4th Grade - Gateway 1

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 4 meet the expectations for assessing grade-level content and, if applicable, content from earlier grades.

• Zearn has two components to the program, Independent Digital Lessons and Teacher-Led Instruction. The summative assessments are located in the Teacher-Led Instruction section of the program.
• The summative assessments in each Mission, except Missions 2 and 7, include a Mid-Module and End-of-Module assessment. In Missions 2 and 7 there are End-of-Module assessments.
• Each assessment question has been linked to one or more of the standards which are specified in the rubric.

The instructional materials focus on grade-level content.

• Mission 1: Students determine numbers ten times the size of another number (4.NBT.1), compare numbers (4.NBT.2), and write numbers in expanded form (4.NBT.2).
• Mission 2: Students convert kilometers to meters, kilograms to grams, and liters to milliliters which assesses (4.MD.1 and 4.NBT.1).
• Mission 7: Students convert pounds to ounces and hours to minutes (4.MD.1).

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 4 meet the expectation for spending the majority of class time on the major clusters of the grade. This includes all clusters within 4.NBT and 4.NF along with 4.OA.A.

According to Missions and Standards Overview for Grade 4, the materials contain 7 Missions, 136 Lessons, and 36 Weeks, with 4 lessons per week.

• 5 of the 7 Missions include one or more major clusters of Grade 4. Approximately 71 percent of the Missions focus on major work of the grade.
• Approximately 32 of the 36 Weeks of instruction are spent on major work of Grade 4, or 88 percent of the year.
• There are a total of 136 Lessons, and approximately 117 Lessons focus on the major work of Grade 4 (or 86 percent of the Lessons).

The most representative perspective for this indicator is Weeks, with Zearn spending approximately 88 percent of instructional time on the major work of the grade.

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 4 meet expectations for the supporting content enhancing focus and coherence simultaneously by engaging students in the major work of the grade.

During Independent Digital Practice students develop fluency in Number Gyms and Blasts, engage in guided practice in Math Chats, and do independent practice in the Tower of Power sections of the lessons. In Teacher-Led Instruction teachers present fluency, lessons, and word problems to engage students with content. In both the Independent Digital Practice and Teacher-Led Instruction students have multiple opportunities to engage with supporting standards connected to the major work of the grade.

• Mission 2 focuses on supporting cluster 4.MD.A. In these lessons, students solve problems involving measurement and conversion of measurements by adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers (4.OA.3 and 4.NBT.4).
• Mission 3 focuses on major clusters 4.NBT.B and 4.OA.A, and the materials connect these with supporting standard 4.MD.3 in Topic A. For example, students solve problems finding the area and perimeter of figures while working with the properties of operations and problems that use all four operations with whole numbers.

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 4 meet the expectation for having an amount of content that is viable for one school year in order to foster coherence between grades.

The Independent Digital Lessons are broken up into four main components: Fluency, Guided Practice, Independent Practice, and Bonus. The components have different titles depending on the lesson and how the student is progressing through the program. The Teacher-Led Instruction is broken into six sections: Whole Group Fluency, Small Group Lessons, Whole Group Word Problems, Optional Homework, Assessments, and Optional Problem Sets.

The suggested time frame for completing the 136 Independent Digital Lessons and Teacher-Led Instruction is approximately 36 weeks. This provides material for 180 days. A typical day consists of 15 minutes of Whole Group Fluency and Word Problems, 30 minutes of individual digital content, and 30 minutes of small-group, direct teacher instruction. There are also 12 summative assessments in the Zearn program.

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 4 meet the expectations for being consistent with the progressions in the Standards.

The materials identify and explicitly connect grade-level work to prior or future grades. Users of the materials will find these connections throughout the materials. The materials give all students extensive work with grade-level problems. The following are places that clearly demonstrate the progressions of the Standards and the connections from grade to grade:

• Each Mission has a Summary. This Summary explains how the lessons work through the progression of Grade 4 and make applicable connections to past or future content. For example, the Mission 1 Summary states: “This module takes number sense and place value understanding from 2nd and 3rd grade a step further. Students start by noticing patterns when bundling and unbundling groups of 10s, 100s and 1,000s, and conclude by estimating and finding precise answers to addition and subtraction problems using the standard algorithm.”
• On the teacher home page for many Missions there is a box titled, "Foundational Digital Lessons.” This identifies what concepts from previous Topics and Lessons are connected to the current topic. For example, in Mission 3 students work on standards 4.OA.3, 4.NBT.1, 4.NBT.2, 4.NBT.3, and 4.NBT.4. Foundational Digital Lessons that prepare students for the work of grade 4 are identified as Grade 2 Mission 6 (G2M6), Grade 3 Mission 1 (G3M1), and Mission 3 (G3M3) which focus on standards 3.OA.8, 3.NBT.1, and 3.NBT.2.
• In early Missions, the Whole Group Fluency link identifies essential skills from previous grades on which the Topic builds. For example, in Mission 2, Whole Group Fluency, Topic A, Metric Unit Conversions, the teacher materials state the following: “In Topic A, students review place value concepts while building fluency with decomposing, or converting from larger to smaller units (4.MD.1). They learn the relative sizes of measurement units, building off prior knowledge of grams, and kilograms from Grade 3 (3.MD.2) and meters and centimeters from Grade 2 (2.MD.3).“
• Students have extensive work with practice problems. Students have daily fluency practice, guided practice, and independent practice when using the Independent Digital Lessons and when working in Teacher-Led Instruction with the teacher.

Overall, Lesson Summaries identify and explain connections between previous grade level, current grade level, and future content including the Lesson, Mission, and/or grade where the content appears.

The instructional materials reviewed for Zearn Grade 4 meet the expectations for fostering coherence through connections at a single grade.

Materials include learning objectives that are visibly shaped by CCSSM cluster headings.

• Mission 2, Topic A, Metric Unit Conversions, is visibly shaped by 4.MD.A: “Solve problems involving measurement and conversion of measurements from a larger unit to a smaller unit.”
• Mission 6, Decimal Fractions, is visibly shaped by 4.NF.C: “Understand decimal notation for fractions and compare decimal fractions.”

Materials include problems and activities that sometimes serve to connect two or more clusters in a domain or two or more domains where connections are natural and important.

• Mission 3, Multiply and Divide Big Numbers, connects 4.OA.A to 4.MD.A. Students use the four operations with whole numbers to solve problems, some of which are two-step word problems.
• Mission 5 identifies equivalent fractions (4.NF.A) as the focus of the mission. During this mission students apply their skills of comparing numbers greater than 1 by solving word problems (4.NF.B) and requiring the interpretation of data presented in line plots (4.MD.B). The Mission also connects fractions with 4.OA.C where students are observing patterns of the sums of odd and even denominators.