Fourth Grade

Essential Content

4th-grade students presenting to a small group of classmates

Guiding Question: Are All Students Working With Content Aligned to the Appropriate Standards for Their Subject and Grade?

Ensure that all students are working with content aligned to the appropriate standards for their subject area and grade. Each content area listed includes a summary of the priority standards that students should be able to demonstrate proficiency in by the end of kindergarten. These prioritized items are considered foundational understandings that students will build upon in first grade and beyond.

Priority Standards

What students will know, what students will do, and what thinking skills students will develop to apply and transfer understandings that endure within the discipline, leverage deeper understandings, and/or support readiness for success at the next grade level. These are the standards that should anchor and drive instruction.

 

Signature Elements

The practices, strategies, and routines at the core of teaching and learning within the content area/discipline.

Fourth Grade Standards

This is the list of fourth-grade standards found on the SFUSD report card. They represent understandings that endure within the discipline, leverage deeper understandings within the content area, and/or support readiness for success at the next grade level.

Arts
  • Engages and develops the ability to express self with increasing creativity, complexity, and depth through 2D and 3D
    visual art
  • Engages and develops the ability to express self through creative movement and creative expression
  • Engages and develops the ability to create music through instruments, voice, or with objects
Digital Learning
  • Utilizes technology tools independently to meet individual needs and for collaborative work
  • Expresses thinking using a variety of digital formats across content areas
  • Chooses the best tool for a specific task when working in a digital environment
English Language Arts
  • Determines the theme of a story and the main idea of informational texts; summarizes the text
  • Integrates information from different texts to write or speak about a subject
  • Writes narratives; establishes a situation, effectively uses narrative techniques, and provides a conclusion
  • Writes informative/explanatory texts; logically develops a topic with facts, details or quotations, and provides a concluding section
  • Writes opinion pieces; states a point of view supported by logically ordered reasons, and provides a concluding section
  • Reports orally on a topic with appropriate facts and details to support ideas
  • Uses grade level phonics and more than one strategy to solve unknown words in a text
  • Uses grade level writing conventions for capitalization, punctuation, and spelling
  • Reads at grade level expectations
English Language Development
  • Contributes to discussions in all settings by asking relevant questions, building on others’ ideas, providing useful feedback and using relevant information
  • Expresses an opinion to persuade and negotiate using complex learned phrases in conversations
  • Listens actively to read alouds, presentations, and discussions by asking and answering detailed questions, restating and paraphrasing
  • Explains ideas, experiences and connections based on a variety of grade-level texts and multimedia
  • Understands and applies how writers and speakers use language
  • Knows and applies basic literacy skills in reading and writing
Health
  • Describes how to use a decision making process to select nutritious foods, beverages, and physical activities
  • Describes the types and effects of bullying and harassment behaviors and demonstrates how to be an ally
  • Describes the effects of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, and demonstrates strategies to avoid substance abuse
History/Social Studies
  • Understands the physical and human geographic features of California regions
  • Describes the social, political, cultural, and economic life in California (pre-Colombian to Spanish mission)
  • Explains the economic, social, and political life in California and describes the events leading to statehood
  • Understands the structures, functions and powers of local, state and federal governments
Mathematics
  • Reasons about problems, explains thinking, and considers thinking of others
  • Generalizes place value understanding for multi-digit numbers
  • Uses place value and properties of operations with whole numbers to solve problems
  • Builds understanding of factors and multiples
  • Builds understanding of fraction equivalence and ordering, and uses unit fractions to add, subtract, and multiply
  • Makes and interprets line plots using measurements in fractions of a unit
  • Understands concepts of angles and angle measures
  • Solves problems involving measurement and conversion from larger to smaller units
  • Generates and analyzes patterns that follow a given rule
  • Understands and uses decimal notation for fractions
  • Classifies two-dimensional shapes by properties of their lines and angles
Physical Education
  • Throws and catches an object with a partner while both are moving
  • Keeps a dribbled ball away from a defender
  • Stops a kicked ball by trapping it with the foot
  • Calculates heart rate for 10 and 15 second intervals
  • Sets short term goals for cardio endurance
Science
  • Asks questions about what would happen if a variable is changed and identifies scientific (testable) and non-scientific (non-testable) questions
  • Develops a scientific model to describe a scientific principle or predict phenomena
  • Plans and conducts investigations collaboratively, using fair tests, producing data to serve as evidence, and evaluating methods of data collection
  • Generates and compares multiple solutions to a problem based on how well they meet the criteria and constraints of a design challenge
Social-Emotional Development
  • Works/plays collaboratively with others
  • Regulates emotions and works with focus
  • Approaches challenges as learning opportunities
  • Accomplishes personal and academic goals
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Essential Content CORE Rubric Teaching Practices

Design Lessons that Advance Students to Grade-Level Standards and/or IEP Goals
  • Demonstrate knowledge of subject matter and academic content standards.
  • Address rigor and depth of standards.
  • Select appropriately demanding instructional materials, tasks, texts for grade/course and time in the school year based on guidance in standards, students’ language development, and/or students’ IEP goals (e.g. Lexile level and complexity of text).
  • Use developmentally appropriate practices.
  • Use subject-appropriate pedagogical practices, including those found in SFUSD curricula (Reader’s Workshop, Writer’s Workshop, Math Signature Strategies, ELD practices).
  • Explicitly address how English works through complex texts (i.e. text level, sentence level, phrase level, word level)
  • Develop and provide accommodations and modifications as needed to ensure all students are able to attain learning goals.
  • Address students’ IEP goals and other specific learning needs in developing learning goals and preparing lessons.
  • Design single lessons and sequences of lessons.
    • Develop a vision for student success and standards-aligned, long- and short-term goals that are ambitious, measurable, and appropriate for all students.
    • Develop and/or uses a long-term, sequential plan that leads to mastery of the most important content for the grade or course.
    • Develop and clearly communicate a well-framed, standards-aligned, and appropriately rigorous instructional objective(s) and language objective(s) to describe the goal(s) of the lesson.
    • Develop and/or use daily lesson activities that are well-sequenced and move students toward mastery of grade-level standards.
    • Develop and/or use appropriately demanding instructional materials, such as texts, questions, problems, exercises, and assessments.
  • Plan differentiated instruction considering students’ individual learning needs and levels of readiness, ensuring content is accessible to all students.
  • Anticipate common student misunderstandings given the content and ensure strategies are in place to overcome those misunderstandings.
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Teaches Lesson Content Accurately and Coherently
  • Explain and model accurate content, practices, and strategies, and all content necessary for students to achieve the learning goal(s).
  • Use explanations of content that are clear, coherent, and support student understanding of content.
  • Provide opportunities for engagement and identity exploration through a variety of creative, technological, and artistic forms and disciplines.
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This page was last updated on August 29, 2023