Welcome to Grantfork's 4th Grade
Teachers: Carrie Warnecke and Marissa Weiss

The Wonders Reading series adopted by the district in 2013-14 leads instruction in reading, spelling, and grammar. Areas of focus include fluency, comprehension, and summarizing. The series concentrates on genres, literary elements, text features, and citing evidence. Much of the writing curriculum concentrates on developing clear, concise responses to the material read in the Reader Writer Workshop and the literature anthology textbooks. Both textbooks include well-written fiction and informative nonfiction. The spelling words coordinate with the selections within both textbooks. The emphasis of the spelling instruction revolves around word families, grammar rules, prefixes, and suffixes. Students complete their weekly spelling and vocabulary tests through Spelling City, a computerized program, which includes a multitude of games, writing activities, practice sessions, and printable cursive handwriting worksheets.
The Eureka Math curriculum serves as the core of the mathematics program. Students must learn and retain multiplication and division facts. After mastering the facts, students continue to take daily timed tests to increase speed and accuracy. Concepts included in 4th grade include multiple digit addition and subtraction, various methods of multiplication and division, fractions, geometry, algebraic understanding, money, time, and decimal usage.
Social studies and science are taught through textbooks, hands-on projects, and experiments. In these classes students learn note-taking skills, research, and presentation skills. Collaborating with a partner or in a small group allows students to build skills they will use in the workplace - cooperation, delegation, leadership, and self-monitoring. Health is taught in conjunction with P.E. using the textbook and hands-on projects.
At Grantfork, students have two very rare benefits lacking in most U. S. schools. While most classes must pick up their supplies at the end of a subject’s allotted time, the Exploratory Room offers teachers and students open space where they can set up ongoing projects returning to them frequently without additional set up and cleanup. Sharing the computer lab with limited classes gifts students with abundant access to online learning -- daily keyboarding, online testing coordinated with the Wonders and enVision curriculum, ability to progress monitor students more frequently, daily practice of spelling, math, and reading skills through STAR, Accelerated Reading, Spelling City, Reflex Math, Skoolbo, and general research and development of computerized presentations in all subject areas.