The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 4 partially meet the expectations of questions, tasks, and assignments as text-specific and require students to engage with the text directly and to draw on textual evidence to support both what is explicit as well as valid inferences from the text. Teacher materials do not provide complete support for planning and implementing text-dependent writing and tasks.

The questions in the instructional materials are labeled as synthesis, inference, evaluation, and analysis. Questions (text-dependent/text-specific and non text-dependent/text-specific) are included throughout the course of the school year to check comprehension.

The following are examples of text-dependent questions that allow for inferences:

• Unit 1, Lewis and Clark and Me, “Why does the author show an excerpt from one of the Captain Lewis’s journals at the bottom of page 56?”
• Unit 4, Navajo Code Talkers, “How did the code talkers affect the outcome of the Battle of Iwo Jima?”
• Unit 5, Antarctica Journal, "What details in her letter on page 268 support this opinion?
• Unit 3, Hurricane Andrew, "What other jobs do you know of that are dangerous? Why do you think someone might choose to do one of these jobs?
• Unit 2, So You Want to Be President, “The author says that Lincoln wore a stovepipe hat. Use the meaning of stovepipe to describe a stovepipe hat.”
• Unit 6, How Tia Lola Came to (Visit) Stay, "This story is set in a small farm town, but the family had moved there from a big city. What would be different about living in a small town and living in a large city? Which would you prefer? Why?"
• Unit 1: Look back and write about how you think the story Miss Franny tells Opal about her encounter with a bear is factual or fanciful. Provide evidence from the text to support your answer.
• Unit 3: Write a compare-contrast essay about how the different types of weather affect the lives of people and animals. Use facts, details, and examples from the texts to support your ideas.
• Unit 5: Use evidence from the text to support your answer in finding out if Axel is a hero.
• Unit 2: Write an argument/persuasive essay to convince others that teamwork is important in everyday life.
• Unit 2: Write an expository composition about an animal that has done something remarkable.

These are examples of a non-text-dependent questions, meaning it can be answered without reading the text:

• Unit 3, Hurricane Andrew, "What other jobs do you know of that are dangerous? Why do you think someone might choose to do one of these jobs?
• Unit 2, So You Want tTo Be President, “The author says that Lincoln wore a stovepipe hat. Use the meaning of stovepipe to describe a stovepipe hat.”
• Unit 6, How Tia Lola Came to (Visit) Stay, "This story is set in a small farm town, but the family had moved there from a big city. What would be different about living in a small town and living in a large city? Which would you prefer? Why?"

Students are provided with opportunities to engage and draw on evidence and inferences from the text in a variety of writing tasks.

• Unit 1: Look back and write about how you think the story Miss Franny tells Opal about her encounter with a bear is factual or fanciful. Provide evidence from the text to support your answer.
• Unit 3: Write a compare-contrast essay about how the different types of weather affect the lives of people and animals. Use facts, details, and examples from the texts to support your ideas.
• Unit 5: Use evidence from the text to support your answer in finding out if Axel is a hero.

Students do not need to read the story in order to write about the following:

• Unit 2: Write an argument/persuasive essay to convince others that teamwork is important in everyday life.
• Unit 2: Write an expository composition about an animal that has done something remarkable.

While questions and tasks posed in reading comprehension often provide instructions for teachers to tell students to use details from the text in their answer, there is no explicit instruction on how to select significant evidence, appropriately paraphrase, quote, transition, or further explain when providing text-dependent written or spoken answers.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 4 partially meet the expectation for materials containing sets of high-quality sequences of text dependent questions and activities that build to a culminating task. Some culminating tasks can be completed without reading or understanding of the text.

Throughout each week’s unit, students are engaged in answering text-dependent questions and completing text-dependent tasks about their reading. Students could complete the task without necessarily completing the questions, and often the questions may not probe deeply enough to gauge student progress and probable success with the culminating task.

Some representative examples that illustrate how the materials work with questions and culminating tasks include (but are not limited to) these examples:

• For Unit 2, Week 4, students are reading about horses. The Research and Inquiry culminating task for the week asks students to research the following question: “How can people and animals work as a team?” This is on Day 1 before reading the main selection, Horse Heroes. The teacher models an example about horses. Students research the question each day and present their findings using a word processing program or poster board. One of the text-dependent questions on Day 3 could help the student with the culminating task: “Using what you learned in this selection, tell how people and animals can work as a team.” However, weekly culminating tasks are research tasks, and instructional materials do not instruct the students to use the main selection or supporting text as a reference.

• Students are asked to write at the end of each selection in the “Think Critically” section following the end of the anchor text in “Think Back and Write.” In this activity students are asked to respond to a prompt and use evidence. In each of these tasks, students are working from Key Ideas and Details standards 1-3. Scaffolding or conversation points are not included in the materials.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 4 partially meet the expectation for materials supporting students’ listening and speaking about what they are reading and researching with relevant follow-up questions and evidence. Speaking and listening skills are encouraged and help with engagement, but the materials offer minimal guidance to teachers regarding students' speaking and listening skills and referring students to the text to obtain and support responses. Explicit instructions on how to select significant evidence, appropriately paraphrase, quote, transition, cite sources, or further explain when providing text-dependent written or spoken answers are absent from the materials for both students and teachers.

The Teacher Edition lacks tools for explicitly teaching Speaking and Listening skills. In Unit 6, Week 4, Day 5: "Have students share their inquiry results by presenting their information and giving a brief talk on their research." Grade 4 students would need modeling from the teacher about speaking and listening skills that support evidence-based discussions such as anchor charts, sentence stems, question stems, and techniques for practicing a skill.

Discussion questions are provided in the “Let’s Talk About It” sections but do not increase in rigor. The Teacher Edition has 3-4 questions to be used for discussion but lack guidelines for creating supports so that students can speak about and listen to others engage in dialogue about what they are reading and researching. Specific tips for developing follow-up questions and evidence would be beneficial.

The Teacher Edition does not include a balance of speaking and listening activities throughout each unit. The directions and support for implementation are minimal. For example, in Unit 4, Week 2, during a Team Talk, students are asked to discuss the photos and use the prompts to create a concept map. There are no further instructions for the teacher, and no time is indicated to ensure that adequate time is allowed for students to gather their ideas or build on one another’s ideas for a quality discussion.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 4 partially meet the expectation of materials including a mix of on-demand and process writing and short, focused projects incorporating digital resources where necessary. While there are some on-demand and process activities, there is not a consistency to practicing process writing over the course of a school year. There are routine on-demand activities.

Each week students participate in process writing. The prompt sometimes connects to the theme, setting, or genre of the main selection, but a direct reference to the text is rarely made. A typical routine has students “Read Like a Writer” on Day 1, brainstorm on Day 2, write a draft on Day 3, revise on Day 4 and proofread and present their project on Day 5. A two-week plan is available and prescribes four days to plan and prewrite, three days to draft, one day to revise, one day to edit, and one day to publish and present. Each unit also has a separate Writing Process prompt. Weekly process writing projects encourage use of technology for presentations.

In the Independent Stations, students can participate in "Let's Write!" In Day 3, students can “Look Back and Write”, which is a narrative retelling of the main selection. In some units, students can do writing based on paired social studies passage. In Unit 6, Week 4, students can write an argument/persuasive essay based on the passage. On demand writing prompts in “Write to Source” incorporate reading and writing using text evidence.

There are some opportunities to revise or edit, however, the instructional materials do not cover standards W.4 and W.5 in the Daily Writing Focus or the Research and Inquiry as students are engaged in self-editing, but rarely are engaged in in peer editing or revision during daily writing or prior to the research presentation on Day 5. In the writing focus of the week, students have the opportunity to participate in Peer Conferencing/Peer Revision on Day 4.

There is minimal support in the Teacher's Edition to support teachers as guide students in reading for relevant facts and then turn the facts into helpful notes and complete sentences. For example on page 61b in Unit 1, Week 2, Day 2 Research and Inquiry, "Have students search the internet using their inquiry question and keywords from Day 1." Teacher directions lack specificity when students are using a digital resource to type their research and inquiry response. For example, in Unit 1, Week 2, Day 4 of Research and Inquiry, the teacher is directed to, "Have students use a word processing program to write their reports and create their Works Cited page," but falls short of explicitly teaching students how to use a word processing program to create final drafts.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 4 partially meet the opportunities for students to address different genres/modes of writing that reflect the distribution by the standards. Materials provide experiences in writing across different genres, but a balanced distribution is lacking in the core materials.

Each week consists of a writing component for Days 1-5 and practice in a mode of writing. Each day offers practice in process and distribution on a writing prompt assigned on Day 2. Weekly focus changes each week. Opportunities to practice opinion style writing are limited to only 8 percent, short of the suggested 30 percent. The distribution of the writing tasks are:

• Informative/explanatory: 9/36
• Opinion: 3/36
• Narrative: 13/36
• Other: 11/36

Each unit focuses on a style of writing in the Writing Process: Unit 1-Personal Narrative, Unit 2-Expository Composition, Unit 3-Compare and Contrast Essay, Unit 4-Story, Unit 5-Argument/Persuasive Essay, Unit 6-Research Report. Students have choice in the Writing Process Units.

In “Writing to Sources” and “Write Like a Reporter”, Units 1 and 4 focus on narrative, Unit 2 and 5 focus on argumentative, Units 3 and 6 focus on informative/explanatory. There are additional writing forms for argumentative and informative/explanatory.

“Writing to Sources” (a Common Core Teacher Resource) contains writing prompts for students to write at the demand associated with the grade level CCSS writing standard using text evidence. This is a supplemental resource and is not part of the Teacher Edition’s weekly planning. Each unit has a focus: Unit 1 Focus: Narrative; Unit 2 Focus: Argument; Unit 3 Focus: Informative/Explanatory; Unit 4 Focus: Narrative; Unit 5 Focus: Argument; Unit 6 Focus: Informative/Explanatory. Each week’s main reading selection has two writing options in “Writing to Sources.” though the materials lack support for "Writing to Sources" in the,teacher directions.

More instructional guidance needs be provided to the teacher for the time spent on each writing task. Teachers can have students “Write like a Reporter” or write to “Connect Texts,” which are suggested in the Teacher Edition, but as with "Writing to Sources," directions for implementation of the supplemental resources are limited.

Exemplars for students and teachers would provide support for Writing to Sources for explicit teacher direction to support students’ growth in writing.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 4 partially meets the expectations of materials, providing frequent opportunities for evidence-based writing to support careful analyses, well-defended claims, and clear information. Some tasks are not clearly tied to the main selection texts, and do not build over the course of the year. Teacher resources on how to implement or teach evidence-based writing are needed.

The Writing to Sources workbook allows students to complete writing tasks in response to multiple texts and to cite text-based sources. Students are able to practice and apply writing using evidence.

Writing opportunities support students’ work in developing claims connected to the texts. There are opportunities to practice argument/opinion, informative/explanatory, and narrative writing, however, the writing tasks do not substantially increase in rigor throughout the course of the year, and the materials have some repetition in the writing opportunities.

• For example in Unit 2, Week 1 students are asked to reread the story and “write a one-paragraph argument telling whether you agree or disagree with Jo’s decision using evidence from the story to state your opinion and to support your argument.”
• In Unit 5, Week 1 the prompt is similar. The students are to reread the selection, and “write a paragraph clearly stating your opinion and giving reasons for it that you support with evidence from the text.”

Additional instructional supports are needed for teachers to guide students’ understanding of developing ideas, building components of structured writing (for example paragraphs, introductions, conclusions, etc.), and integrating evidence from texts and other sources.

The instructional materials reviewed for Grade 4 partially meet expectations for explicit instruction of the grammar and conventions standards for grade level as applied in increasingly sophisticated contexts, with opportunities for application both in and out of the context.

Some standards covered are not at the appropriate grade level. For example:

• In Unit 1, Week 1 and Week 2, there are lessons about types of sentences and punctuating those sentences (TE, page 31c, and TE, page 45o). The use of end punctuation is taught in Grade 1 (L.1.2.b)
• In Unit 2, Week 1, there is a lesson on common and proper nouns (TE, page 175d). Common and proper nouns are taught in Grade 1 (L.1.1.b).
• In Unit 2, Week 4, there is a lesson on possessive nouns (TE, page 283o). Possessive nouns are taught in Grade 2 (L.2.2.c).
• L.4.1a- relative pronouns, are taught in Unit 4.
• L.4.1e- prepositional phrases are taught in Unit 5.
• L.4.1g- homographs are taught in Unit 4.
• L.4.2b- quotation marks are taught Unit 4, but not in the context of writing a narrative.
• L.4.2c- using commas in a coordinating conjunction, is taught in Unit 4
• L.4.4c- students practiveusing a dictionary, but they are not exposed to the dictionary in both print and digital formats
• L.4.5b- personification is only covered in 3 lessons in Unit 4

Many of the convention and grammar skills are taught in Grade 3, Grade, 4, Grade 5, and Grade 6 such as the four kinds of sentences.

Each unit has a daily direct instruction lesson on “Conventions.” Each week focuses on specific grammar skills and conventions. Each day explicit instruction takes place, and students practice the skill with worksheets from Grammar Transparencies, Reader’s and Writer’s Notebook, and Let’s Practice It!

The skills for the week are shown in the Skills Overview for the unit. All of the Language Standards are embedded in the curriculum, but some standards are taught in only one unit as indicated below. Teachers will need to create additional materials to be able to teach the full intent of the standard. For example:

Grammar instruction worksheets often have words and sentences that connect to the week’s main reading selection, but the application is primarily out of context.

The materials reviewed for Grade 4 partially meet the materials, questions, and tasks address grade-level CCSS for foundational skills by providing instruction in phonics, word recognition, morphology, vocabulary, syntax, and reading fluency in a research-based and transparent progression. Materials lack a cohesive sequence which builds toward application.

Students are expected to read aloud grade-level text fluently with accuracy, comprehension, appropriate pace/rate, with expression/intonation, with attention to punctuation and appropriate phrasing. These skills are tested weekly. There are opportunities for instruction regarding high frequency, irregular words, however, assessment guidance is not present in the teacher materials. Optional unit reviews offer an opportunity to revisit foundational skills. The unit and end-of-year benchmark tests provide teachers the materials to assess phonics, vocabulary skills, and fluency.

Instructional opportunities are present for decoding multisyllabic words with common word parts and spelling patterns. However, Greek and Latin roots are not tested. Base words and affixes, possessives, contractions, and compound words are tested. The focus on multisyllabic words across the entire grade level is uneven.

Examples of RF.4.3 included in the publisher materials are:

• Turning Points Unit 1, Week 1 when students are taught that many verbs have an ending that helps readers figure out when the action happened and sometimes words change their spelling when the ending is added. Students are asked to brainstorm more examples of words that follow each pattern of adding -ed. The teacher is reminded to “Follow the Strategy for Meaningful Word Parts to teach jumped.”
• Puzzles and Mysteries Unit 4, Week 4 when students are taught that the prefix tele- means “over a long distance” and the prefix trans- means “across or beyond.” Students are asked to circle the prefix in each word in the chart and use its meaning, along with the meaning of the root, to determine a definition for the word.
• Adventures by Land, Air, and Water Unit 5, Week 1 when students are asked to break words into syllables. Students are reminded to “break multisyllabic words into syllables before they begin to spell the word. Students are asked to write spelling words and draw a line between the syllables. Students are reminded to “refer to the dictionary if they are unsure how to divide the word.” Additional practice is available in the Reader’s and Writer’s Notebook, page 320.

The materials reviewed for Grade 4 partially meet the requirement to include materials, questions, and tasks to guide students to read with purpose and understanding and to make frequent connections between acquisition of foundation skills and making meaning from reading.

Students are provided opportunities to practice oral vocabulary on Days 1-4 with assessment on Day 5.

• On Day 1 during “Build Oral Vocabulary,” students are asked to listen for Amazing Words (academic vocabulary) as the teacher reads the selection aloud. Following the read aloud, students are asked several questions about the Amazing Words, but students do not need to attack unfamiliar words because the teacher is reading the selection.
• On Day 5 during “Build Oral Vocabulary,” students are told to work with a partner and discuss the theme question and are not required to apply their foundational reading skills to attack unfamiliar words.

Amazing Words provide some practice for making meaning based on the vocabulary. For example, in Unit 4, week 1, questions in the TE asks students to look for context clues to determine the meaning of invisible. The teacher is also directed to work on syllabication of the word invisible. This practice is done with the teacher read aloud. The Amazing Words are introduced, a few a day, over four days. The Teacher Edition suggests following: Introduce, Demonstrate, Apply, Display the Word to teach the students these words. There is also a graphic organizer the students can use to put the words into to connect concept-related words. The Question of the Week suggests writing using a few of the Amazing Words, but this is optional for the students.

Selection vocabulary from the main selection is emphasized and is tested at the end of the week. There are multiple opportunities provided over the course of the year in the core materials for students to demonstrate mastery of the vocabulary. Students will use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary. The students learn the selection vocabulary before reading the main selection on Day 1. The TE directions ask the teacher to help students practice syllabication and figure out the word using context clues from a sentence. They discuss the words during the week, and test on them at the end of the week, but the words are not reviewed at a later time in the curriculum. If students are having difficulty understand the selection vocabulary, there is an “if…then..” section for the teacher. For example, In Unit 1, Week 4 after going over the selection vocabulary with the students and there are students who still do not understand then the teacher can follow the “If…then…” suggestions. “If… students are having difficulty understanding, then…review the definitions in small groups.”

Students have some opportunities to demonstrate word analysis skills. In Unit 5, students must figure out the meaning of the word carabiner in Cliff Hanger using context clues. Students also complete a worksheet about unfamiliar words.