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

This unit includes a combination of fourth grade writing and social studies standards. It focuses on research and public discourse.

In fourth grade, students learn how to be better researchers and using AR Flashcards, they are taken to a new level with the interactivity of augmented reality. AR Flashcards Lincoln is an iOS app where students can see a full size Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg address, place magical doorways on the ground and walk through them using their device to visit places Lincoln lived.

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 overcome their fears by using a traditional poem to teach students about alliteration. After reading the book, A My Name Is... by Alice Lyne, students use a variety of print and online resources to brainstorm their own alliterative word lists. They then create a poetry link that uses the traditional poem they have read together as a framework for their own poems.

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.

This is a multi-day culminating activity based on unit 2 of the 4th grade Wonders curriculum. Students will work in groups to research a chosen animal off of a given list. After researching the animal, they will create a visual using four nonfiction text features to describe the animal. Students will connect a Makey Makey to their presentation and record audio describing each section. After projects are complete, students will participate in a gallery walk. A rubric accompanies this activity so teachers have guidelines on how to assess student work.

Write an introduction that explains why they are famous and some interesting information about them.

This lesson emphasizes the 4 Cs (critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication). It is designed with a media center setting in mind, but could take place in a regular classroom.

Students will work in pairs, with each partner creating a written plan for a micro:bit coding project. They will then trade plans with their partners and follow their partner’s written plan to create appropriate code. If micro:bits are available, students will then download the code to the physical device(s) to see it run.

Next, students will reflect on the collaborative process and record their reflections, either in written form or as a video or audio recording. These reflections can be shared with either the instructor or the entire group.

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.

The North Carolina Museum of Natural Science created this resource as part of an online workshop series, but you are welcome to use or modify it for your classroom. It includes a video and written directions for creating nature journals and tips for incorporating them into your classroom. For information on taking any the Nature Neighborhood online workshops for CEUs or EE credit, visit: https://naturalsciences.org/learn/educators/online-workshops.

Students will identify why and how Feynman started to look at the world through the eyes of a scientist. Students will both learn how memoirs can be as deeply revealing as fiction and how to unpack the meaning of a first person narrative.

In this lesson, students will compare and contrast day and night of their place on earth, to another location. Students will conduct a short research project that builds knowledge through investigation of different aspects of day and night in other locations on earth with a focus on Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Alaska. This lesson was developed by Lisa Hiatt 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 through a nonfiction text picking out key ideas and details. Students will create their own note taking sheet using boxes and bullets based on teacher modeling. 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, readers become experts on a topic by teaching others what they know, and by using main ideas and supporting details to help explain the text. Students will also make a poster with a picture of their animal in its habitat with facts about the animal on it. This lesson was developed by Tina Deal 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.