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

This resource accompanies our Rethink 4th Grade Science 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. 

In this activity, each collaborative group of students is given a sample of sand and asked to determine how old the sand is by keying out "fossils" (plastic animals) the sand contains. Once each group has dated their sand, groups will work together to stack all the containers of sand in order from oldest to youngest.

In this activity, students acts as a paleontologist as they create and analyze tracks.

Learners will become paleontologists for a day/week. They will discover this career and undertake the challenge of designing a fossil excavator structure to remove newly discovered fossils stuck in a cave crevice. As a class, graph the results on the amount of weight each structure could lift without breaking

Using this website, students can observe photographs of the Grand Canyon today and compare them with photographs of fossils of sea life found in the Grand Canyon. Students are asked to draw conclusions based on their observations of the photographs and a short article with an explanation is provided.

In this classroom activity, middle school students explore the Greek and Latin root words used to create dinosaur names. The activity opens with background information for teachers about how dinosaurs are named. As a class, students explore the Greek and Latin roots of the words photograph, terrace and other familiar terms. Working individually, students complete a worksheet that challenges them to translate the meaning of seven dinosaurs' names. Then, working in pairs, students create their own dinosaur; name it; and describe how it moves, what it eats, how it raises it young, and how it behaves.

This informational text introduces students to the dinosaurs found near the polar regions and discusses the adaptations that allowed these dinosaurs to survive in a dark and cold environment. The text is written at a grade four through grade five reading level. This version is a full-color PDF that can be printed, cut and folded to form a book. Each book contains color photographs and illustrations.

This informational text introduces students to the dinosaurs found near the polar regions and discusses the adaptations that allowed these dinosaurs to survive in a dark and cold environment. The text is written at a grade four through grade five reading level. This is a PDF containing the informational text and a glossary.

In this lesson, students participate in a game where students try to become fossils while traveling through the lifecycles of animals. Discussion is geared toward why it is difficult to become a fossil and what types of animals are more likely to become fossilized. Different modes of fossilization will also be discussed.

In this activity, students will excavate a fossil and obtain information about prehistoric life from a fossil. The importance of data collection is emphasized. Directions for making the fossil matrix are included.

In this lesson, students will learn how paleontologists use fossils to tell them the relatives dates of layers of rocks in the present time. Students organze letters on notecards into a specific sequence to begin, then do the same with fossil pictures printed on "rock layer" cards to mimic how paleontologists work. The notecards are included to print and copy.

Students discover what can be learned from fossils and in doing so, realize the difference between fact and theory. They will also gain understanding of how fossils are formed.

Students recognize the kind of information that can be accumulated by studying dinosaur fosisls as well as understand that some fossil facts are made based on comparisons with living organisms.

In this activity, students will act as paleontologists and attempt to figure out the environment where various fossils would have existed. As paleontologists they will discover an abundance of fossils and map their location on a grid of the area.

This scientific article explains the ethymology, the origin, and the retrieval of fossiles in quarries. An audio link provides an impression of children looking for fossiles in a quarry. The article is written for native speakers age 8 and up. The audio is spoken at a natural pace.

This scientific article discusses three different hypothesis regarding the extinction of dinosaurs: 1. a meteor impact, 2. a vulcanic eruption, 3. a slow evolutional change makes space for new species. A weblink opens a page with interview questions directed to a German dinosaur researcher. The text child-friendly and appropriate for children of age 8 and up.

This scientific article focuses on the adaptive capabilities of animals using the example of the Ichtyosaur. It first explains how the Ichtyosaur found a new territory with better survival chances in the sea and, thus adapted its bodily features to life in the sea. It then explains how the Ichtysaurus eventually lost the competition over food to a new species, which was better adapted and of comparable size. In consequence the Ichtysaurus died out long before the mass dying of dinosaurs.

The article attends to three topics: 1. the smallest dinosaur in the world found in Bavaria, 2. the largest dinosaur found in Bavaria, and 3. types of rhinoceros that lived in Bavaria. Each part has a link to more detailed information on an additional page. The text is written in child-friendly language and appropriate for children age 8 and up.

In this classroom activity, young students are introduced to sets and subsets. The activity opens with background information for teachers about cladistics. After brainstorming different ways to group the class itself, students work in small groups to identify subsets of coins. The groups then complete a worksheet that challenges them to group dinosaurs into sets and subsets and share their results with the class.