What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know: Fundamentals of a Good Fourth-Grade Education - Paperback

by E. D. Hirsch (Author)

Give your child a smart start with the revised and updated
What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know

How can you help your child at home? This book answers that important question and more, offering the specific shared knowledge that thousands of parents and teachers across the nation have agreed upon for American fourth graders. Featuring full-color illustrations throughout, a bolder, easier-to-follow format, and a thoroughly updated curriculum, What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know is designed for parents and teachers to enjoy with children. Hundreds of thousands of students have benefited from the Core Knowledge Series. This edition, featuring a new Introduction, gives today's generation of fourth graders the advantage they need to make progress in school and establish an approach to learning that will last a lifetime. Inside you'll discover

- Favorite poems--old and new, from the familiar classic "Paul Revere's Ride" to Langston Hughes's "Dreams"
- Literature--from around the world, including African and Chinese folktales, excerpts from beloved novels, and condensed versions of popular classics such as Gulliver's Travels and "Rip Van Winkle"
- Learning about language--the basics of written English, including grammar, punctuation, parts of speech, synonyms and antonyms, plus an introduction to common English sayings and phrases
- World and American history and geography--explore world and American history, including creation of a constitutional government and early presidents and politics
- Visual arts--a broad spectrum of art from around the world, including African masks, Islamic architecture, Chinese calligraphy, and great American painters--featuring full-color reproductions
- Music--understanding and appreciating music, from the basics of musical notation to the orchestra, plus great composers and sing-along lyrics for such favorites as "Auld Lang Syne" and "Waltzing Matilda"
- Math--challenging lessons ranging from fractions and decimals to understanding graphs, making change, square roots, and the metric system
- Science--discover the wonders of the human body and its systems, learn about electricity, atoms, chemistry, geology, and meteorology, plus concise biographies of some of the great scientists of our time

Author Biography

E. D. Hirsch, Jr., is an emeritus professor at the University of Virginia and the author of The Knowledge Deficit, The Schools We Need, and the bestselling Cultural Literacy and the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. He and his wife, Polly, live in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they raised their three children.