Grade 4 - English Language Arts (2022)

English Language Arts

Text Forms and Structures: Identifying and applying text forms and structures improves understanding of content, literary style, and our rich language traditions.

Oral Language: Listening and speaking form the foundation for literacy development and improve communication, collaboration, and respectful mutual understanding.

Vocabulary: Communication and comprehension are improved by understanding word meaning and structures.

Fluency: Comprehension and literary appreciation are improved by the ability to read a range of texts accurately, automatically, and with expression.

Comprehension: Text comprehension is supported by applying varied strategies and processes and by considering both particular contexts and universal themes.

Writing: Ideas and information can be articulated accurately and imaginatively through the use of writing processes and an understanding of the author�s craft.

Conventions: Understanding grammar, spelling, and punctuation makes it easier to communicate clearly, to organize thinking, and to use language for desired effects.

Students examine how the form and structure of texts can support the communication of ideas and information.

Students examine and demonstrate how listening and speaking support connections and clarify understandings.

Students expand vocabulary and analyze morphemes to communicate in multiple contexts.

Students enhance fluency to refine comprehension and proficient reading.

Students investigate strategies and connections that support text comprehension.

Students construct and organize text to share perspectives and develop creative expression.

Students examine and apply conventions to develop effective written communication.

Knowledge

Understanding

Skills & Procedures

Knowledge

Understanding

Skills & Procedures

Knowledge

Understanding

Skills & Procedures

Knowledge

Understanding

Skills & Procedures

Knowledge

Understanding

Skills & Procedures

Knowledge

Understanding

Skills & Procedures

Knowledge

Understanding

Skills & Procedures

Texts can be communicated for a variety of purposes, including to inform, persuade and provide enjoyment.

Texts read for enjoyment can inspire, fascinate, or expand understandings.

A genre is a category of text that has a specific content or style and includes fiction and non-fiction.

Literary forms of fiction and non-fiction texts include novels, journal entries and media.

Media texts can be digital or non-digital and can combine sounds, words, images, and graphics.

Narrative texts can be fiction or non-fiction and can follow a structure, including beginning, problem, events, solution and ending.

Text features can be digital or non-digital, including images and graphics and indexes.

Fictional texts can be categorized by sub-genres, including traditional literature and fantasy.

A fantasy is a fictional text that contains elements that are highly unreal.

Fictional texts can have structures that include main plots with subplots and flashbacks.

A flashback interrupts the story plot to take an audience back in time to past events in a character's life.

Elements of fiction include major and minor characters and point of view.

A minor character is a character in a story who is not the main focus and is less developed.

Fictional texts include characters who can be known by what they say, think, or do.

Point of view is the way an author or text creator chooses to tell or narrate a story and includes first person.

First person is where the author, text creator, or narrator relates information from their own point of view, often using the word I.

Non-fiction texts include autobiographies , procedural texts and land.

Procedural texts include recipes or instruction manuals.

Non-fiction texts can have structures that include introduction, main idea or topic, supporting details, conclusion and compare and contrast.

Non-fiction texts can share opinions regarding information.

Poetry includes figurative language to create a desired effect.

Poetic structures include verse, free verse and concrete.

Verse is text structured with a rhythm and typically has a rhyme.

Free verse is a type of poetry that does not rhyme or have a regular rhythm.

A concrete poem creates an image with words or symbols that matches the topic of the poem.

Text form or structure can support the enjoyment and communication of ideas and information for a variety of purposes.

Text features can organize and enhance information in the main body of a text.

Fictional texts can open minds to new possibilities and ideas.

Non-fiction texts can open minds to new possibilities and ideas.

Poetry engages the imagination and can encourage individuals to connect with other people, places, ideas, or emotions.

Confirm the author's or text creator's purpose based on information in the text.

Explain how personal preferences for texts inspire, fascinate, or expand understandings.

Examine a variety of literary forms used to communicate ideas and information.

Examine the structure of a variety of narrative texts.

Determine how the structure of texts can support the organization and communication of ideas or information.

Examine a variety of text features that provide important information in a text.

Include a variety of text features to organize, clarify, or enhance information.

Differentiate between a variety of fiction sub-genres, considering content, characters, time, or place.

Examine fictional text structures that include main plots with subplots or flashbacks.

Examine elements within a variety of fictional texts, including point of view.

Determine if characters in fictional texts are major or minor.

Create imaginative representations or dramatizations of fictional texts that depict point of view.

Examine the narrator's point of view in texts.

Investigate ways that non-fiction texts can be organized to support sharing of information.

Discuss a variety of facts and opinions expressed in non-fiction texts.

Investigate figurative language used in imaginative ways.

Examine how a variety of poetic structures contribute to creative expression of ideas.

Experiment with creating verse, free verse, or concrete poetry.

Oral traditions can support connections to people , the community , the natural world and the constructed world.

Stories presented in oral traditions can reflect connections to spirit, land, universe, time, and people.

Protocols for sharing information may vary by source, context, community, or culture.

Respectful interactions include behaviours that consider the contributions, feelings, points of view, and needs of participants.

Phrasing and pausing work together to support flow of thought and speech , support meaning and create emphasis.

Projection is the directing and supporting of the voice toward an intended target.

Projection is a combination of breath, clarity, and intentionality.

Listening includes restating key points or ideas and making personal connections.

Listening to texts can expand vocabulary, understandings, and personal views.

A combination of verbal and non-verbal language can be used to enhance clarity or create effects when communicating.

Presentations can be prepared by developing a plan, using notes and speaking cards, using visual aids and selecting digital or non-digital tools.

Speaking cards can be jot notes or cue cards that contain key points to support speakers.

Visual aids can be digital or non-digital, such as objects, diagrams, images and text.

Presentation delivery includes clear enunciation, appropriate tone and pace, correct grammar and appropriate word choice.

Communication choices and styles differ from speaker to speaker.

Oral traditions can connect the speaker and listener in experiences of the past or present that help prepare for the future.

Listening and speaking skills can be applied and adapted to support respectful interactions.

Listening involves playing an active role in understanding the speaker and supports collaboration.

Communication can be enhanced through adjusting verbal and non-verbal language.

Presentations can be prepared and delivered to engage, inform, persuade, or entertain an audience.

Describe personal connections to spirit, land, universe, time, or people revealed through oral traditions.

Discuss protocols used to share oral traditions.

Contribute respectfully to a variety of interactions that involve listening and speaking.

Identify opinions or points of view shared in conversations or texts that are listened to.

Select appropriate volume, intonation, phrasing, and pausing to create a desired effect when speaking or presenting.

Project voice appropriately for the audience and situation.

Demonstrate active listening when engaging in collaborative work.

Use a variety of listening strategies to support understanding.

Adjust verbal and non-verbal language to enhance clarity or create effects when communicating.

Plan ideas and details in a logical manner, including introductions and conclusions.

Present information that engages, informs, persuades, or entertains an audience.

Share a poem from memory, demonstrating emphasis, pausing, and phrasing that enhance the presentation.

Integrate visual aids to enhance communication.

Vary word choice to appeal to an audience.

Participate in presentations as a respectful audience member.

Figurative language includes personification, analogy and idiom.

Personification is when animals or objects are given qualities or abilities that a human can have.

An analogy compares two things that are mostly different but have some things in common.

An idiom is a phrase that means something different than the literal meaning of the words within it.

Suffixes, including the following, change the meaning of words when added to the ending of a base <y>,<ish>, < ful>   

The English language is made up of words derived from many origins, including other languages, technology, place, names, trademarked products and social practices.

An extensive and varied vocabulary enhances effective communication in a variety of contexts.

Morphology involves examining words and parts of words and how they are related to each other to enhance communication.

Communicate clearly and accurately using precise alternatives for commonly used words.

Record information about words in a variety of ways.

Apply tier 2 words in a variety of literacy contexts.

Use tier 3 words to describe subject content.

Confirm word meanings, spellings, or word choices using a variety of digital or non-digital resources.

Integrate knowledge of word study across multiple literacy contexts.

Use analogies to compare words or clarify word meanings.

Analyze the meanings of words or phrases expressed figuratively.

Examine morphemes in words to determine meaning.

Analyze the meaning of affixes and how they influence the meaning of bases.

Predict meanings of unfamiliar words using morphological cues.

Analyze word origins for meaning and spelling.

Proficient reading involves the ability to read with accuracy, automaticity, and prosody with a focus on meaning.

Reading with fluency allows readers to focus more attention on understanding text and supports proficient reading.

Demonstrate comprehension of text through appropriate stress on words, pausing, phrasing, intonation, and use of punctuation.

Read dialogue with phrasing and expression to reflect understandings of characters and events.

A variety of reading processes and strategies support comprehension of longer and more complex texts through independent practice.

Connections that support comprehension of text include text to self, text to text and text to world.

Significant information that is synthesized to make predictions includes background knowledge, personal experience, specific clues from a text and anticipation of logical outcomes or events.

Inferencing involves multiple critical thinking skills, including considering cause and effect relationships, answering, personal wonderings, combining information from various sources to draw conclusions and reading between the lines to discover the author's meaning.

Summarizing information involves determining key ideas and specific details, logically ordering ideas, and paraphrasing.

Synthesizing can create new understandings through a combination of background knowledge and new information from a text.

Strategic reading and questioning occur before, during, and after reading.

Problem solving can occur at the word, sentence, and whole-passage level.

Reading comprehension skills that address challenges include appropriate text selection, rereading parts of the text, reading ahead, visualizing, questioning and word solving.

Metacognition is an awareness of thoughts and how one thinks and involves connecting thinking and learning, identifying problems, considering options, reflecting on strategies and skills and adjusting thinking based on information or experience.

Comprehension processes and strategies can be purposefully applied to broaden understandings of texts.

Comprehension is enhanced when relevant connections are made to information within and between texts.

Comprehension and making predictions have a reciprocal relationship when understanding texts.

Comprehension involves inferencing and relying on multiple critical thinking skills when engaging with texts.

Comprehension is enhanced when information is synthesized and summarized.

The reading comprehension process involves checking for understanding, problem solving, and metacognition.

Independently read and demonstrate comprehension of a variety of texts that increase in length or complexity.

Apply comprehension processes and strategies when interacting with texts.

Examine connections between texts and self, between a text and other texts, and between texts and the world.

Compare or contrast aspects of texts within an individual text or between multiple texts.

Reflect on personal connections to a text that best support understandings.

Revise or confirm predictions based on new or additional information in texts.

Examine how making, modifying, or confirming predictions supports text comprehension.

Infer cause and effect relationships in texts.

Make inferences in texts that reach beyond personal experiences.

Combine information from various sources to draw conclusions.

Infer ideas that are not explicitly stated in texts.

Synthesize a variety of information when creating summaries of texts.

Create personal responses to a variety of literature, informational texts, or other texts by synthesizing information.

Apply self-monitoring skills to self-correct when comprehension breaks down during reading.

Evaluate skills that can be implemented to repair and strengthen reading comprehension.

Apply metacognitive strategies that are personally effective when reading.

Writing processes used to organize and enhance messages include planning , drafting, revising, editing and publishing.

Methods and tools that support planning include lists and visualizing.

Interest can be created by varying sentence beginnings and length.

Paragraphs include a topic sentence, supporting details, and a concluding sentence.

A topic sentence describes what the paragraph is going to be about.

A concluding sentence brings closure to a paragraph by identifying main ideas without adding new information.

Fluent writing is smooth, natural, and easy to read aloud with inflection, which helps bring out meaning.

Revising includes adding or removing words or sentences to enhance writing clarity or fluency.

Publishing can involve consideration and selection of a variety of text features to enhance and finalize written work.

Creative thinking processes involve reviewing, revising, and enhancing ideas, considering the processes of other, creators, constructing drafts or models and applying feedback to improve the creative product.

Writing is a craft that involves creative expression of ideas through organization, word choice and presentation.

Word choice can reflect the author's voice or style through careful selection and presentation of details.

Words selected to enhance written texts include figurative language.

Dialogue can be used to add variety to written texts, advance the plot, or reveal a character's thoughts or feelings.

Questioning can help focus research topics and processes.

Methods and tools can be used to organize information, including note taking, graphic organizers and lists.

Research findings can be shared in a variety of digital or non-digital forms, including reports, presentations and visual representations.

Ethical use of information includes asking permission to use, share, or store information, acknowledging the ownership of information used to inform writing (citing) and fair and accurate representation of individuals or information.

Written messages can be created or enhanced using a variety of digital or non-digital methods or tools, such as printing, keyboarding and cursive handwriting.

Messages communicated through cursive handwriting can reflect artistry through consideration of letter formation, size, proportion and slant.

Keyboarding skills can be improved through practice that involves finger reaches, keystroking and key recognition.

Writing is a vehicle for communication, creativity, and connection.

Creative thinking involves intentional application of skills and processes to enhance the expression of ideas and emotions.

Research processes involve investigating materials or information to uncover facts and support problem solving.

Digital or non-digital methods or tools can enhance written works and the artistry of a message.

Create written texts for a variety of audiences and purposes.

Create written texts using a variety of text forms and structures.

Develop creative expression through the use of organizational processes, methods, and tools.

Share perspectives on a topic in a clear and focused manner.

Develop creative expression through a range of sentence beginnings, lengths, and types.

Develop a logical order by grouping ideas into paragraphs.

Write paragraphs with topic and concluding sentences.

Reread written texts to identify what could be added or deleted to enhance creative expression.

Revise texts to enhance clarity or fluency.

Edit writing for spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

Incorporate images, charts, graphs, or other text features when publishing selected pieces to support a purpose or connect with an audience.

Apply creative thinking processes to enhance the expression of ideas or emotions.

Relate how connections between audience, purpose, and text form can influence creative expression.

Examine how effective writing provides insight into the creative expression of ideas and emotions.

Experiment with ideas and word choice to create beginnings that catch the audience's attention.

Experiment with sensory detail or figurative language to add interest and keep audiences engaged.

Communicate personal voice or the voice of characters in narratives through dialogue.

Generate effects in creative expression through punctuation.

Create thoughtful conclusions that tie up events or leave readers wondering.

Select a variety of presentation forms or text features to critically share perspectives.

Access information from a variety of sources to critically answer questions or expand knowledge.

Demonstrate how information can be ethically shared using a variety of methods or tools.

Use information ethically to create text for an intended audience.

Choose and cite appropriate sources of information to inform research.

Enhance the artistry of personally written works using selected methods or tools.

Use cursive handwriting to write texts with appropriate letter formation, size, proportion, and slant.

Apply keyboarding skills to enhance written works.

Capitalization is used for abbreviations.

An abbreviation is the shortened form of a word or words (e.g., Rd., St., AB).

Punctuation can be used to add clarity, precision, or creativity to messages.

A comma can have a variety of uses, including to indicate a pause between parts of a sentence, to separate words in a list or series and to separate a transition word from the words that follow in a sentence.

Sentences can describe facts or actions happening in the present (present tense).

Sentences can describe what happened in the past (past tense).

Sentences can describe what may happen in the future (future tense).

The subject of a verb is the person or thing that performs the action.

The object of a verb is the person or thing that receives the action.

Both subjects and objects can be nouns or pronouns.

Pronouns can replace a noun as the subject in a sentence (subjective) (e.g., I, you, he, she, it, we, they).

Possessive adjectives come before a noun to show who or what owns it (e.g., my, your, his, her, its, our, their).

Adjectives can compare two things (comparative or "more").

Adjectives can compare three or more things (superlative or "most").

Spelling patterns include vowel-vowel-consonant-consonant (VVCC) (e.g., each), vowel-vowel-consonant-silent "e" (VVCe) (e.g., weave), vowel-consonant-consonant-silent "e" (VCCe) (e.g., wedge), vowel-consonant-consonant-consonant (VCCC) (e.g., trench), vowel-vowel-consonant-consonant-silent "e" (VVCCe) (e.g., bounce) and vowel-vowel-consonant-consonant-consonant (VVCCC) (e.g., health).

Homophones are words that have the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings (e.g., hear-here).

Digital or non-digital reference tools can be used to confirm the spelling of words.

Suffixes include , , , , , , , , , .

Capitalization and punctuation can be used to support writing fluency.

Grammatical structures can support consistency in communication.

Spelling accuracy can be supported by transferring understandings of word patterns and structures.

Automatic transference of spelling knowledge can increase writing fluency.

Guidelines for spelling transferred to writing new text can increase written clarity.

Capitalize words appropriately in different contexts.

Include a variety of punctuation at the end of sentences.

Insert commas to indicate a pause between parts of sentences, to separate items in a list, or to follow a transition word.

Insert quotation marks to identify the words of a speaker or to bring attention to a word that is used in a special way.

Insert apostrophes in place of letters in contractions and to show possession.

Distinguish between a variety of sentence types.

Determine if text is in the present, past, or future tense.

Identify nouns or pronouns that are the subject of a variety of sentences.

Identify nouns or pronouns that are the object of a variety of sentences.

Examine possessive adjectives in a variety of sentences.

Use adjectives to indicate comparison of two or more things (<er> or <est>).

Use conjunctions to connect phrases in sentences.

Apply consistent subject-verb agreement in a variety of sentences.

Identify spelling patterns within and across words.

Apply knowledge of known words, word parts, and word patterns to spell unfamiliar words.

Spell a variety of prefixes and suffixes accurately in words.

Identify words that are not spelled in predictable ways.

Differentiate between the spelling and associated meaning of a variety of homophones.

Apply a variety of spelling strategies to increase writing fluency.

Use a variety of tools to spell or confirm the spelling of words.

Spell a range of compound words, contractions, possessives, and complex plurals.

Recognize and spell common suffixes.