Spiritual/Bible:  Students study the Old and New Testament concepts that teach that God is all-powerful, all knowing and always present.  Character development is strongly valued.  The weekly memory verses are chosen to reinforce a character trait that applies to the life of a 4^th grader.  Activities are completed to reinforce the trait and help them to find the daily life application of these scriptures.

Reading/Phonics:  Reading/literary units are interactive and use engaging activities to reinforce comprehension, vocabulary and growth.  Books are discussed as they are read and take turns reading them as a group.  A variety of books have been chosen that cover a wide array of styles of writing.  Students are also allowed to choose their own novels for silent reading time, to allow them to read about topics they are interested in.  To build interest in reading, each day there is a Teacher Read time.  We read to the students from an interesting novel, we are animated and draw them into the story.  This encourages students to try more types of books on their own.

Writing:  Writing projects are creative and allow the students to really stretch this year in their writing abilities as they learn to use graphic organizers, write poetry, short stories, letter and essays.  Many writing projects are thematic and reinforce other areas of the curriculum.  Our English unit also focuses on grammar skills that are foundational as they move on to the following grades.

Math:  Students continue to build on the basic foundation that has been laid.  Students will begin to study fractions and long division more in depth.  I teach math step by step from the overhead making sure that we are setting a foundation for these new concepts that the students are able to build on.

History/Social Studies:  History is interactive and requires a new level of critical thinking.  Students are guided through the year from immigration, inventions, to the Industrial Revolution.  We focus on reading, highlighting and reviewing for tests as a team to help them condense the information they are learning into basic study skills.  There will also be a unit of study on California History with a project of a California Landmark due at the end of the unit.  There will be an overnight field trip to a Gold Rush Camp in Coloma, CA.

Science:  Students will learn to use critical thinking to study plants, insects, sea mammals and much more.  Students will start to learn the scientific process this year and experience hands on labs in groups.  We focus on reading, highlighting and reviewing for tests as a team to help them condense the information they are learning into basic study skills.

Computer: Typing skills continue with the fourth grade.  Every class period involves some amount of typing practice.  They continue to review and expand on hardware found in and outside of computers.  They also practice with educational programs, such as our geography program Seterra, in order to master the skill of being taught by a computer.  They learn how to define and identify technology.  And through learning the parts of a window, they become familiarized with the structure of most computer programs.  These grades are also introduced to word processing and some formatting skills.