The following are the Colorado academic standards for fourth graders.

 

 

Comprehensive Health

• Apply knowledge and skills to engage in lifelong healthy eating
• Apply knowledge and skills related to health promotion, disease prevention, and health maintenance
• Utilize knowledge and skills to enhance mental, emotional, and social well-being
• Apply knowledge and skills to make health-enhancing decisions regarding the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs
• Apply knowledge and skills that promote healthy, violence-free relationships

Dance

• Understand that dance performance requires technical competency
• Demonstrate competence and confidence in performing a variety of dance styles and genres
• Demonstrate and use the principles and practices of choreography in the creative process
• Demonstrate an understanding of form and structure to create dances
• Explore and perform dance styles from various cultures and times
• Understand and appreciate a dance in terms of the culture in which it is performed
• Demonstrate thinking skills such as describing, analyzing, interpreting, evaluating, and problem-solving through dance movement and verbal discussion

Drama and Theatre Arts

• Create drama and theatre by interpreting and appreciating theatrical works, culture, and experience through scenes and scenarios, improvisation, creating environments, purposeful movement, and research
• Use a variety of methods, new media, and technology to create theatrical works through the use of the creative process for performance, directing, design, construction, choreography, playwriting, scriptwriting, and dramaturgy
• Create drama and theatre by interpreting and appreciating theatrical works, culture, and experience through scenes and scenarios, improvisation, creating environments, purposeful movement, and research
• Demonstrate the evolution of rehearsal and product through performance and/or production teamwork while simultaneously validating both as essential to the theatre making process
• Express drama and theatre arts skills in a variety of performances, including plays, monologues, improvisation, purposeful movement, scenes, design, technical craftsmanship, media, ensemble works, and public speaking
• Make informed, critical evaluations of theatrical performance from an audience member and a participant point of view, and develop a framework for making informed theatrical choices
• Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of theatre history, dramatic structure, dramatic literature, elements of style, genre, artistic theory, script analysis, and roles of theatre practitioners through research and application

Mathematics

• Understand the structure and properties of our number system. At their most basic level numbers are abstract symbols that represent real-world quantities
• Understand that equivalence is a foundation of mathematics represented in numbers, shapes, measures, expressions, and equations
• Are fluent with basic numerical and symbolic facts and algorithms, and are able to select and use appropriate (mental math, paper and pencil, and technology) methods based on an understanding of their efficiency, precision, and transparency
• Make claims about relationships among numbers, shapes, symbols, and data and defend those claims by relying on the properties that are the structure of mathematics
• Make sound predictions and generalizations based on patterns and relationships that arise from numbers, shapes, symbols, and data
• Solve problems and make decisions that depend on understanding, explaining, and quantifying the variability in data
• Understand quantity through estimation, precision, order of magnitude, and comparison. The reasonableness of answers relies on the ability to judge appropriateness, compare, estimate, and analyze error

Music

• Employ musical skills through a variety of means, including singing, playing instruments, and purposeful movement
• Demonstrate the processes of development of musical literature from rehearsal to performance, exhibiting appropriate interpersonal and expressive skills, both individually and within ensembles
• Demonstrate the expressive elements of music - including melody, harmony, rhythm, style, genre, texture, voicing/instrumentation, mood, tonality, and form - through voice, musical instruments, and/or the use of electronic tools
• Perform music with appropriate technique and level of expression at an appropriate level of difficulty in sight reading and prepared performance
• Display instrumental or vocal improvisation skills by performing extemporaneously what is created in the mind
• Create music by composing and/or arranging what is heard or envisioned, in notated or non-notated form, with or without the use of music technology, demonstrating originality and technical understanding
• Read and employ the language and vocabulary of music in discussing musical examples and writing music, including technology related to melody, harmony, rhythm, style, genre, voicing/orchestration, mood, tonality, expression, and form
• Demonstrate melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic aural skills through identification, transcription, and vocalization or instrumental playback of aural musical examples
• Make informed, critical evaluations of the effectiveness of musical works and performances on the basis of aesthetic qualities, technical excellence, musicality, or convincing expression of feelings and ideas related to cultural and ideological associations
• Develop a framework for making informed personal musical choices, and utilize that framework in the making and defending of musical choices
• Demonstrate a nuanced understanding of aesthetics in music, appropriate to the particular features of given styles and genres, as it relates to the human experience in music
• Know the place of each of the participants in the performance environment and practice appropriate audience participation; recognize the place and importance of music in life

Physical Education

• Demonstrate competency in motor skills and movement patterns needed to perform a variety of physical activities
• Demonstrate understanding of movement concepts, principles, strategies, and tactics as they apply to learning and performing physical activities
• Achieve and maintain a health-enhancing level of physical fitness
• Participate regularly in physical activity
• Apply personal safety knowledge and skills to prevent and treat intentional or unintentional injury

Reading, Writing and Communicating

• Use language appropriate for purpose and audience
• Demonstrate comprehension of a variety of informational, literary, and persuasive texts
• Engage in a wide range of nonfiction and real-life reading experiences to solve problems, judge the quality of ideas, or complete daily tasks
• Interpret how the structure of written English contributes to the pronunciation and meaning of complex vocabulary
• Implement the writing process successfully to plan, revise, and edit written work
• Apply standard English conventions to effectively communicate with written language
• Use primary, secondary, and tertiary written sources to generate and answer research questions
• Articulate the position of self and others using experiential and material logic

Science

• Apply an understanding that energy exists in various forms, and its transformation and conservation occur in processes that are predictable and measurable
• Analyze how various organisms grow, develop, and differentiate during their lifetimes based on an interplay between genetics and their environment
• Explain how biological evolution accounts for the unity and diversity of living organisms
• Explain and illustrate with examples how living systems interact with the biotic and abiotic environment
• Describe and interpret how Earth's geologic history and place in space are relevant to our understanding of the processes that have shaped our planet

Social Studies

• Develop an understanding of how people view, construct, and interpret history
• Analyze key historical periods and patterns of change over time within and across nations and cultures
• Develop spatial understanding, perspectives, and personal connections to the world
• Examine places and regions and the connections among them
• Understand the allocation of scarce resources in societies through analysis of individual choice, market interaction, and public policy
• Acquire the knowledge and economic reasoning skills to make sound financial decisions (PFL)
• Analyze and practice rights, roles, and responsibilities of citizens
• Analyze origins, structure, and functions of governments and their impacts on societies and citizens

Visual Arts

• Analyze, interpret, and make meaning of art and design critically using oral and written discourse
• Transfer the value of visual arts to lifelong learning and the human experience
• Explain, demonstrate, and interpret a range of purposes of art and design, recognizing that the making and study of art and design can be approached from a variety of viewpoints, intelligences, and perspectives
• Recognize, articulate, and debate that the visual arts are a means for expression
• Critique personal work and the work of others with informed criteria
• Recognize, articulate, and implement critical thinking in the visual arts by synthesizing, evaluating, and analyzing visual information
• Create works of art that articulate more sophisticated ideas, feelings, emotions, and points of view about art and design through an expanded use of media and technologies
• Develop and build appropriate mastery in art-making skills using traditional and new technologies and an understanding of the characteristics and expressive features of art and design
• Recognize, interpret, and validate that the creative process builds on the development of ideas through a process of inquiry, discovery, and research
• Identify, compare and justify that the visual arts are a way to acknowledge, exhibit and learn about the diversity of peoples, cultures and ideas