Beaverton Schools has recently adopted Lucy Caulkins Units of Study. This program offers grade-by-grade curricula in reading designed to meet ambitious 21st century global standards. Drawing on learning gleaned from decades of research, curriculum development, and working shoulder-to-shoulder with students, teachers, and school leaders, this new reading series is rooted in the Project’s best practices and newest thinking. It includes state-of-the-art tools and methods for teaching reading, undergirded by the Project’s learning progressions in reading for literature and informational texts. Units of Study:Fourth grade is a time for children to hone their intellectual independence. In the first unit, Interpreting the Characters: The Heart of the Story, This unit is about getting students to read with deep engagement and rapt attention. Nothing can accomplish this better than a character study, as the heart of any good story is the character. You will rally students’ enthusiasm for building big ideas that are grounded in the books they read by telling them that this year is not going to be like other years. . In the second unit, Reading the Weather, Reading the World: Purposeful Reading of Nonfiction, In this unit supports students in the essential skills they will need to be strong readers and researchers of informational texts. Specifically, they will learn to read for main ideas and supporting details, to identify text structures and use this information to understand texts more fully, to summarize, and to figure out meanings of unknown words and academic vocabulary.Historical Fiction Clubs:, In this unit, students practice reading analytically, synthesizing complicated narratives, comparing and contrasting themes, and incorporating nonfiction research into their reading. This can be a beautiful intellectual journey, where the stories sweep children along with their exciting dramas. Each club reads several novels set within a historical time period, supported by researching nonfiction.
As an assessment tool to determine the quality of our students writing, we utilize the Lucy Caulkins Program. This program provides a coherent, curriculum in the three types of writing and are aligned with the new ELA Common Core Standards. The model reflects the latest research and data based, responsive instruction The focus of writing in the 4th grade is based on the following styles of writing:
The ability to convey ideas through discussion and presentations is an important life skill that is expressed through the various tasks we will explore as we work our way through the listening and speaking standards. Students will be in small group for this activity. They will be responsible for assigned reading of their chosen text, then they will create three questions, a summary, and two challenging vocabulary words. With this information they will met with their group and discuss the reading.