This 10-day module builds on Grade 2 concepts about data, graphing, and line plots. The two topics in this module focus on generating and analyzing categorical and measurement data.  By the end of the module, students are working with a mixture of scaled picture graphs, bar graphs, and line plots to problem solve using both categorical and measurement data.

This 40-day final module of the year offers students intensive practice with word problems, as well as hands-on investigation experiences with geometry and perimeter.  The module begins with solving one- and two-step word problems based on a variety of topics studied throughout the year, using all four operations.  Next students explore geometry.  Students tessellate to bridge geometry experience with the study of perimeter.  Line plots, familiar from Module 6, help students draw conclusions about perimeter and area measurements.  Students solve word problems involving area and perimeter using all four operations.  The module concludes with a set of engaging lessons that briefly review the fundamental Grade 3 concepts of fractions, multiplication, and division.

Module 1A focuses on building community by making connections between visual imagery, oral accounts, poetry and written texts of various cultures with a focus on the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) culture. Students will determine a central idea and demonstrate how gathering information from a variety of sources can help us understand a central idea more fully.| Module 1 also reinforces reading fluency, close text analysis, explanatory paragraph writing, and presenting to peers. The module reinforces the fact that Native Americans—specifically the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee, People of the Longhouse) —were early inhabitants of the New York region and state, and continue to contribute to the region’s history.

Students learn about what life was like in Colonial America. They go on to study the many roles people played in a colonial settlement and how necessary their interdependence was for survival. Students select one role to explore more deeply through various forms of nonfiction texts. With an emphasis on making inferences, summarizing informational text, basic research (note-taking and pulling together information from a variety of texts), this module will foster students’ abilities to synthesize information from multiple sources and integrate research into their writing. At the end of the module, students participate in several critique experiences during the revision process as they write a research-based narrative that vividly describes an event in a colonist’s life.

In this module, students engage in reading, writing, listening, and speaking to build knowledge of simple machines and how they impact force, effort, and work.

Download the full Grade 4 ELA Module 3B as a zip folder of PDF files. Each module, unit, and lesson file will appear separately within the folder.

In this module, students will read, write, and speak about the topic of voting rights and responsibilities. In the first two units, students will read informational texts that focus on the women’s suffrage movement and the leadership of New Yorker Susan B. Anthony. Specifically, they will read firsthand and secondhand accounts of her arrest and trial for voting in a time when women were outlawed from doing so. Students then read The Hope Chest by Karen Schwabach, a historical fiction novel set in the weeks leading up to the passage of the 19th Amendment. They will continue to examine the idea of leaders of change and explore the theme “making a difference” by collecting evidence on how selected characters make a difference for others. After completing the novel, students will analyze this theme in selected passages of the novel and write an essay

In this 25-day module of Grade 4, students extend their work with whole numbers.  They begin with large numbers using familiar units (hundreds and thousands) and develop their understanding of millions by building knowledge of the pattern of times ten in the base ten system on the place value chart (4.NBT.1).  They recognize that each sequence of three digits is read as hundreds, tens, and ones followed by the naming of the corresponding base thousand unit (thousand, million, billion).

Module 2 uses length, mass and capacity in the metric system to convert between units using place value knowledge.  Students recognize patterns of converting units on the place value chart, just as 1000 grams is equal 1 kilogram, 1000 ones is equal to 1 thousand.  Conversions are recorded in two-column tables and number lines, and are applied in single- and multi-step word problems solved by the addition and subtraction algorithm or a special strategy.  Mixed unit practice prepares students for multi-digit operations and manipulating fractional units in future modules.

In this 43-day module, students use place value understanding and visual representations to solve multiplication and division problems with multi-digit numbers. As a key area of focus for Grade 4, this module moves slowly but comprehensively to develop students’ ability to reason about the methods and models chosen to solve problems with multi-digit factors and dividends.

This 20-day module introduces points, lines, line segments, rays, and angles, as well as the relationships between them. Students construct, recognize, and define these geometric objects before using their new knowledge and understanding to classify figures and solve problems. With angle measure playing a key role in their work throughout the module, students learn how to create and measure angles, as well as create and solve equations to find unknown angle measures. In these problems, where the unknown angle is represented by a letter, students explore both measuring the unknown angle with a protractor and reasoning through the solving of an equation. Through decomposition and composition activities as well as an exploration of symmetry, students recognize specific attributes present in two-dimensional figures. They further develop their understanding of these attributes as they classify two-dimensional figures based on them.

In this 40-day module, students build on their Grade 3 work with unit fractions as they explore fraction equivalence and extend this understanding to mixed numbers.  This leads to the comparison of fractions and mixed numbers and the representation of both in a variety of models.  Benchmark fractions play an important part in students’ ability to generalize and reason about relative fraction and mixed number sizes.  Students then have the opportunity to apply what they know to be true for whole number operations to the new concepts of fraction and mixed number operations.

This 20-day module gives students their first opportunity to explore decimal numbers via their relationship to decimal fractions, expressing a given quantity in both fraction and decimal forms.  Utilizing the understanding of fractions developed throughout Module 5, students apply the same reasoning to decimal numbers, building a solid foundation for Grade 5 work with decimal operations.

In this 20-day module, students build their competencies in measurement as they relate multiplication to the conversion of measurement units.  Throughout the module, students will explore multiple strategies for solving measurement problems involving unit conversion.

What are human rights, and how do real people and fictional characters respond when those rights are challenged? Students will develop their ability to read and understand complex text as they consider this question. Students will begin to build knowledge about human rights through a close read of the introduction and selected articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), paired with short firsthand accounts of people around the world who currently face human rights challenges. In Unit 2, students will do an extended study of Esperanza Rising (740L) by Pam Muñoz Ryan, applying their new learning about human rights as one lens through which to interpret the character and theme in this rich novel—a complex coming-of-age story set in Mexico and rural California during the early 1930s. Through close reading, interpretation, and analysis of fiction and nonfiction texts, students will synthesize their understanding of human rights. The specific literacy focus is on supporting understanding through quoting directly from text, inferring theme, and comparing and contrasting how different texts address the topics and themes of human rights. Students will write an analytical essay in which they describe how a character in the novel responds to challenges. In Unit 3, students will continue to revisit the text and themes of the UDHR and Esperanza Rising as they read, write, and ultimately perform Readers Theater. Students will compare novels and Readers Theater as two forms of narrative writing. They will then select specific articles of the UDHR that relate thematically to the novel and reread key passages of the novel with that theme in mind. They will write individual and small group scripts based on these key passages and on phrases from the UDHR. Students will revise, rehearse, and ultimately perform their group Readers Theater scripts for their class and/or school or community members.

In this eight-week module, students learn about new or improved technologies that have been developed to meet societal needs and how those inventions have changed people’s lives. They conduct authentic research to build their own knowledge and teach others through writing. In Unit 1, students read the graphic novel Investigating the Scientific Method with Max Axiom, Super Scientist by Donald B. Lemke as well as several informational articles about inventions that have been developed to meet people’s needs. Students learn about and analyze structures and visual elements authors use to convey complex ideas. Then, they will write a short opinion paragraph about which of the inventions they learned about has been most important to people and why. In Unit 2, students will read The Boy Who Invented TV: The Story of Philo Farnsworth by Kathleen Krull, focusing on how the television was invented to meet societal needs.

This module begins with a brief study of the importance of sports in American culture over time. The heart of this module is a whole class study of the short but challenging biography Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America (1030L) by his daughter, Sharon Robinson. (Students will read selected segments; some of these will be read aloud.) Students will analyze Jackie Robinson as a specific example of an athlete who served as a leader who broke barriers in society. They will also begin to study argumentative writing, analyzing how the author Sharon Robinson provides evidence to support her opinions. In Unit 3, students then choose to learn about one of three other respected sports figures (Roberto Clemente, Babe Didrikson, or Jim Thorpe). Students will develop their understanding of the cultural context in which these athletes competed and the barriers these athletes broke during the times in which they lived. Students will build their research skills by reading biographical articles and other informational texts and by participating in Webquests. They also will continue to build their skills to write arguments based on multiple sources, focusing on crafting clear opinions and providing sufficient reasons and evidence. For the final performance task, each student will write a letter to a publishing company explaining the need for a biography about their selected athlete, in which they discuss the athlete, evaluate the barriers that he/she broke during the era in which he/she lived, and give an opinion about the importance of that athlete’s impact on American society. They must support their opinions with evidence from their research.

This module engages students in a high-interest topic—natural disasters—with a literacy focus on point of view in literature, research, opinion writing, and public speaking. The module integrates science content (about extreme natural events) with a Social Studies focus on the Western Hemisphere and the role of multinational organizations.

In Module 1, students’ understanding of the patterns in the base ten system are extended from Grade 4’s work with place value of multi-digit whole numbers and decimals to hundredths to the thousandths place. In Grade 5, students deepen their knowledge through a more generalized understanding of the relationships between and among adjacent places on the place value chart, e.g., 1 tenth times any digit on the place value chart moves it one place value to the right. Toward the module’s end students apply these new understandings as they reason about and perform decimal operations through the hundredths place.

In Module 2, students apply the patterns of the base ten system to mental strategies and the multiplication and division algorithms.