Fourth grade students are expected to have the ability to “read to learn.” The years of learning to read are over, and it is time to read to extract information from what a student reads. Mastered phonics and decoding skills began to transform into sight reading, which increases speed, fluency, and comprehension. Continuous exposure to vocabulary enables the student to read and comprehend higher levels of text.  A successful, college-bound student is typically reading two to three years above their actual grade level by the end of 5th grade!

Fractions and decimals are a pivotal skill in any student’s math career. Having all the prerequisite skills for fractions and decimals will determine a student’s success at learning these concepts. Learning these concepts will have a major impact on future success in pre-algebra and other upper-level math courses coming in the 6th through 12th grades!

Expanding on skills learned from earlier grades, a 4th and 5th grade writing student learns to polish his or her topics through deeper introductions, smooth transitions, and forming conclusions. Students learn not only to express their ideas creatively, but also to organize them. They must be able to write clearly by using complete sentences and thoroughly constructed paragraphs.