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Wisconsin Standards

Wisconsin 4th Grade ELA Standards

All 31 Wisconsin English language arts standards for 4th grade, each explained in plain English. The official wording is in Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's document, linked at the end of this page.

31 standards

Reading Foundational Skills

2 standards
RF.4.3
Sound out unfamiliar long words using letter sounds, syllable patterns, and word parts like roots and affixes, both in sentences and on their own.
RF.4.4
Read 1st-grade books aloud smoothly and accurately with expression, understand them, and reread when a word or sentence does not make sense.
Common Core RF.1.4

Reading

9 standards
R.4.1
Use details and evidence from a text to show what it says outright and what it hints at, and draw sensible inferences, like why a character is upset.
R.4.2
Summarize stories and nonfiction to find the theme or central idea, then show which key details back it up.
R.4.3
Describe a character's traits, motives, and feelings, a setting, or an event, and explain what happened and why in nonfiction, using text details.
R.4.4
Work out what words and phrases mean in a text, including figurative language, academic words, and subject terms like habitat or erosion.
R.4.5
Name the parts of poems and plays, like verse, meter, and stage directions, and identify how nonfiction is organized, like cause and effect.
R.4.6
Compare stories told in first and third person, and compare a primary and secondary source about one event or topic.
R.4.7
Explain how charts, diagrams, timelines, and pictures help a reader understand what a text is saying.
R.4.8
Explain which reasons and evidence an author gives to back up each claim in a text.
R.4.9
Recognize the genre of a text and connect it to other texts, ideas, cultures, identities, time periods, and the reader's own life.

Writing

9 standards
W.4.1
Write reflective, formal, and creative pieces for both low-stakes and high-stakes purposes, like a journal entry or a graded report.
W.4.2
Write opinion pieces with grouped reasons, informative texts with headings and facts, and stories with a narrator, dialogue, and a natural order of events.
W.4.3
Organize writing with an introduction and conclusion, link ideas with transition phrases, and choose words that add emphasis, contrast, or order.
W.4.4
Write clear, well-organized pieces that fit the task, purpose, and audience, in a way that honors the writer's own culture and voice.
W.4.5
Plan, revise, and edit drafts, responding to classmates' questions and suggestions and adding details to make the writing stronger.
W.4.6
Use digital tools with adult help to write and publish, including with classmates, and write by hand, in cursive, or by typing a full page at once.
W.4.7
Carry out short research projects that build knowledge by looking at a topic from several angles.
W.4.8
Pull facts from memory, books and websites, take notes, sort them into categories, and list where they came from.
Common Core W.4.8
W.4.9
Remember and use facts from stories or nonfiction to back up analysis, reflection, and research.

Speaking and Listening

5 standards
SL.4.1
Join partner, group, and class discussions prepared, follow agreed norms, ask and answer clarifying questions, and sum up key ideas afterward.
SL.4.2
Restate in their own words parts of a text read aloud or information shown in videos, charts, or other media.
SL.4.3
Pick out the reasons and evidence a speaker gives to support each point, such as the facts behind a classmate’s case for a longer recess.
Common Core SL.4.3
SL.4.4
Give an organized report, story, poem reading, or account of an experience with facts and vivid details, speaking clearly at a steady pace for the audience.
SL.4.5
Add audio and visuals to a presentation, like a sound clip or photo, to strengthen its main ideas or themes.

Language

6 standards
L.4.1
Notice how language differs across cultures, settings, and subjects, and use that to read better and choose precise words and punctuation for effect.
L.4.2
Figure out unknown and multiple-meaning words using context clues, word parts, and print or digital dictionaries for meaning and pronunciation.
L.4.3
Explain a nonliteral phrase like take steps, name someone who is friendly to link a word to real life, and rank knew, believed and suspected by how sure they are.
Common Core L.3.5
L.4.4
Build vocabulary alone and with others, using precise words for actions and feelings, like stammered or whined, and topic words, like endangered.
L.4.5
Use standard grammar when the situation calls for it and explain choices like relative pronouns, adjective order, complex sentences, and to versus too.
L.4.6
Capitalize, punctuate, and spell correctly in formal writing, including quotation marks, commas in compound sentences, and checking spelling with references.

The official Wisconsin documents

The plain-English lines on this page are EMStudio's own explanations of Wisconsin's standards, not the official wording, which Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction publishes in the documents above. Codes and strand names identify each standard.