Grade 4 English Language Arts
10 units matched to the BC Curriculum. Kids see this subject as “Reading & Writing”.
Big Ideas
- Language and text can be a source of creativity and joy.
- Exploring stories and other texts helps us understand ourselves and make connections to others and to the world.
- Texts can be understood from different perspectives.
- Using language in creative and playful ways helps us understand how language works.
- Questioning what we hear, read, and view contributes to our ability to be educated and engaged citizens.
Units
Unit 1
Reading Detectives
Reading short original stories and articles, then finding the main idea and key details, making inferences from clues, working out word meanings and choosing the best summary.
Learning standard: Reading strategies (main idea, making inferences, summarizing); literary elements (character, problem, theme); supporting evidence
Unit 2
Text Features
Using the parts of a nonfiction book to find information: reading a table of contents and index, knowing what glossaries, captions, labels and timelines are for, and choosing headings.
Learning standard: Text features (table of contents, headings, captions, glossary, index, diagrams); forms, functions and genres of text
Unit 3
Figurative Language
Spotting similes, metaphors, personification, onomatopoeia and alliteration (plus hyperbole at the stretch level), and explaining what figurative phrases really mean.
Learning standard: Literary devices: figurative language and imagery (simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, hyperbole)
Unit 4
Point of View
Telling first-person stories (I, me, we) from third-person stories (he, she, they), finding pronoun clues, and noticing when dialogue uses “I” in a third-person story.
Learning standard: Literary elements and perspective: narrator and point of view (first and third person)
Unit 5
Parts of Speech
Naming the job each word does in a sentence, with a focus on Grade 4's pronouns, adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions. Easier levels stick to nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns.
Learning standard: Sentence structure and grammar: parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions)
Unit 6
Super Sentences
Joining sentences with and, but, or and so; spotting and fixing fragments and run-ons; and choosing verbs that agree with the subject and match the tense.
Learning standard: Sentence structure and grammar: simple and compound sentences, coordinating conjunctions, fragments and run-ons, subject–verb agreement and verb tenses
Unit 7
Punctuation Power
Writing possessives (the dog's bone, the girls' bikes, the children's toys), placing commas in dates, places and lists, and punctuating dialogue with quotation marks.
Learning standard: Conventions: apostrophes (possessives and contractions), commas in dates, places and lists, and quotation marks for dialogue
Unit 8
Word Builders
Using word parts to work out meanings: prefixes like re- and mis-, suffixes like -able and -ment, finding the base word, and (at the stretch level) roots such as port and tele.
Learning standard: Reading strategies and vocabulary: word structure, including prefixes (re-, dis-, mis-, pre-, un-), suffixes (-able, -ment, -tion, -ful, -less) and roots
Unit 9
Sound-Alikes
Choosing between words that sound alike (there/their/they're, to/too/two, its/it's) and using context to tell which meaning of a word like “bark” or “bow” is meant.
Learning standard: Language features and conventions: homophones and homographs; using context to choose word meaning and spelling
Unit 10
Paragraph Power
Choosing topic and concluding sentences, finding the sentence that doesn't belong, using transition words, identifying cause and effect, and putting sentences in order.
Learning standard: Paragraph structure (topic sentence, supporting details, concluding sentence), transition words and cause and effect; writing processes
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