4th Grade Readers
Reading is the engine of the 4th-grade experience. This year, your child is expected to become an advanced reader developing in both fluency and comprehension. Fluency is the ability to quickly and accurately read words in the text. Comprehension is the ability to understand and draw meaning from what you read. As a 4th grader, your child needs opportunities to read aloud daily, read for sustained periods of time, and think about how they are able to personally connect with the text while exploring the deeper meaning of what they are reading. More complex skills will be learned while engaging in more sophisticated reading material.
Your 4th grader should be reading longer chapter books and more nonfiction books and texts. Additionally, your child should know how to safely use the internet to access and research information. Your child should be able to recognize the elements of stories such as character, setting, plot, and theme. Additionally, comprehension skills should be such that he/she can identify main ideas and details, understand cause and effect relationships, and draw inferences from what is read. As a fourth-grade reader, your child should be able to answer questions about what he/she has read and explain why an answer is reasonable.
This year, your child is expected to become an advanced reader developing in both fluency and comprehension.
By the end of fourth grade, your child is expected to be an engaged confident reader and able to…
- Use more advanced reading comprehension strategies to understand text, including making inferences, determining the main idea, and identifying key details.
- Recognize the meaning of words in context as well as recognize words based on clues from their roots.
- Synthesize information from two texts.
- Support analytical thinking with specific examples from the text.
- Summarize information.
- Interpret information from charts, images, videos, timelines, and diagrams.
- Compare and contrast information read.
- Proficiently read at grade level in both fiction and nonfiction texts.
- Analyze and discuss books with peers, family, and friends while raising questions, making connections, and demonstrating critical thinking skills.
Developing reading mastery takes time and practice. Students need to gain knowledge, become familiar with reading strategies, and receive feedback from parents, knowledgeable teachers, and others.
Our Book Club is a great place for your fourth grader to become an engaged reader while mastering reading with comprehension, decoding multisyllabic words, reading more fluently, developing a robust vocabulary, and discussing great chapter books with other kids. Register for our upcoming classes.
READING WITH COMPREHENSION and READING ENGAGEMENT
Fourth grade is also a critical year for comprehension development.
Fourth grade is also a critical year for comprehension development. Becoming an engaged and independent reader requires learning how to make meaning from text and how to demonstrate understanding of what is read by putting it into your own words through discussion and written summarization.
Fourth graders should be able to provide detailed retellings of what they read, make meaningful connections while reading, and share their personal points of view about stories. A common frustration among parents is that their children are simply decoding words but not understanding their reading. Their children have yet to understand that reading is an interactive process between them, the author, and the text which is satisfying and rewarding. Reading comprehension is essentially what your child does throughout interactions and engagement with a book. Readers with good comprehension are always thinking strategically and skillfully throughout the reading. They visualize the characters and settings while creating mind-movies of the book in their heads. They make connections to characters, and plot development and constantly wonder about what will happen next as one event after another occurs. Reading engagement is a big part of comprehension and what makes reading fun to do.
How To Master Reading Comprehension
A common question I receive from parents is, “How can I help improve my child’s comprehension and ensure they are “getting it?” In other words, how can I help make sure my child understands what he/she reads and how can I assess their progress as a reader?
The #1 way for comprehension to improve and become mastered is for your child to read a lot.
Additionally, your child needs to receive daily direct reading comprehension strategy and skill instruction. Listening to thinking aloud read aloud, reading daily, and discussing books he/she reads, is the best way for your child to develop comprehension skills.
Monarch Literacy 4th Grade Book Club Classes.
Our fun strategy and skills-based book club classes are designed to show your child that reading is fun, interactive, and engaging while helping him or her improve/master comprehension.
By the end of our session, your child will want to read more and enthusiastically select “just right” books to enjoy, independently.
Enrolling in this book club will give your child a huge reading advantage. Your child will be able to:
- observe/learn word attack strategies for decoding multi-syllabic words.
- actively read and discuss a great selection of diverse chapter books with peers.
- receive direct and explicit instruction of reading comprehension strategies and skills modeled throughout each session with a skillful teacher.
- develop independent reading reasons and become motivated to read more.
- develop a positive attitude about the joy and benefits of reading.
If you have any questions and would like to discuss your child’s participation in class or reading development, set up a discovery call today.
