4th Grade Reading: What Happens

Fourth grade reading is about getting faster and better at reading. Your child already has his basic reading skills in hand. Now he'll focus on using them with greater ease. Children in the fourth grade continue to work on the mechanics of reading, especially vocabulary skills, and expanding the number of words that they comfortably use. They'll also work quite a bit on reading comprehension, learning and using strategies to understand, interpret, and evaluate text.

Curriculum varies from state-to-state, but students working at the standard level at the beginning of fourth grade generally:

• Read with understanding and fluency
• Understand the meaning of synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms
• Identify the meaning of most compound words
• Use punctuation cues to add meaning to the text
• Use graphic organizers to aid comprehension
• Make reasonable predictions about something they are reading
• Identify the main idea of a passage
• Identify traits of characters in passages they are reading
• Summarize what has been read
• Know a large number of words by sight (don't have to sound them out)

Students working at the standard level at the end of fourth grade:

• Read with understanding and fluency
• Use graphic organizers to aid comprehension
• Visualize descriptions and details
• Can follow and give sequential directions
• Can summarize a story
• Can use past experiences to identify with characters
• Compare and contrast various things
• Understand cause-and-effect relationships
• Can use basic rules with quotation marks in dialogue