Fourth Grade Language Arts

PEIMS Course Title/Number:
English Language Arts 4/02630040

Prerequisite Requirements:
Grade-level placement by K12 placement team.

Course of Instruction/Lesson Description:
K12's Grade 4 Language Arts program provides a comprehensive sequence of lessons on Language Skills, Literature, and Spelling. Students are expected to read and write with a greater degree of fluency, proficiency and independence, and participate meaningfully in discussions.

The instructional plan includes readings and activities on a range of topics and skills including literature, composition, grammar, usage and mechanics, spelling, test readiness, and vocabulary.

Composition: Students generate ideas and work through a series of activities that inculcate the stages of the writing process (prewriting, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing). Topics include opportunities for creative writing, as well as a book review, reports, a persuasive paper, a news article, and writing to a prompt.

Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics: A typical GUM lesson consists of a "Get Ready" teaching activity to review previous concepts and explain new ones, a "Try It" section to provide students with an opportunity to practice skills taught in the lesson, and a workbook exercise. Unit, mid-course, and End-of-Course assessments are provided.

Literature: Lessons include varying combinations of the following components:

• Vocabulary: Students learn definitions of challenging words in the reading selection.
• Think Ahead: Students answer pre-reading questions and review previous reading to prepare for the day's reading.
• Questions: Students write brief responses to questions in a Reading Notebook.
• Discuss: Students discuss ideas and issues in the readings, in response to questions provided in the lesson.
• Write: Students write brief responses to questions provided in the lesson.
• Activities: Students complete any of a variety of activities designed to deepen understanding and enhance enjoyment, such as dramatizing part of a story, writing a creative or analytical response, or completing a supplied activity page on comprehension skills (e.g., describing characters, inferring and drawing conclusions, or comparing and contrasting).
• Assessments: Assessments are provided at the unit level, as well as at the mid-point and end of the course. Assessments contain both objective and short-answer questions.

Spelling: Each of 36 units (each unit containing five lessons) begins with a Spelling List composed of 22 words presented in five categories:

• Words that Follow the Rules (10): These words include the spelling pattern taught or reinforced in the unit.
• Words with Prefixes or Suffixes (4): These words share the same prefix or suffix. Lessons explain the meaning of the affix and any spelling conventions related to adding the affix to the base word or root.
• Related Words: Words with Common Base Words or Roots (4): The related meanings for these words are explained and the parts with the same spellings are emphasized.
• Spelling Dangers (2): These are commonly misspelled words. Lessons give hints to help the student remember the correct spelling.
• Proper Nouns: Geographical Proper Names (2): These words include the names of all 50 states in the United States, the continents, and the countries that border the United States.
• Reviews and Assessments: Students complete a pretest, dictation exercises, practice pages, review games, and assessments to help them achieve mastery.

Vocabulary: The Vocabulary Workshop program provides 16 units, with 12 words in each unit. For each unit, the workbook provides definitions, part of speech, standard pronunciations, a list of synonyms and antonyms, and sample sentences, followed by a series of exercises distributed across four lessons. These exercises include:

• Identifying the meanings of words
• Matching words and definitions
• Identifying synonyms and antonyms of vocabulary words
• Writing sentences to answer questions on a reading selection that uses the words in context
• Completing fill-in-the-blank exercises using contextual clues
• Writing sample sentences or paragraphs that incorporate the vocabulary words and demonstrate understanding of their meanings and usage

Test Readiness: Workbooks from Curriculum Associates provide practice in standardized test-taking question formats in reading comprehension, spelling, writing skills, grammar, usage, and mechanics.

Major course expectations include the following:

Composition

• Use prewriting strategies to generate ideas for diverse kinds of writing (e.g., journals, letters, stories, essays) and consider audience expectations.
• Use writing processes including organizing, drafting, revising, and editing to write compositions on a variety of self-selected or assigned topics.
• Use published pieces as models for the student's own writing.
• Evaluate model compositions.
• Select a topic, generate questions for inquiry, and complete research.
• Take notes from media sources.
• Organize notes in charts or tables.
• Write drafts by organizing information into paragraphs.
• Revise drafts by adding, deleting, and rearranging text.
• Revise drafts for coherence and logical support of ideas.
• Revise and proofread drafts for standard usage, sentence variety, and word choice.
• Publish clean, error-free final copy of written work to share with audience.
• Write creative and expository pieces for a specific purpose and audience.
• Maintain a writing portfolio.
• Prepare and deliver oral presentations, adapting language, tone, and pacing for subject, audience, and purpose.

Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics

• Differentiate among sentence types.
• Identify various punctuation marks and demonstrate correct usage.
• Use commas in a series, with direct address, and after yes and no.
• Use apostrophes to show possession and for contractions.
• Use appropriate capitalization for proper nouns, beginnings of sentences, titles, etc.
• Use correct agreement including subject-verb and pronoun.
• Write sentences with correct verb tenses.
• Use pronoun case correctly.
• Use adjectives (comparative and superlative forms) and adverbs to make writing precise.
• Use prepositional phrases to elaborate ideas and conjunctions to connect ideas.
• Identify relationships among words that are synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms.

Literature

• Demonstrate fluency and comprehension of a diverse variety of traditional and contemporary texts including drama, poetry, novels, short stories, and nonfiction.
• Distinguish among and recognize the defining characteristics of various literary forms, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, fable, and informational texts.
• Read independently.
• Read aloud with appropriate expression and intonation.
• Establish purpose for use of resources and references such as dictionaries, glossaries, tables of contents, etc.
• Compare and contrast literary characters or selections.
• Identify problems and solutions in plot.
• Analyze character traits and motivations.
• Make inferences and draw conclusions.
• Describe setting and recognize its effect on plot.
• Retell (summarize) a story plot.
• Describe characters, using context clues.
• Listen, take notes, and demonstrate comprehension of oral text.
• Read stories and recognize similarities in the experiences of characters across cultures.
• Describe similarities in themes across cultures.
• Identify imagery and describe mental pictures that texts convey.
• Develop vocabulary through reading.
• Interpret dramatic text through recitation or enactment.
• Draw conclusions about literature using supporting evidence.
• Make connections between text and graphics, e.g., illustrations, maps, tables, timelines, and diagrams.
• Create charts to organize information.
• Generate questions for research and inquiry.

Spelling

• Demonstrate mastery of regular and irregular patterns in multisyllabic words.
• Analyze the relationship between sounds and spellings.
• Demonstrate comprehension of rules for adding suffixes.
• Analyze how prefixes and suffixes affect meaning.
• Locate the meanings, pronunciations, and derivations of unfamiliar words.
• Identify root words with prefixes and suffixes.
• Apply knowledge of letter-sound correspondences and language structure to recognize words.
• Review spelling conventions taught in earlier grades, and study and apply new spelling conventions.
• Study vocabulary through the presentation of meanings for word parts such as prefixes, suffixes, base words, roots, and unfamiliar words.
• Correctly spell the names of all 50 United States, the continents, and the countries that border the United States.
• Differentiate among the meanings of commonly misspelled words.
• Identify and spell correctly contractions, compound words, and homophones.

Vocabulary

• Develop vocabulary through reading.
• Develop vocabulary by identifying the meanings of words in context.
• Develop vocabulary by writing sentences using new words.
• Develop word analysis skills.
• Identify context clues.
• Study word meanings systematically.
• Demonstrate knowledge of the vocabulary words by answering a question or choosing the answer that best completes a sentence.

Lesson Numbers/Duration:
There are 180 Language Arts lessons, which combine components of the following:

• Composition: 72 lessons
• GUM: 108 lessons
• Vocabulary: 80 lessons
• Test Readiness Reading: 8 lessons
• Test Readiness Language Skills: 8 lessons
• Spelling: 180 lessons
• Literature: 122 lessons, including 12 optional and 50 novels units from which to choose four for study. Novels units contain between six and 10 lessons, depending upon the length and complexity of the novel.

Online Importance:
K12's English Language Arts program provides step-by-step guidance in each lesson. Most activities are presented offline, although some of the "choice" novels lessons are presented online.

Most of the language arts program is delivered with the assistance of a Teacher Guide, which provides an outline of the lesson as well as information about assessment and supplemental material that can help support each student. The Teacher Guide is available as printed material as well as online.

Some lessons have a Student Guide that leads the student through the lesson. The Student Guide is available as printed material.

Monitoring Student Progress:
Most units end with an assessment. The assessment helps the teacher gauge whether the student has met the unit objectives. Assessment results are entered online, to be tracked by the Online School application.

Students and parents can access student-specific screens to determine (1) progress in the number of lessons completed, (2) the lesson assessment (percentage mastered), (3) the semester assessment (percentage mastered), and (4) the number of times the student has taken the assessment instruments. Families who enroll their children in the eCP program have the benefit of help and guidance from an experienced teacher. The teacher will contact students daily through email and phone conferences. Consistent progress monitoring by the teacher will be utilized throughout the project period.

Schedule for Monitoring Student Progress:
Each teacher will establish a daily contact schedule for their assigned students at a time of day that is reasonably convenient for both parties. Contacts may be asynchronous/synchronous or one-on-one/groups. The avenues of teacher initiated contact will be adjusted as determined by the progress a student makes through their learning plan. Parent- and student-initiated contact with teachers can happen at any time. The Acting Director, or their designee, will monitor the communication logs to ensure that parents are being routinely supported and informed regarding the student's ongoing progress and participation.

In addition, teachers will monitor progress in mastery of objectives and lesson completion on a weekly basis. Continuous progress monitoring by the assigned teacher ensures that parents are informed on a regular basis regarding progress and participation.

Required Instructional Materials:
Materials K12 provides:

• White Dry Erase Board
• Exercises in English, Book D from Loyola Press
• Writing in Action, Books C and D
• Vocabulary Workshop, Orange Series from Sadlier-Oxford

Standardized Assessment Instruments:
End-of-Course Exams developed by Texas Tech, University of Texas, or K12 Inc.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Compliancy:
Side-by-side comparisons of TEKS and the content of each course have been developed and reviewed to ensure that the online curriculum meets or exceeds the TEKS.

Grading/Credit Award Criteria:
The Texas Virtual Academy at Southwest Schools issues formal report cards every nine weeks. Students who complete a significant amount of coursework after the conclusion of the final term will receive a supplemental report card in July. The final grade in each content subject, English/Language Arts, mathematics, Social Studies, and Science, is determined by a combination of the grades from each reporting period and the proctored course completion (CCE) exam. The average of the grades for each reporting period is comprised of 90% of the final grade. The scores of the CCE comprise 10% of the final grade.

The final grade for electives is based on cumulative progress recorded in the Online School (OLS). A grade of Completed, or C, is reported for 80% or more of the lessons marked as completed. A grade of Incomplete/Unacceptable, or I, is reported when less that 80% of the lessons are marked as completed. No Grade, or NG, is assigned if the student has administrative approval to waive the course requirements in a particular elective course.

To be promoted to the next grade, the student must meet the Student Success Initiative requirements for that grade. Additionally, the student must have a final score of 70 or above on at least three content courses and the average of the four content courses must be at least 70. For each reporting period, the grade in a content area subject is the average of at least six distinct grades. Those grades include, but are not limited to, the progress in the OLS converted to a numerical grade, response to the daily questions, online quizzes following the weekly grade-level study halls, work samples, and benchmark assessments.

Contact Information:
Students will be assigned a teacher upon acceptance into TXVA@SW. The teacher will provide the student and family telephone and email contact information. The student and/or family may contact a help desk at 1-886-YOUR K12 for additional technical, material, or logistical support. Students will be provided with online assistance 24/7 through the TXVA web site.