Grade 4 · printable course

Energy, Waves, and Living Systems: Grade 4 Science

Grade 4 · 370 pages · 74 lessons · PDF, print at home

A full-year grade 4 science course built around the NGSS storyline of energy transfer, waves, light, sound, living structures and senses, and Earth's changing surface and resources. Students investigate household-material phenomena: collisions, ramps, mirrors, string phones, plant and animal structures, stream tables, and models of natural resource use, always with a parent nearby to check materials safety and record work. Each unit moves from concrete, hands-on observation toward the model or explanation that accounts for it, and every unit reuses vocabulary and reasoning from earlier units. The course closes by asking students to apply energy, structure-function, and systems thinking to how people use and change Earth's resources.

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What is inside

Every unit and lesson in this book, in order. The same lessons are taught online at lettersanddevotion.com, so a family can move between paper and screen.

Energy, Waves, and Living Systems: Grade 4 Science

74 lessons · try a lesson online free

Unit 1: Energy on the Move10 lessons
  1. 1.Energy transfer in a collision between a moving object and a struck object
  2. 2.Direction of contact in a simple collision between a moving object and a still object
  3. 3.Energy transfer pathway from moving ball to struck block, including sound and motion outputs
  4. 4.Relationship between release height, speed, and distance traveled by a struck object
  5. 5.Complete electric circuit as a closed loop enabling energy transfer
  6. 6.Direction of energy conversion between motion and electricity in everyday devices
  7. 7.Fair-test design isolating ramp height as the single changed variable
  8. 8.Pattern and exception in ramp-height-versus-distance data across multiple trials
  9. 9.Energy transfer from a raised object's position to motion on release, applied to an untaught track shape
  10. 10.Relationship between object speed and size of change caused in a collision, argued from original data
Unit 2: Waves Carry the Pattern8 lessons
  1. 11.The physical features of a transverse wave (crest, trough, amplitude, wavelength)
  2. 12.The distinction between the motion of the medium and the motion of the wave pattern
  3. 13.The relationship between shake speed and the resulting wavelength and amplitude of a rope wave
  4. 14.The cause-and-effect relationship between wave energy passing through water and the limited motion of a floating object
  5. 15.The categorical difference between wave-pattern transfer and object transfer, applied to new examples
  6. 16.Application of the wave-pattern-versus-matter-transfer model to an unfamiliar real-world context (a wave pool)
  7. 17.Measurement and recording of amplitude and wavelength using a physical rope-wave setup
  8. 18.A claim-evidence-reasoning explanation of matter-versus-pattern motion in a wave, using the summative rope investigation as evidence
Unit 3: Light and How We See9 lessons
  1. 19.The light-to-eye pathway for vision
  2. 20.The opaque/translucent/transparent classification of materials by light transmission
  3. 21.The ray-diagram representation of reflection off a plane surface
  4. 22.The rule that light travels in straight lines and reflects at the surface it strikes
  5. 23.The relationship between a material's light transmission and the shadow or visibility it produces
  6. 24.The distinction between organized (specular) and scattered (diffuse) reflection versus the presence/absence of reflection
  7. 25.A multi-mirror light path that redirects a beam around an obstruction
  8. 26.Application of the reflection and straight-line-travel rules to an untaught optical device or scenario
  9. 27.A claim-evidence-reasoning explanation of a mirror-redirected light path
Unit 4: Sound and Vibration9 lessons
  1. 28.The cause-effect relationship between vibration and sound production
  2. 29.The vibrating part responsible for a given everyday sound
  3. 30.The requirement that sound needs a medium to travel through
  4. 31.The relationship between vibration rate (frequency) and pitch
  5. 32.The vocabulary terms amplitude and frequency and their sound effects
  6. 33.The shared and differing structure of sound-to-ear and light-to-eye energy pathways
  7. 34.How a sound wave's pattern can carry a coded signal
  8. 35.The procedure for constructing and fair-testing a string-and-cup telephone
  9. 36.The effect of string tightness on transmitted sound, explained through vibration and medium
Unit 5: Senses and Information8 lessons
  1. 37.The sense organ as an energy-to-signal converter
  2. 38.The stimulus-organ-signal-brain-response pathway
  3. 39.Behavior as a response to a sensed stimulus
  4. 40.Comparison of an animal sense organ to the matching human sense organ
  5. 41.Fit between a sense organ's structure and its environment's available energy
  6. 42.A CER argument for structure-environment fit in an animal's sense organ
  7. 43.Prediction of sense mismatch for an unfamiliar animal
  8. 44.Definitions of stimulus, signal, and response
Unit 6: Built to Survive: Structures in Plants and Animals9 lessons
  1. 45.External vs internal structures on a plant diagram
  2. 46.Function of a specific named external structure
  3. 47.Function of a specific named internal organ exactly as modeled (e.g., stomach breaks down food; root absorbs water)
  4. 48.Structure-function relationship in an internal organ (e.g., stomach, heart, root)
  5. 49.Structure-function comparison across two organisms solving one shared survival problem
  6. 50.Categories of structure purpose: survival, growth, protection, reproduction
  7. 51.Inferred structure-function match for an unfamiliar organism-habitat pair
  8. 52.CER comparison of two survival structures across two organisms
  9. 53.Validity of a relatedness claim based on shared structure shape
Unit 7: Earth's Changing Surface11 lessons
  1. 54.The distinction between weathering and erosion
  2. 55.The weathering/erosion location test applied to a single labeled photo
  3. 56.The bottom-equals-oldest stacking rule applied to a single simple diagram
  4. 57.Weathering, erosion, and deposition as distinct but connected processes
  5. 58.The mismatch between the speed of surface processes and the length of human observation
  6. 59.Rock layers as a time-ordered record of deposition
  7. 60.Flow rate as the manipulated variable in a stream-table erosion test
  8. 61.The cause-and-effect relationship between flow rate and erosion pattern
  9. 62.Patterns of Earth's surface features shown on maps
  10. 63.The relationship between flow rate and erosion, supported by two data sources
  11. 64.Landform origin inferred from visual evidence of formation rate
Unit 8: Resources, People, and Trade-offs10 lessons
  1. 65.Renewable versus nonrenewable natural resources
  2. 66.The energy-transfer chain from a fuel source to a usable output
  3. 67.Trade-offs between two energy sources on shared criteria
  4. 68.The effect of resource extraction on surface processes
  5. 69.Structure-function reasoning applied to a human-built filtration device
  6. 70.Design modifications that reduce environmental impact while preserving intended function
  7. 71.Competing resource proposals weighed on benefit versus environmental cost
  8. 72.A resource decision in a context not used during instruction
  9. 73.Definitions of renewable and nonrenewable resources
  10. 74.The benefit/cost T-chart format for analyzing a resource use

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