Curriculum Overviews > Fourth Grade

At The Branch School, the following objectives are taught through an integrated, developmental, hands-on, and in-depth approach that teaches critical thinking, problem-solving, and cooperative learning.

• Students spend significant blocks of time engaged in reading and writing independently.
• Students are critical listeners and analyze a speaker's intent such as to entertain or to persuade.
• When speaking, students adapt their language to the audience, purpose, and occasion.
• Students continue to read classic and contemporary selections. Fourth grade students read with a growing interest in a wide variety of topics and adjust their reading approach to various forms of texts.
• Students expand their vocabulary systematically across the curriculum.
• Students read for meaning and can paraphrase texts.
• Students are able to connect, compare, and contrast ideas.
• Students can identify and follow varied text structures such as chronologies and cause and effect.
• Students produce summaries of texts and engage in more sophisticated analysis of characters, plots, and settings.
• Students are able to select and use different forms of writing for specific purposes such as to inform, persuade, or entertain.
• Their writing takes on style and voice.
• Students write in complete sentences. Students vary sentence structure and use adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, and conjunctions.
• Students are proficient spellers.
• Students edit their writing based on their knowledge of grammar and usage, spelling, punctuation, and other conventions of written language. Students can produce a final, polished copy of a written composition.
• Students understand and use visual media and can compare and contrast visual media to print.

• Students compare and order fractions and decimals, applying multiplication and division, and developing ideas related to congruence and symmetry.
• Students understand in number, operation, and quantitative reasoning; patterns, relationships, and algebraic thinking; geometry and spatial reasoning; measurement; and probability and statistics.
• Students use algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division as generalizations connected to concrete experiences; and they concretely develop basic concepts of fractions and decimals.
• Students use appropriate language and organizational structures such as tables and charts to represent and communicate relationships, make predictions, and solve problems.
• Students select and use formal language to describe their reasoning as they identify, compare, and classify shapes and solids; and they use numbers, standard units, and measurement tools to describe and compare objects, make estimates, and solve application problems.
• Students organize data, choose an appropriate method to display the data, and interpret the data to make decisions and predictions and solve problems.

• Land and Water
• Microworlds
• Space
• Motors and Magnets
• Time and Measurement
• Ecosystems

• Students discuss important issues, events, and individuals of the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Students conduct a thorough study of regions in Texas.
• Students describe how early Native Americans in Texas and the Western Hemisphere met their basic economic needs and identify economic motivations for European exploration and colonization and reasons for the establishment of Spanish missions.
• Students explain how Native Americans governed themselves and identify characteristics of Spanish and Mexican colonial governments in Texas.
• Students recite and explain the meaning of the Pledge to the Texas Flag.
• Students use critical-thinking skills to identify cause-and-effect relationships, compare and contrast, and make generalizations and predictions.
• To support the teaching of the essential knowledge and skills, a variety of rich primary and secondary source material such as biographies, novels, speeches, letters, poetry, songs, and artwork are used.

• Students are exposed to the basic elements of art and explore them in detail through projects that emphasize each specific art principle. Students engage in exciting exploration with a variety of media such as painting, clay, pastels, etc.

• They are read books appropriate to their level as well as given help, if necessary, checking out books.

• Students express themselves through singing and movement, and by playing simple instruments. Children learn to experiment with music concepts, volume, tempo, and sound. They begin to appreciate different types of music. Students attend at least one live concert. They perform several times a year at school-wide events.

• Students learn to empathize with, feel comfortable in, and understand fundamental processes of nature. We do this through a “working wildscape” partly accessible to children on the playground, partly fenced to allow more habitat development, and through horticulture activities from growing vegetables to propagating plants.

• Students acquire the knowledge and skills for movement that provide the foundation for enjoyment, continued social development through physical activity, and access to a physically active lifestyle. Students learn group games as well as sportsmanship.

• Students are taught the importance of peacemaking with their classmates. They learn conflict resolution as well as communication skills. They learn to be life-long peacemakers. In addition, a curriculum on ethical decision-making designed by the Institute for Global Ethics is implemented. It is based on Rushworth Kidder’s book, How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living.
• Students practice creative thinking through brainstorming solutions to a variety of spontaneous problems. Students also are given opportunities to compose, create, and implement at least one school-wide program. The students are responsible for designing the sets, writing the scripts, and creating the costumes.

• Students are immersed in the Spanish language through a Spanish program three times a week.

• Students use engaging, age-appropriate, and challenging software and technology to extend their knowledge and to enrich their learning of curriculum content and concepts. Children learn the basic functions of the computer and related technologies.