Like other professional instructors at Liberty Common School, the 4th-grade teachers stress fidelity to the Core Knowledge Curriculum. As the curriculum expands in breadth, complexity, and ambitious pacing, LCS’s 4th-grade teachers emphasize the exigency of being authentic content experts, rather than solely teaching facts from the book. 4th-grade students are hungry for more abstract conversations; they are inclined to ask thoughtful, prodding questions rather than comfortably dwell in the rote, concrete thinking common of younger scholars seeking background knowledge and the foundational building blocks of education.

4th-grade scholars are firmly into mature literacy. Some are beginning to explore moral literacy.  The novels read together as a class are rich in beautiful language, virtuous characters, and nuanced storytelling. These students are primed to begin the patterns stage of the Thinking Framework. Their professional classroom instructors meet them at pace, and arm them with the knowledge and skills to begin engaging in the world outside the classroom.

As the year progresses and students move even more deeply into patters within the Thinking Framework, the 4th-grade instructors astutely work diligently to rebuff students’ tendencies to struggle and to fear failure, and instead guide them toward feeling an allurement to the rich curriculum, and to embrace the pursuit of truth, beauty, goodness, and perfection.

Consistent with other elementary-level classrooms, 4th-grade classrooms continue instruction in and practice of Singapore Math, penmanship, and cross-curricular connections from the Core Knowledge Curriculum.