Bju Press English Grade 4 (3rd Ed.)

Start your student on the journey to becoming a writing craftsman who utilizes a biblical worldview, with God as the source of language, truth, goodness, and excellence. Students will develop strong listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills—each one complementing the other in a spiral-learning approach. Working through 6 larger assignments, your student will practice the 5 stages of the writing process: planning, drafting, revising, proofreading (and revision skills with proofreading marks), and publishing. Students study and practice the narrative, informative, and persuasive skills. The biblical worldview is integrated through a process of recalling and then explaining biblical teaching, evaluating, and understanding potentially controversial concepts, and applying a biblical understanding to life. Don't let the phrase, "controversial concepts" frighten you. These include such things as biblically handling negative traits in reading samples (such as a tall tale hero), evaluating research sources for trustworthiness, the idea that plagiarism is stealing, etc. There will be a focus on practicing such 21st century skills as critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving, collaboration, and technology literacy. Still, the key teaching approach utilizes the teaching process for which Bob Jones is known (engaging, instructing, applying, and assessing). Course components include Student Worktext, the 2-part Teacher Editions, Assessments, and Assessments Key. These can be purchased separately or as a homeschool kit. In the teacher edition, you will see some potentially unfamiliar terminology, such as "entrance" or "exit" tickets (quick, informal pre- and after-learning assessments); peer conference (students evaluating another's writing), etc. These tasks can be easily implemented in the home. Homeschool parents have access to BJU's HomeschoolHub.com which provides teacher management, scheduler, gradebook, and planner materials. This requires creating a free online account.

In the student worktext, grammar (orange tabbed) and writing chapters (blue tabbed) are interspersed. All grammar chapters will end with students composing journal entries highlighting that chapter's biblical worldview focus. Students learn and practice beginning diagramming skills. The writing chapter assignments include an acrostic poem, a book review, a story, a tall tale, comparison/contrast (among other possible assignments), culminating with a research paper. Students will learn to use research tools, take reading notes, outline, and create bibliography pages. Sounds daunting? Never fear! This course makes those seemingly formidable steps extremely attainable, helping your student toward success. ~ Ruth