Fourth Grade - Arts

Fourth-grade students experience Arts instruction through the broad integration of arts throughout the school day, as well as through stand-alone visual and performing arts lessons that happen throughout the week. Stand-alone arts lessons are taught by you, the classroom teacher, and via instruction from itinerant visual and performing arts teachers. Fourth grade also marks the first year of specialized instrumental music instruction (violin, clarinet, trumpet, and flute) offered in SFUSD. 

In fourth grade, students create through various stimuli (music/sound, text, objects, images, and symbols). Students are incorporating and considering the ideas, contributions, space, and feedback of their classmates. Fourth-grade students answer open-ended questions and are adding more details to develop their own creations. They are able to talk about what they did and what thinking went into their creative process. They listen to one another and appreciate different approaches and artworks.

Students respond to/investigate an image, a rhythm, a dance, or media using an inquiry-based set of questions. Questions might lead students to perceive or determine what message and/or mood is being communicated. Suggested thinking routines and resource: 4 Cs and Elaboration Game, sentence starters.

Students investigate their own selves and cultures. They also investigate cross-cultural approaches to storytelling and creating works of art that connect to and reflect community and culture. Students explore and invent art-making techniques and approaches. They collaboratively set goals and produce artwork, performances, and exhibitions that are meaningful and have purpose for the makers. Students are engaged in multi-week creative investigations and technical projects/performances. During the creative process, students consider and revise artistic works based on peer feedback.

Fourth-grade students explain and demonstrate how personal interests, experiences, ideas, community, and culture relate to creating and performing. Fourth-grade students perform and create finished works of art with expression and technical accuracy. They use discipline-specific art vocabulary to describe personal choices and present artistic work to peers as an audience who reflect on the presentation. 

Through observation, fourth-grade students infer information about the time, place, and culture in which a work of art was created. They create in response to community and social issues, and they are incorporating other content areas in artistic work. Students are using specific vocabulary to interpret art by analyzing characteristics of form, structure, context, and the artist’s life. Fourth-grade students are learning about the roles and responsibilities of a curator or producer; they can explain the skills and knowledge needed in preserving, documenting, and presenting artwork.

At this age, students compare and contrast multiple personal experiences when participating in or observing an artistic work. Students come together to make one artwork or performance. They are considering multiple ways to create, and appreciate different approaches and the variety of ideas coming from classmates. Groups of students are investigating and collaborating to generate new ideas - taking risks and experimenting with various materials and tools to explore personal interests.

At the beginning, middle, and end of the time, students respond to open-ended questions, use turn-and-talk, gallery walks, and closing circles to view, celebrate and ask questions about peers' work. They also have moments to pause and also reflect on their own process. Closing discussions: “Tell me about what you created” What did you notice when you saw your classmates’ work? When your classmate made music, what made you go wow? What surprised you? What would you do differently next time?”