3RD GRADE
Teachers utilize the Reading Street guidelines that encourage children to be active, thoughtful, proficient readers and thinkers. We structure our lessons on basic reading strategies, spelling, phonics, and grammar. A large block of time is dedicated to reading and responding, which affords the students time to work in small groups and share what they learn.
The writing curriculum compliments our reading curriculum where students explore oral and pictorial story-telling, emergent writing, and fluent writing. In second grade, students learn how to turn the events of their lives and imaginations into detailed, developed, and organized stories and essays. By third grade, our students have learned how to turn extended paragraphs into persuasive essays.
In third grade, students are exposed to computation, measurement, data collection, statistics, geometry, ratio probability, graphing, simple algebra, estimation, mental arithmetic, and patterns and relationships.
Our science curriculum program uses hands-on scientific inquiry to support and inspire learning. In first grade, students explore the diversity of life in the plant kingdom, the physical world, earth science, and life sciences. In second grade, we introduce air and weather, balance and motion, balancing and weighing, and insects. In third grade, we explore water, land formations, sound, and organisms.
We discuss citizenship, family life, economics, communication, family living, government, history, and geography. Every two weeks, students are expected to discuss an article from a news source regarding a relevant current event. Students love the opportunity to become news experts!
4TH GRADE
In fourth grade, we take what the children have learned about reading, and set them on the path towards deeper understanding and independence. This is the time when students transition from learning to read to reading to learn. We take special care to match books to each child’s reading level, and then teach students to organize what they have read into essays and reports.
Children learn best at this age by doing, and we offer an array of age-appropriate materials that help build on basic math concepts. Consistent practice of multiplication and division at home will help your student enormously.
We focus on the Regions of the United States with a special emphasis on the Midwest and Illinois, as well as American history, topography, landmarks, and symbolism. Students learn to support their findings with charts, graphs, maps and timelines.
Major units for Science include the Earth, Moon and Stars, Land and Water, Electricity and Magnetism, and the Human Body.
STEAM is offered to all students!Weekly visits to the STEAM Lab allow students to think critically and have an engineering or design approach towards real-world problems while building on their math and science base. STEAM programs add art to STEM curriculum by drawing and encouraging creative solutions. We are teaching our students at a young age to be innovative problem solvers.