Fourth Grade at Pioneer Academy | Best Private School in Passaic County

Pioneer’s K–4 Language Arts program is based on the McGraw Hill Wonders curriculum, a dynamic and research-based program designed to build literacy skills in all areas—reading, writing, listening, and speaking. This comprehensive program is designed to engage students with high-quality texts and provide them with a variety of opportunities to develop skills they can use both in and out of the classroom. Our classroom libraries feature a wide array of engaging books, including many from students’ favorite series, all chosen to encourage a love of reading.

The McGraw Hill Wonders curriculum uses a balanced approach to reading instruction, blending phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies. Through a variety of texts, including stories, poems, and informational articles, students explore a wide range of genres and subjects that deepen their understanding of the world. This program emphasizes active reading, enabling students to make connections between texts and their own experiences while strengthening their ability to analyze, predict, summarize, and infer meaning.

Each unit in the Wonders program introduces key skills and concepts through anchor texts and interactive read alouds that allow students to practice and apply what they’ve learned. Instructional activities, such as vocabulary and grammar exercises, help build language skills while providing students with opportunities to use language creatively through speaking and writing activities.

In addition to reading comprehension, Wonders emphasizes writing for a variety of purposes and audiences. Students engage in collaborative and independent writing tasks, including narrative, informative, and opinion writing. They are guided through each stage of the writing process—prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing—allowing them to develop their unique voices as writers. Grammar, spelling, and vocabulary are integrated into writing lessons to reinforce the importance of proper mechanics and effective communication.

By combining direct instruction with opportunities for hands-on practice and collaboration, the McGraw Hill Wonders curriculum ensures that all students are equipped with the foundational skills necessary to become proficient readers, writers, and communicators.

Reading: Students' active reading skills continue to improve. As students develop the abilities to conduct in-depth research, they are encouraged to read for information. Note-taking, underlining, summarizing, and utilizing tables of contents, bibliographies, and glossaries are all areas where students concentrate. Fourth graders learn to summarize stories, examine the author's craft, and identify themes. They support their interpretations of the text with evidence from the text. They also learn to synthesize information from both fiction and nonfiction works.
‍Writing: In fourth grade, students will write personal narratives, focusing on real-life experiences and using dialogue, sensory details, and descriptive language to bring their stories to life. They will also work on opinion essays, where they will develop clear arguments, supported by facts, examples, and mini stories to persuade their readers. In addition, students will explore feature articles, where they will create nonfiction pieces that utilize text features like headings, captions, and bullet points to organize and display information on a poster. Students will also write biographies, researching and sharing the life stories of notable individuals, while incorporating key events, facts, and dates to paint a detailed picture of their subject's life.

‍STANDARDS AND SKILLS:

Increase competency in self-editing and proofreading for capitalization, organization, punctuation, and spelling
Use correct subject/verb agreement and consistency of tense
Create a final draft reflecting pre-writing, revising, and editing strategies
Identify and distinguish the characteristics of literary genres and devices (e.g., metaphor, personification, simile, flashback)
Draw inferences, conclusions, or generalizations and support them with textual evidence

Our inquiry-based science program encourages children to satisfy their curiosities through experiences. Presented with open-ended questions, students gather evidence, conduct experiments in the lab and in the field, propose solutions, and collaborate with one another to defend their thinking. Experiential lessons deepen content knowledge in relevant ways. Students gain awareness of the natural world while enhancing skills needed in a world of rapidly expanding scientific knowledge. Students connect concepts, develop critical-thinking skills, and gain confidence in communicating their ideas clearly.

Fourth-grade Students construct and utilize model hills in order to determine what causes erosion and how to address erosion-related issues. Students examine matter and material qualities! They categorize and classify a wide range of materials based on features including hardness, flexibility, and absorbency, and they investigate how these characteristics might help to assist meet basic human requirements (such as clothing and cooking).

They also investigate how heat and cold affect material properties. Students research the characteristics and processes that occur on the Earth's surface. Students investigate the quick eruptive mechanism of volcanoes! Students, on the other hand, investigate the gradual Earth processes of weathering and erosion. Students use what they've learned and come up with ideas to reduce the negative effects of these processes on people. Students also investigate the science of sound.

Students build tangible gadgets to sense the vibrations that enable us to communicate over long distances. Students can also visualize the features of distinct sound waves that lead us to hear different things using digital gadgets. Students investigate energy!

Students look into how energy is stored, how it can be used to move objects, and how collisions can transmit energy between them. Students also build machines that transform energy from one form to another, such as converting heat to motion or electricity to light.

MYSTERY SCIENCE is a curriculum aligned with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and supports Common Core. It features rigorous lessons in science and engineering that inspire students to love science. Each Mystery begins with a question that is explored through hands-on scientific investigations, discussion questions, engaging videos and experiences that connect to real-world phenomena.

Grade 4 Planning Guide

All students will acquire the knowledge and skills to think analytically about how past and present interactions of people,cultures,and the environment shape the American heritage. Such knowledge and skills enable students to make informed decisions that reflect fundamental rights and core democratic values as productive citizens in local, national, and global communities.

In grades K-4, students learn fundamental concepts about government, citizenship, geography, economics, and history. The focus of instruction is on developing an understanding of core democratic values, the rights and responsibilities of American citizens, and how key people and events contributed to the development of the American heritage. Exploration of cultural universals enables students to realize how the availability of resources, the changing environment, and innovation impact everyday life.

In this course, fourth grade students will learn about the geography, history, economy, and people of New Jersey, as they relate to the United States and the world. Studies will include the 5 themes of geography. Students will study geography including the surface area of New Jersey and the ways people use New Jersey's natural resources.

Lessons will include the early settlement of New Jersey, how it was originally divided into two colonies, and why the colonies wanted independence from Britain. Studies will include New Jersey's role in the American Revolution, the formation of the American government and writing of the Constitution. Students will discover how new forms of transportation changed this state.

This course will primarily focus on New Jersey's role in the Civil War and the changes the United States experienced during and after this war. Students will discover how New Jersey's population grew and changed after the war, as well as how the rights of New Jersey citizens changed. Furthermore, this course will address the governing relationship between local, state, and national governments, thus becoming familiar with the ways the national and New Jersey's economies work. Students will learn ways citizens demonstrate responsibilities and the culturally diverse people that make up the state of New Jersey.
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STANDARDS AND SKILLS

Identify similarities and differences between the past and present
Understand how the natural resources of a geographical location influence culture
Read and create maps using a key, scale, compass rose, and grid lines
Demonstrate an understanding of another culture or historical figure’s point of view
Describe the social, political, cultural, and economic life and interaction among people in New Jersey
Demonstrate understanding of New Jersey’s diverse geographical region

Physical Education at Pioneer Academy offers students a dynamic environment that grows beyond the traditional classroom. Through a variety of physical activities, students are encouraged to be creative, cooperative, and competitive while navigating diverse challenges as individuals and as members of a team. The curriculum is intentionally designed to promote locomotor development, teamwork, communication, and cooperation—essential foundations for both physical and social development.

A key benefit of physical education is its positive impact on mental well-being. A well-rounded workout helps reduce anxiety, tension, and stress, leading to better focus and improved academic performance. Lower School Physical Education classes foster this holistic development by integrating movement and mindfulness into students’ daily routines.

The Pioneer Academy Physical Education program emphasizes the development of lifelong skills that extend well beyond the gymnasium. Students build physical fitness and motor skills while also learning valuable life lessons through active play. The program nurtures good sportsmanship, helping students practice positive social behaviors through interaction and movement. It fosters skill acquisition in areas such as throwing, catching, striking, and kicking, and encourages students to develop a healthy self-image by understanding and expressing themselves through physical activity.

Classes typically begin with warm-up routines, including jogging, jumping rope, tumbling, parachute games, and dance activities—all designed to build aerobic and anaerobic endurance. Students engage in group games that develop agility, balance, coordination, spatial awareness, directionality, and creative movement.

Through a fun and non-competitive approach, students learn foundational sports skills such as jumping, catching, throwing, kicking, dribbling, volleying, and striking. These activities are always supervised to ensure a supportive environment where every child can build confidence, self-esteem, and positive interpersonal skills. Physical education at Pioneer Academy empowers children to enjoy movement, value fitness, and carry a love of healthy activity throughout their lives.

PIONEER

Fourth Grade

Fourth grade represents the end of the elementary road here at Pioneer.

Fourth Grade

Fourth grade represents the end of the elementary road here at Pioneer.

Curriculum