4th Grade at Home: A Parent's Guide with Lessons & Activities to Support Your Child's Learning (Math & Reading Skills)

Before Reading

In grade 4, children begin to see themselves as readers—not only as readers in school, but as readers in the world. Some fourth graders think the purpose for reading can be determined only by the teacher or that reading is simply a way to get information. However, you know that people read things for many reasons—for fun, to figure out how to make a cake, or even to find out where Walla Walla is.

Good readers understand that reading is an active process. They participate in that process by knowing why they are reading, using information they have, and thinking about what might happen next. To become an active reader, your child needs a plan for using his or her prior knowledge, without having that knowledge overshadow the new information that’s being presented by the text.

To become a strong reader with good comprehension skills, your fourth grader needs to determine why he is reading, as well as how to use the information from the text to make predictions.

First things first: Get a sense of what your child already knows. Turn the page and tell your child to Jump Right In!

Here’s what you’ll need for this lesson:

a newspaper with a photo of a famous person

several reading materials, such as magazines, brochures, take-out menus, recipes, or anything else with words on it

a short story

paper and pencils

Jump Right In!

Love the Earth!

We all need to take care of the planet we share. We need to make sure that the Earth is around for people in the future. Let’s all do our part!

Here are some simple things you can do:

Take shorter showers or use less water in your bath. This will save water.

Recycle your bottles, cans, and paper. Ask your parents to help you figure out how to do this.

Turn the lights off when you leave a room. This will save electricity.

Be careful with paper. Use both sides of each sheet of paper. Use leftover sheets of paper for notes or letters. This will help save trees.

If possible, hang your clothes to dry outside. A dryer uses a lot of electricity. This will help you cut down on the amount of electricity you use.

Don’t litter. If you have something that you need to throw away, wait until you are near a trash can. Never throw it on the ground. The trash can wind up in our lakes, rivers, or oceans.

Plant a tree or flowers. Ask your parents to help you. If you can’t do this at home, think about doing it at your grandparents’ home, your school, or at a local park. Trees provide shade on hot days, and both trees and flowers even clean the air we all breathe.

1. Someone might read this passage

A. to find a recycling center near his or her school

B. to enjoy a story about trees and flowers

C. to learn about how to care for the planet

D. to find out how electricity works

2. If the author wrote more, what else might the author ask you to do?

A. Leave your television on when you leave the house.

B. Wash your towels every day.

C. Have your parents drive you to school each morning.

D. Turn the water off as you brush your teeth.

3. What will using both sides of a sheet of paper do?

4. Have you learned about caring for the Earth before? If so, when? What did you learn?

Excellent Job!

Checking In

Answers for this page:

1. C

2. D

3. An A+ answer: If you use both sides of a piece of paper, you use less of the Earth’s resources. This means the Earth will have more resources for the future.

4. An A+ answer: I learned about caring for the Earth from Saturday morning cartoons. I learned that people should try to use their cars less to help reduce pollution.

If your child answered correctly, ask, What information in the passage did you use to choose your answers? Ask your child to write his or her reasons for choosing the correct answers in the margins and to underline the words in the passage that helped him or her identify those answers.

If your child answered incorrectly, ask, What were your reasons for choosing that answer? Make sure you understand how your child arrived at the incorrect answer. If your child used prior knowledge that is not appropriate for this question, explain why the information is inappropriate and ask them to try again.

Watch Out!

Sometimes it’s good for fourth graders to make their reading relevant by accessing knowledge that they already have about a particular topic. For example, with question 4, your child could have learned about caring for the Earth from many different places, such as school or television or friends or even other reading material. And if your child does have prior knowledge about a particular topic, that knowledge ought to help your child figure out whatever it is he or she is reading. It doesn’t hurt to push your child to look into things that they seem interested in. Children at this age are often tremendously curious, and children can be encouraged to indulge their curiosity through reading. Provide your child with the opportunity to read for enjoyment as well as to find out new things.

What to Know…

When your child sits down to read, how does she prepare herself? There are many things your child can do to prepare to read and to help herself understand a passage while she is reading.

Review these skills with your child this way:

Prior knowledge is any relevant information we have before we begin reading.

A prediction is an idea or thought about the future.

Strong readers often set a purpose for reading—they know if they are reading to get information or to have fun. To get information, people might read newspapers, instruction manuals, editorials, essays, dictionaries, cookbooks, and other texts. To have fun, people might read poems, novels, plays, short stories, and other texts.

You and your child might see a sign like this when visiting a recycling center.

Recycling Center

Get cash for your:

• bottles

• cans

• newspapers and magazines

We are open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day.

It’s fast and easy. Stop by today!

Ask your child, What do you know about recycling or recycling centers? Then, ask your child, If we were going to the recycling center, what might we do after seeing this sign? Then, ask your child if he would read the sign for fun or to get information.

Checking In

When correctly using prior knowledge, your child might say:

I’ve never been to a recycling center, but I know that people recycle to help the Earth.

Our local recycling center takes only newspaper, but this one takes newspaper, cans, and bottles.

Children struggle when they use prior knowledge instead of details in a text:

Our local recycling center takes only newspapers, so I think this sign is wrong.

Our old cans and bottles are dirty, so no one would want them.

Most children can use information to make predictions:

The recycling center would like our old copies of Time magazine.

If we go later than 6 p.m., the center will be closed.

Most children can use information to set a purpose:

I would read this sign because I want to get information about how to recycle things at the recycling center.

Fourth Graders Are…

Fourth graders sometimes assume information they have is the only information there is. It can be fun to surprise your child with facts that might not fit with what he or she already knows. You might ask, Do you think Grandma likes to dance? If your child says no, you might respond, Grandma won a jitterbug contest when she was younger. This will help your child understand how prior information can lead to incorrect predictions.

On Your Way to an A Activities

Type: Reading/Writing

Materials needed: a newspaper with a photo of a famous person

Number of players: 2

Be a fortune teller! Have one player silently read the newspaper article that goes with the photo. That player should keep the details of the story to himself or herself. The player who reads the story should show the other person the photo and give a very general idea of what the story is about. The player who did not read the story should write a paragraph that predicts what the story says. How close are the two stories? The player who wrote the paragraph should consider the prior information that he or she used. Were the predictions correct?

Type: Speaking/Listening

Materials needed: reading materials, such as a newspaper, magazine, brochures, take-out menus, bus schedules, novels, plays, recipes, directions on a side of a box, and so on

Number of players: 2

Spread the reading materials out all over the room. Have one player stand in the center so they can see all of the materials at once. That player points to each item, one by one. For each, he or she asks if it would be read to get information or to have fun. After going over about half of the materials, you should switch positions. After all of the materials are identified, you can discuss several articles in each magazine and newspaper. Notice how different your answers are for each type of reading material. How is your answer for a recipe different from your answer for a novel?

Type: Reading/Writing

Materials needed: a short story, paper, pencils

Number of players: 2 or more

Read the first half of a short story. Stop at the halfway point and predict what will happen in the rest of the story. Write a paragraph to describe your prediction. Have fun with it. If you want, draw a picture to accompany your story. Then, finish reading the story. Did you correctly predict the ending? What information did you use to make your predictions? Did you use prior information? If so, was it incorrect?

Study Right

Show your child how to set a purpose when reading. You can do this with a variety of texts. If you are reading a recipe, you could point out that you are reading the recipe to figure out how to make a particular dish. Or, if you are reading directions on the side of a box, you might point out that you want to make sure you do something correctly. If you are reading a novel, you can explain that you are doing it for pleasure and what kind of pleasure this type of reading produces. This will help your child understand the variety of texts that are out there, as well as the range of reasons why we read things. After a week or so, turn the tables on your child. Encourage your child to tell you why she is reading something, such as a poster or a letter.

Has your child breezed through the activities? If so, he or she can work on this Using Your Head activity independently.

Using Your Head

Grab a pencil!

Juan wrote the following paragraph for school. Read Juan’s paragraph. Then, answer the questions that follow.

Little Chores That Help

I do a lot of little things to help save our planet. When I brush my teeth in the morning, I always turn the water off. I think about all the fish smiling while I’m brushing. They’ll still have some water to swim in, even if it’s just a tiny bit more. When my family and I went on a picnic in the summer, my parents wanted to throw away their plastic forks and cups, but I wouldn’t let them. They thought I was being a pain, but it doesn’t really take much time or effort to take the forks and cups home and wash them. This way we can use them again, and somebody else won’t have to carry around so much trash when they clean up the park. I also reuse scraps of paper whenever I can. For example, when I needed to write a letter to my teacher about trying to get the school to recycle, I wrote it on the back of an ingredient list from a tin can. I hope she could still read it. These things may seem small, but I think they add up, especially if I do them every day for the rest of my life. Every little bit helps, you know.

1. The title of this passage is Little Chores That Help. What do you already know about chores? And how do Juan’s chores help?

2. Juan wants to make a list of things he needs to do over the weekend. He will most likely write this list on

A. a new page in his notebook

B. the back of an old flyer from school

C. a clean sheet of paper

Answers: 1. I know that chores are work of some kind, like washing dishes and taking out the trash. The chores that Juan does help the earth. 2. B

During Reading: Connections

Fourth graders are learning how to process their thoughts, feelings, and opinions as they read. They are continuing to develop their sense of outside issues, as well as their ability to articulate their thoughts and feelings about these issues. The combination of learning so much about the world and becoming aware of internal feelings can sometimes be overwhelming.

Children sometimes make connections based on whatever issue feels most important in their personal lives at the moment. For example, if a child is newly aware that people live in poverty, he or she might focus on this issue in a character’s life. This kind of connection is good. It shows that your child is feeling and understanding the text.

To tackle questions that require children to start seeing the links between what they are reading and their own experiences, as well as what is going on in the world, your fourth grader needs to be able to make accurate and appropriate connections.

First things first: Get a sense of what your child already knows. Turn the page and tell your child to Jump Right In!

Here’s what you’ll need for this lesson:

a newspaper, magazine, or book

any art supplies you have

paper

pencils

crayons

Jump Right In!

An Amazing Animal

What do you think is the fastest animal on land? Some people might think it is a horse or a wolf. Others might say it is a zebra or a giraffe, but none of those animals can keep up with a cheetah. The cheetah is the fastest animal on the planet.

A cheetah is a spotted cat. It can run more than 70 miles per hour. That’s faster than your parents drive on the freeway! Humans are much slower. The athletes you see in the Olympics can run only about 23 miles per