get kids to think, talk, and find learning moments in everyday life.

In this lesson, students will use thematically related texts, organized from least to most complex, to gather a word bank of supporting details and content vocabulary about a concept. Then they use these words as a basis for writing acrostic poems, which support organization of information around a central idea, as the lines of an acrostic poem are held together by the topic or main idea spelled vertically.