Canadian International School of Kuwait

Canadian International School of Kuwait

Grade 4

Grade 4 Health & Physical Education

The Health and Physical Education (HPE) curriculum helps students learn the skills and knowledge they need to lead healthy, active lives and make healthy and safe choices. There are four parts to the curriculum: Healthy Living Active Living Movement Competence Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Skills.

Grade 4 Fine art

Grade 4 students further develop techniques in drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, fabric arts, photography and computer graphics, and they mix media for new experiences. They express feelings and ideas through their art and try to make their art look more like things in real life. Your child will study the visual qualities of objects and compare different objects and forms. All students should have the opportunity to experience the fine arts as part of a well-rounded education. The study of drama, dance, music, media arts, and the visual arts helps students explore realities, relationships, and ideas that cannot be expressed simply in words or numbers.

Grade 4 Foreign Language

Whether you choose Spanish or Japanese, German or Russian, learning a foreign language can strengthen your career prospects in a global economy. But it is more than just learning to speak in a new way. It’s about learning to think in a new way. Become a citizen of a broader world. Learning languages benefits kids in many areas including academic achievement, cognitive development, and cultural empathy. Our fourth grade foreign language worksheets expose kids to a variety of cultures and corresponding languages including Spanish, Japanese, French, German, and more with colorful approaches that will have your kids seeing the world through very different sets of eyes in no time.

Grade 4 Social Emotional

Designed to help students develop socially and emotionally into happy, responsible, productive adults, the Social Emotional Learning – Elementary course begins by discussing students’ personal characteristics, strengths, and values, and how important it is that they remain true to their core values. Students explore how they can use the choices they make each day to control their lives, and they consider the concept that there are boundaries that they need to respect and responsibilities they need to shoulder. They learn what it means to be inspired, and that being inspired is a choice they make. They discuss how to be considerate and respectful, and how their attitudes shape their successes. They learn how developing good personal hygiene and a regular daily schedule can improve their lives.

Grade 4 Social studies

By the time they reach fourth grade, students are usually strong readers who have developed the skills for seeing patterns in history and current events. This growth prepares them for reading longer and more in-depth historical narratives and for recognizing how ancient, past, and current events are often tied together. A standards-based program will target goals like:
  • Becoming an active citizen
  • Thinking critically
  • Use of technology to research and report
  • Map reading
  • Use of Timelines
  • Interpretation of Charts, Graphs, and Tables
  • Gain an understanding of economic concepts (banks, imports/exports/production of goods)
  • Learn about the characteristics, way of life, and beliefs of various cultures such as vikings, Native Americans, etc.

Grade 4 Language

Reading

Foundational skills for fourth grade readers involve making sure they are reading a wide variety of books and other written materials. They will be sharing what they are reading with others, both verbally and in writing. Your child should be reading fluently enough to read aloud comfortably as well. Specifically, some of the objectives for this year’s reading instruction include:
  • Paying close attention to the key features of what is read, and being able to share details afterward
  • Comparing ideas, characters, events, and settings in stories
  • Recognizing figurative language when reading (similes, metaphors, etc.)
  • Learning the difference between first and third person narration
  • Gaining additional skills in reading comprehension including summarizing, predicting, visualizing, questioning, and clarifying details

Writing

Your fourth grader will become actively involved in the steps of the writing process this year. From prewriting to drafting to editing and revision, fourth graders will learn how to plan out their compositions and refine them. Some of the specific writing goals our 4th grade language arts curriculum aims for this year include:
  • Using research tools to investigate and write about a specific topic.
  • Writing summaries or opinions of topics, using supporting details.
  • Analyzing and interpreting a story they have read by writing about it.
  • Writing an example news article.

Grammar

In fourth grade, students learn to apply what they have learned about grammar and mechanics as they write original compositions. Our 4th grade language arts curriculum lessons focus on parts of speech, similes and metaphors, punctuation, double negatives, and spelling. Fourth graders will continue to review the grammar rules they have learned to this point, and will add new concepts such as:
  • Rules of spelling
  • Proper and common nouns
  • Regular and irregular verbs
  • Correctly using commas in series, dates, addresses, and compound sentences
  • Recognizing and avoiding double negatives

Grade 4 Science & technology

This course builds on the Grade 3 curriculum to further develop students’ understanding of fundamental sientific and technological concepts by exploring topics related to life systems, structures, mechanisms, matter, energy, Earth’s systems, and space systems. Students will learn how science and technology relate to society and the environment. They will start to understand the basic concepts of science and technology while developing the skills, strategies, and habits of mind required for scientific inquiry and technological problem-solving. As part of life systems, students will focus on habitats, natural communities, and the impacts that changes to habitats can have on plants and animals. Students will learn that living things (including humans) rely on other living things for the energy and resources they need to live. They will also investigate factors that alter various habitats and communities, including factors that occur naturally and those that result from human action. For structures and mechanisms, students will delve deeper into understanding simple machines by looking at pulleys and gears. Students will learn that pulleys and gears can transfer motion from one object to another, transform one kind of motion into another, change the speed and direction of an object’s motion, and change the amount of force needed to move an object. They will identify how these devices are used to improve everyday life, learn about mechanical advantage, and apply what they have learned through investigations of their own design. Students will also explore the properties of light and sound by investigating and observing how these forms of energy interact with various objects in the environment. Students will discover ways in which materials can be used to transmit, reflect, or absorb light and sound in order to control these energies. They will then begin to apply this knowledge by constructing simple devices and examining the impact of technologies related to sound and light on our everyday lives. Finally, students will explore Earth and space systems through the study of rocks and minerals, which is also known as the science of geology. By examining different types of rocks and minerals found in Earth’s crust, students will learn that the unique characteristics and properties of rocks and minerals are a result of how they were formed. These properties then determine the possible uses of these resources.

Grade 4 Mathematics

This course builds on the Grade 3 curriculum to further develop students’ understanding of fundamental mathematical concepts by exploring topics related to number, coding, algebra, data, spatial sense, social emotional learning skills in mathematics, and financial literacy. Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to build their social emotional learning skills by focusing specifically on the interactions and challenges they face in the world around them. They will learn to solve problems using reasoning, cooperation, tools, and a variety of different problem-solving strategies. Students will practice using math language in order to communicate their ideas and solutions in order to tell a story and to cooperate with others. Regarding numbers, students will learn how to identify, represent, show place value, compose and decompose, compare and order numbers up to 10 000, and learn how to round four-digit numbers. They will also be introduced to reading, writing, and understanding decimal numbers. Students will explore different ways of representing, comparing, counting by, and ordering fractions. They will be able to show equivalent fractions. Students will practice addition and subtraction of four-digit numbers using a variety of tools and strategies. They will also practice multiplying and dividing numbers by 1 through 11, as well as by 100, and 1 000. Students will practice their problem-solving skills by working through real-world problems that require the use of more than one operation to find a solution. In algebra, students will continue to expand their knowledge of patterning as they create, identify, extend, and predict repeating and increasing patterns. Students will explore the commutative and distributive property of both multiplication and addition. They will also make use of a variety of different tools and strategies in order to help them find missing numbers in equations and to solve inequalities. In data, students will learn about the differences between qualitative and quantitative data, and primary and secondary sources of data. They will demonstrate an understanding of and the uses of the mean, medians, and modes. They will collect and organize data in order to display it in a variety of different charts and graphs, and then use their charts and graphs to create simple infographics in order to tell a story about data. They will use data, charts, graphs, infographics, and probability experiments in order to read, interpret, compare, predict, and draw conclusions based on applicable data sets. In spatial sense, students will learn the properties and characteristics of rectangles and learn how to identify, describe, reflect, and translate different angles and shapes. They will learn how to differentiate among acute, right, obtuse, and straight angles, and students will explore lines of symmetry. They will also use shapes to create patterns. While exploring measurement, students will estimate, compare, and determine mass and capacity in a variety of different units and contextual situations. They will also continue to expand their knowledge of time by exploring units of minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, decades, and centuries. In financial literacy, students will be exposed to the different methods of payment that are used in modern society. They will estimate and calculate costs, make change for cash purchases, and explore the relationships among spending, saving, earning, investing, and donating. They will build good financial sense by practicing how to determine whether purchases are worthwhile. Through investigation of real-life problems, students develop a strong foundation of mathematical knowledge and skills. Students apply mathematical processes and build transferrable critical thinking skills in varied teaching and consolidation activities that appeal to diverse learning styles. Students participate in engaging storylines along with characters who connect their learning to real-world contexts and build confidence by instilling a positive attitude towards mathematics. Various opportunities consolidate students’ learning through technology and offline activities, including tactile manipulatives, to reinforce essential mathematical strategies and tools. The course has a strong focus on reinforcing number sense and numeracy skills. It also provides various activities for practice throughout. This course prepares students for grade 5 mathematics.