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

This unit combines nonfiction reading, biographies, Henry Ford, and Michigan history into one unit. It covers many informational reading standards and Michigan social studies standards all together.

In this lesson, traditional stories of the Native peoples (i.e., narrative text) introduce students to the study of animals in Alaska (i.e., expository text). Students use the Internet to listen to a Yu'pik tale told by John Active, a Native American living in Alaska. They also use online resources to find facts about animals in Alaska. Students compare and contrast the two types of text in terms of fiction and nonfiction. The narrative stories provide students with a context to begin studying a content area topic; this lesson emphasizes the integration of curriculum.

In this lesson, students integrate information from two texts on the same topic to show knowledge about the subject.

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 Unit 1, students begin to build background knowledge about the women’s suffrage movement and the role that Susan B. Anthony played in it. Students will read a variety of informational texts as well as primary source documents. In Lessons 1 and 2, students are introduced to the topic through examining a timeline on the history of voting in America and an excerpt of a speech by Susan B. Anthony. (They will revisit the speech throughout the module.) Throughout the first half of this unit, students will read and summarize several informational texts about Susan B. Anthony. Students will also learn to use glossaries, context clues, and deconstructing parts of words as strategies for understanding unfamiliar academic and domain-specific words. This is followed by a mid-unit assessment of RI.4.2 and RI.4.4. Students then continue learning about Susan B. Anthony’s role in the suffrage movement, comparing firsthand and secondhand accounts of key events in the history of voting in America. The end of unit assessment focuses on RI.4.2 and RI.4.6: Students compare firsthand and secondhand accounts of a modern-era historical event (the inauguration of Barack Obama).

In this lesson students learn domain-specific (history) vocabulary found in the primary source, Inventory of John Allen. The main purpose of this lesson is not to teach and assess these rare words; rather, the purpose is to help students understand the language from the time period in order to draw inferences about this primary source document. This vocabulary work also gives students an opportunity to notice how the English language has evolved over time. Students also compare and contrast a first-hand and second-hand account of the same event or topic.

Students will work or in learning teams to design and build a cardboard ship bow using Makedo tools to transform their desk or a copy paper box into a pirate ship for the classroom museum. Students will research historic North Carolina pirates including Blackbeard using multiple print and digital texts to prepare a written entry for their exhibit.Family and other classes will be invited to view the museum.  Students will share their experience with the Design and Engineering Process through class discussion and by publishing a digital record of the DEP on Seesaw.

Students will create flipbooks to give examples of the difference between primary and secondary sources. They will also participate in a game where they move around the classroom to create a kinesthetic memory of the differences between primary and secondary sources.

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 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.