St. Maria Goretti
Third/Fourth Grade Multi-age Curriculum
Religion
We
use the Faith First series in religion, teaching
both the third grade and fourth grade curricula. Faith
First gives the students the knowledge and skills
they need to apply and practice their faith in their daily
lives -- where it counts. The curriculum is developed
on the Doctrine Scripture and the Liturgical Year. Visit
www.faithfirst.com
to learn more about our religion series and for a
variety of at-home activities.
Our reading program is a literature-based program. We
will continue to develop our comprehension skills through
story quizzes, comprehension questions and activities.
We will also work on vocabulary and skills such as compare
and contrast, cause and effect, drawing conclusions, sequence,
dictionary, fact and opinion, prediction, story elements
and main ideas. In Language Arts, we will cover sentences
(subject and predicate), nouns (singular, plural and possessives),
pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and quotations. We will use
learned skills in creative writing.
Each Wednesday, we will concentrate on Writing Workshop,
allowing the students to express themselves in writing.
They will have the opportunity to write and publish their
own stories.
Cursive
- The third graders will be learning how to write in cursive.
We use the D'Nealian handwriting approach when teaching
cursive. Once we have completed the workbook, the third
graders will be required to write everything in cursive.
The fourth graders will review correct letter formation
and be required to hand in all work in cursive.
We
will use the VoWac program for the second year. The VoWac
program teaches word attack strategies for when the vocabulary
becomes too complex to pronounce it by memory. VoWac is
an effective program by using a variety of approaches
such as visual, auditory, kinesthetic-tactile, plus discovery
and development of thinking skills.
The
year's curriculum will be focused on Wisconsin. We will
begin the year by reading Little House in the Big Woods,
by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and learn about life in Wisconsin
in the late 1800s. Laura Ingalls Wilder is a wonderful
storyteller. We will become familiar with Wisconsin government
and our role in the community. We will develop our map
skills using maps of Wisconsin.
