Grade 4 English, unit by unit

How do you teach a fourth grader to back up an answer with the text?

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A fourth grader who says 'I just think so' about a story has not yet learned to use the page. Reading and Writing with Evidence: Grade 4 ELA is a year of quoting the line that proves it. It has eight units and 21+ hours, and it ends with opinion, informative and narrative writing that stay on topic.

The eight units

Reading Between the Lines: Inference with Evidence. What the Story Is Really About: Theme. Whose Story Is It: Summarizing and Sources. One Story, Three Shapes: Poem, Drama, Prose. Reading a Page That Isn't All Words: Visual Information. Writing to Inform and Writing to Persuade. Writing to Tell a Story: Narrative Craft. Putting It Together: Mixed Reading and Writing Tasks.

An inference is not a guess

In Unit 1 your child writes a claim, quotes the exact sentence that supports it, and explains the connection in one sentence. The guide's checks are 'could you have answered this without reading the passage?' and 'does that quote actually say what you claimed?'

Topic is not theme

Unit 2 teaches that 'a girl and her dog' is a topic and a theme is a full sentence that claims something about life. Your child works from a character's choices, first in a fable with a stated moral and then in a story with none.

A summary is shorter and true

Unit 3 separates a summary from a retell, and a firsthand account from a secondhand one. Your child works out what each source could actually know and why two true accounts of one event can disagree.

A true chart can still mislead

Unit 5 reads bar charts, diagrams and timelines as real sources, including how a broken axis distorts a true difference. Unit 4 beforehand compares the same event told as a poem, a drama script and prose.

Writing last

Unit 6 is an opinion paragraph with two reasons and an informative paragraph with three grouped facts. Unit 7 teaches four craft moves one at a time: event order, dialogue that matters with its punctuation, sensory description, and planning toward an implied theme.

What this is not

It is not worksheets about texts. The guide says the course runs on real short passages and charts, which you read or look at together most days.
It is not a smooth final unit. Unit 8 teaches nothing new and mixes every task type, and the guide says to expect a dip in performance there, which is the mixing working.
It is not a course to reorder. The guide says that swapping Units 2 and 4 sends a child to a poem's theme with no idea what a theme is.

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Questions parents ask

What should my child do before starting?

Point to one sentence in a four-sentence paragraph that answers a question, and say what a short paragraph is mostly about in one sentence. If your child thinks an inference means a guess, the guide says that is fine, because Unit 1 fixes it.

How long is a day?

About 50 minutes, five days a week. Each unit opens with a worked example before your child tries alone, so the first days of a unit need more of your attention than the later ones.

Which units take the longest?

The two writing units. Unit 6 is about 5 weeks and Unit 7 is about 5 weeks, because drafting and revising takes longer than answering a reading question.

What does it cost?

$29 a month or $290 a year for every child. The first 30 days are free with no card.

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