What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know (Revised and Updated): Fundamentals of a Good Fourth-Grade Education (The Core Knowledge Series)

What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know (Revised and Updated): Fundamentals of a Good Fourth-Grade Education (The Core Knowledge Series)

Give your child a smart start with the revised and updated What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know   How can you help your child at home? This book answers that important question and more, offering the specific shared knowledge that thousands of parents and teachers across the nation have agreed upon for American fourth graders. Featuring full-color illustrations throughout, a bolder, easier-to-follow format, and a thoroughly updated curriculum, What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know is designed for parents and teachers to enjoy with children. Hundreds of thousands of students have benefited from the Core Knowledge Series. This edition, featuring a new Introduction, gives today’s generation of fourth graders the advantage they need to make progress in school  and establish an approach to learning that will last a lifetime. Inside you’ll discover   • Favorite poems —old and new, from the familiar classic “Paul Revere’s Ride” to Langston Hughes’s “Dreams” • Literature —from around the world, including African and Chinese folktales, excerpts from beloved novels, and condensed versions of popular classics such as Gulliver’s Travels and “Rip Van Winkle” • Learning about language —the basics of written English, including grammar, punctuation, parts of speech, synonyms and antonyms, plus an introduction to common English sayings and phrases • World and American history and geography —explore world and American history, including creation of a constitutional government and early presidents and politics • Visual arts —a broad spectrum of art from around the world, including African masks, Islamic architecture, Chinese calligraphy, and great American painters—featuring full-color reproductions • Music —understanding and appreciating music, from the basics of musical notation to the orchestra, plus great composers and sing-along lyrics for such favorites as “Auld Lang Syne” and “Waltzing Matilda” • Math —challenging lessons ranging from fractions and decimals to understanding graphs, making change, square roots, and the metric system • Science —discover the wonders of the human body and its systems, learn about electricity, atoms, chemistry, geology, and meteorology, plus concise biographies of some of the great scientists of our time E. D. Hirsch, Jr., is an emeritus professor at the University of Virginia and the author of The Knowledge Deficit, The Schools We Need, and the bestselling Cultural Literacy and the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy . He and his wife, Polly, live in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they raised their three children. Chapter I Language and Literature Reading, Writing, and Your Fourth Grader: A Note to Parents In this chapter, you and your child will learn to appreciate the magic of words, travel to other worlds without leaving the room, and understand how words work together to create meaning. This chapter presents a rich and varied selection of literature, including poems and stories. You will also read brief discussions of grammar and writing and explanations of common sayings and phrases. By the end of fourth grade, students should be able to engage in the mental process of turning letters into sounds automatically. This year, they will focus more on meaning as they read, extending their vocabulary and understanding of the texts. Asking questions is a good way to draw your children into a story. Here are a few that work well: “What do you think is going to happen next?” “How might the story have turned out differently if . . . ?” “What did you hear/read that makes you believe that . . . ?” “What does the author mean by the statement . . . ?” “How is this story similar to . . . ?” You might also ask your child to retell the story. You can even encourage your child to change events or characters: this is a rich tradition of storytelling and explains why there are so many versions of traditional stories. You may also encourage your child to write and illustrate her own stories. Some children may be interested in beginning to keep a journal or writing letters to friends or relatives—these are both fine ways for children to cultivate their writing skills. Another way to build vocabulary and foster language skills is by playing word games such as Scrabble, Boggle, or hangman and doing crossword puzzles. You can download many of these popular word games on tablet devices and computers. Experts say our children already know more about grammar than we can ever teach them. But standard written language does have special characteristics that children need to learn. The treatment of grammar and language conventions in this book is an overview. It needs to be supplemented and rounded out by giving your child opportunities to read and write and to discuss reading and writing in connection with grammar and spelling. At school, children should be working on vocabulary and spelling in the fourth grade. They should enjoy a rich diet of fiction, poetr