4th Grade

Fourth Grade Newsletter 2025-2026!

Summary of Module 6 Marvels of Nature: In this module, our class will build their knowledge with information about Earth’s natural wonders. There will be a genre focus on informational text that provides students with opportunities to identify text and graphic features, central ideas, and text structures in order to better understand unfamiliar texts. Students will also encounter poetry and literary nonfiction to build knowledge across genres. As students build their vocabulary and synthesize topic knowledge, they will learn that our world is full of unique places with amazing wonders on land, in the ocean, and in the sky.

 

Reading: Over the course of Module 5 we will read texts that will help us answer the following:

Essential Question: What makes Earth’s natural wonders exciting and unique? We will develop and work on the following reading skills and strategies: Identifying Text and Graphic Features, Text Structure, Identify the central idea and supporting details, Elements of poetry, and Author’s Craft.

  

Home Connections

Discuss the Topic: Set aside time daily for your child to share with you what he or she is learning. Use these ideas to discuss the topic:

• Talk about the ideas your child has added to the Knowledge Map each week.
• Ask about the texts your child is reading and what he or she has learned.

 

Explore the Genre: The genre focus in this module is informational text. Discuss with your child the characteristics of this genre, such as it gives facts and information about a topic. 

Look for texts that: 

Look for texts that: 

• spark your child’s curiosity. 
• tie to the module topic. 
• provide interesting facts and details. 
• have unique formats and graphic features.

Build Vocabulary: Use these ideas to help your child build a rich vocabulary.

 The Big Idea: Reinforce the topic words scenic, landscape, canyon, and landform in conversations with your child. 

Use prompts like these: 

• What is your favorite landform, and why? 
• Describe a landscape. 

What Does It Mean? Have your child keep a growing list of the Critical Vocabulary words. Quiz each other on their meanings. 

Word Hunt Look for words with the Greek roots auto, bio, photo, graph the suffixes –ness and –ment; and the prefix inter– in books and online texts.

Reinforce Reading Skills

Your child’s IXL account is linked with this Module and all skills that are taught weekly from this module. Please have your child use the IXL platform daily to reinforce these skills and other teacher recommended skills. 

Summary of Module 7 Tricksters and Tall Tales: In this module, students will listen to, read, and view a variety of texts and media that present them with information about traditional tales. There is a genre focus on traditional stories that provides students with opportunities to identify central ideas, figurative language, and media techniques in order to better understand unfamiliar texts. Students will also encounter an informational text to build knowledge across genres.

As students build their vocabulary and synthesize topic knowledge, they will learn that traditional stories can teach many lessons about life and the world around us.

 

Reading: Over the course of Module 7 we will read texts that will help us answer the following

Essential Question: What lessons can we learn from characters in traditional tales? We will develop and work on the following reading skills and strategies: central ideas, figurative language, retelling, theme, describing characters, text and graphic features, literary elements and media techniques in order to better understand unfamiliar texts. 

   

Home Connections

Discuss the Topic: Set aside time daily for your child to share with you what he or she is learning. Use these ideas to help build your child’s knowledge about the topic: 

• Talk about the ideas your child has added to the Knowledge Map each week.
• Ask about the texts your child is reading and what he or she has learned from them. 
• Share with your child your own questions about the topic, and work together to find the answers.

Explore the Genre:The genre focus in this module is traditional stories. Discuss with your child the characteristics of traditional stories, such as they often teach a lesson and include characters that are animals or have exaggerated abilities.

Build Vocabulary: Use these ideas to help your child build a rich vocabulary. The Big Idea reinforces the topic words trickster, shrewd, exaggeration, and legendary in everyday conversations with your child. 

Using prompts like these: 

• Name some characters that are tricksters. 
• Describe something that is legendary.

What Does It Mean? Have your child keep a growing list of the Critical Vocabulary words. Quiz each other on their meanings.

Word Hunt Look for words with the suffixes –ion, –ity, –ty and prefixes mis–, pre–, dis– in books and online texts.

Reinforce Reading Skills

Your child’s IXL account is linked with this Module and all skills that are taught weekly from this module. Please have your child use the IXL platform daily to reinforce these skills and other teacher recommended skills.

 

Writing:  MODULE 6- Letter Writing

Focus Statement: Earth’s natural wonders can teach us a great deal.

In this writing unit students will be writing a letter to their parents about which natural wonder of the world they should go visit on their next trip and why. They will use the information gathered from Module 6’s reading and persuade their parents why they should choose to visit that natural wonder.  The Focus Statement for this unit is: Earth’s natural wonders can teach us a great deal.  As students get prepared to write, they will be introduced to formal language when writing a letter, they will think about who they are writing to and what information they will include in their letters and reasons why they should visit this place.  To help gear students into thinking more about their topic, we will introduce and read students a Focal Text titled Coral Reefs by Jason Chin. Students will go through the writing process as they prepare to write, review the features of a letter

   

MODULE 7-Narrative - Imaginative Story Writing

Focus Statement: Imaginative stories can make us laugh and teach us a lesson.

In this writing unit students will be writing an imaginative story about an interesting animal and how it came to be. Students will use their knowledge of Narrative story writing to create their imaginative stories. The Focus Statement for this unit is: Imaginative stories can make us laugh and teach us a lesson. As students get prepared to write and learn the features of a narrative story, they will think about an animal they find interesting and write about how that animal came to be.  To help gear students into thinking more about this animal, we will be introduced to and read a Focal Text titled: The Luck of the Loch Ness Monster: A Tale of Picky Eating written by Alice Weaver Flaherty.  Students will go through the writing process as they prepare to write, students will  review the features of a narrative story. 

  

Math Curriculum: 

 

Topic 6 - Use Operations with Whole Numbers to Solve Problems

We will work on applying multiplication and division strategies to problem situations and 

exploring ways to find solutions. This topic focuses on solving comparison problems as well as using addition, subtraction,  multiplication, and division to solve multi-step problems. Your child will practice using the four operations to explore the relationship between separate values. Here is an activity 

you can try together.

Topic 8 - Extend Understanding of Fraction Equivalence and Ordering

We begin our unit on fractions.  An important part of this topic is identifying equivalent fractions.  Equivalent fractions name the same part of a whole.  The number line below shows 1/3 and 2/6 are equivalent fractions, and 2/3 and 4/6 are equivalent fractions because they are the same distance from zero.  The concept of equivalent fractions will allow your child to compare fractions in this topic as well as add and subtract fractions in later topics.

 

Topic 9 - Understand Addition and Subtraction of Fractions

In this topic, your child will learn to add and subtract fractions with like denominators, or denominators that are the same.  To add fractions with like denominators, add the numerators and write the sum over the like denominator.

For example,  

Your child will also learn to use fraction strips and number lines to represent the addition and subtraction of fractions with like denominators.

 

At Home Connection:

Please continue to work at home with your child to help them memorize their basic multiplication facts.  This will help them in our fractions unit. You can do this by asking your child random basic facts, skip counting with your child, or using flash cards.

 

Multi-Step Word Problems - Topic 6

Create and solve multi-step problems with your child. One person creates the first step of the 

problem. For example: This week Tom ran 2 miles one day and 3 miles another day. Next, the 

other person uses a different operation to construct the next step: Last week Tom ran 3 times 

farther than this week. How far did Tom run in two weeks? The first person then explains how to 

solve the problem: Tom ran 2 + 3 = 5 miles this week. He ran 5 × 3 = 15 miles the week before, 

so he ran 5 + 15 = 20 miles in two weeks. Vary the operations used and increase the number of 

steps as fluency allows.

Fractions Toss - Off for Topic 8

Materials number cube labeled 1 - 6 

Step 1  Toss a number cube once to generate a numerator and once or twice to generate a one-digit or two-digit denominator.  Repeat to create several fractions.

Step 2  Have your child decompose each fraction in two or more ways.

Fraction Writing for Topic 9 

Materials paper and pencil

Step 1: Write 1/4 , 1/2 , 2/4, 3/4 , 1/8 , and 1/12 on a piece of paper.

Step 2: Have your child name the fractions that have a common denominator and explain how to add those fractions.

Science: 

We are currently in our  Waves, Energy and Information unit. Students will take on the role of marine scientists investigating how bottlenose dolphin mothers and their calves use patterns of sound to communicate across distances. Students will ask questions about sound and gather evidence from physical models and a digital model. They will  investigate sound waves at the nanoscale and also investigate observable properties of sounds, such as volume and pitch. They use mathematical thinking to make sense of the wavelength and amplitude of waves. As students work in their role as marine scientists, students will figure out how mother dolphins communicate with their calves, and they will write a series of scientific explanations with diagrams to demonstrate their growing understanding of how sound waves travel. Then they will apply what they’ve learned about waves, energy, and patterns in communication to figure out how to create patterns that can communicate information over distances, transferring data from one place to another.

At home connections:

Some questions you can discuss with your child at home over the course of the unit is:

 

Unit Focus Questions: How can a mother dolphin and her calf communicate underwater when they cannot see each other? How can humans use patterns to communicate? 

Chapter 1: How does a mother dolphin communicate with her calf across a distance?

Chapter 2: How does sound energy travel through water from a mother dolphin to her calf?

Chapter 3: How does a dolphin calf know which call is his mother’s call?

Chapter 4: How can humans use patterns to communicate?

 

We will then be moving into our Earth’s Features Science Unit. In this unit students will take on the role of geologists—scientists who study rocks and Earth’s history. The big mystery we are exploring is how a dinosaur fossil found in the fictional Desert Rocks National Park was formed. Students will study the following: The dinosaur fossil, The rock layers around it and The land features in the park. From these clues, students will make inferences about what the park was like long ago and how the fossil formed. This will lead them to learn about sedimentary rocks, which form when layers of sand, mud, and tiny rock pieces pile up over time and harden. Sometimes plants or animals become trapped in these layers — and that’s how fossils are made!Students will also discover that different environments (like rivers, deserts, or oceans) create different kinds of sediment and rock layers. By looking at these layers, scientists can tell what a place was like millions of years ago. Later in the unit, students examine a new mystery: Why do two canyons in the same park show different amounts of exposed rock? Students discover that water and other natural forces can break down rock over time. This process can wear away the surface and reveal rock layers that were once hidden.

 

At home connections:

Some questions you can discuss with your child at home over the course of the unit is:

Chapter 1: How did the fossil get inside the rocky outcrop? 

Chapter 2: What was the environment of Desert Rocks National Park like in the past?

Chapter 3: What is the order of the past environments of Desert Rocks National Park? 

Chapter 4: Why did more rock layers get exposed in Desert Canyon than Keller’s Canyon?

 

 Encourage Science Talk

Great conversation starters:

• “What is a fossil?”
• “How do rocks form layers?”
• “What can rock layers tell scientists?”
• “How can water change land over time?”

Social Studies 

In our upcoming Social Studies unit, students will be learning about the first people to live in New York State — the Native Americans, with a special focus on the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Algonquian peoples. Students explore how Native Americans lived long before Europeans arrived and how they built strong, successful communities.

At home connections:

Essential Question: Why does geography matter?

Questions you can discuss with your child at home to help them better understand concepts  are:

What are the purposes of different types of maps?

• What are the purposes of a map, and how do we use it? 
• How can we use our knowledge of maps and geography to understand the location of New York State in our world?
• What are the defining features of the regions of New York State?
• What are the geographic features of New York State? 
• How does geography affect where and why people settle? 
• How can we use our research and knowledge of geography to compare and contrast regions within New York State?

Music Curriculum: 

Students in fourth grade music will be learning a song entitled “Nature Starts a Song.” The students will be drawing connections between the lyrics of the song and their HMH unit on Natural Wonders. While practicing this song, the students will be focused on maintaining adequate pitch, posture and tone. The students will be learning how to sing in two parts in a musical round. 

In addition, fourth grade students will be learning to play the soprano recorder. The students will be using this instrument to begin learning to read notes on the musical staff, beginning with B, A and G. 

Home Connection:

Soprano Recorders are provided by school, but students have the option of purchasing their own home recorder. Recorders can be purchased using the link below.

 Soprano Recorders on Amazon  

SPARK New Victory Theater:

Students in fourth grade will be receiving fifteen workshops in theater with the teaching artists from New Victory Theater. The students will be studying clowning, and connecting their learning to their previous HMH unit on Identity

 

Art 🎨

Fourth grade artists took inspiration from the work of Dutch-Canadian artist, Christa Rijneveld. She is known for her beautiful landscape art featuring topographic interpretations of mountains and trees. The students used her intricate “stippling” and line work to create their skies and mountains to capture the complexity of the great outdoors. They layered the foreground with a collage moon and animal of their choice. Their mixed media landscape pieces featured texture and contrast which really showcased their artistic skills and abilities. 

  

Physical Education

For the next couple of weeks, the Fourth grade students will be participating in the Fitnessgram. The Fitnessgram is an annual fitness assessment which helps students to develop an appreciation for lifelong fitness. It assesses strength, endurance, flexibility and aerobic capacity through a variety of tests. The results are confidential and the students are reminded to just try their best. Some of the components include the Pacer test, sit ups, push ups, trunk lift and sit and reach. At the end of the year, parents can view their child’s results on your child’s NYC Schools account.