4th Grade 2020-2021

Which are you more likely to notice: a person’s character or his or her clothing? Hoca has a witty response when the latter is true at a dinner he attends after a day of hard work.

In this poem, the speaker addresses his father, recalling for him the lush Puerto Rican landscape that he grew up in. Now, this green can be seen only in his father's dreams.

Katherine Scholes begins this informative piece by describing the multi-facted nature of the word "peace" and what it can mean to different people at different times. Then she provides concrete ways that each of us can be a peacemaker.

After spending months talking to women in Afghan refugee camps, Deborah Ellis penned this timely novel about life under Taliban rule. Living in Afghanistan with her family, Parvana is a rarity—a girl who can read and experiences life, even for just a few hours, outside the four walls of her home.

In this excerpt, the reader meets two characters from The Misfits: Addie, a girl who is exceptionally tall and smart for a middle schooler and Joe, who is creative and feminine in a way that makes his peers nervous.

Maleeka gets made fun of at school about her clothes, her grades, even the color of her skin. In this chapter, she talks about getting teased on a school trip and how even her friend Char was ashamed to be seen with her because of her clothes.

After her father's death, Esperanza and her mother are left with few options and forced to flee to America. The immigration officers are only the first obstacle they must face. Beyond them, the Great Depression and an uncertain future awaits.

This excerpt explains that families are defined by love, caring and sharing, not the number or gender of its members.

Mari and her family have been sent to an internment camp in Utah. She does not understand what they have done to deserve their internment and longs for her backyard in California where she used to grow sunflowers.

In this excerpt, Garang tells his story of how he became a lost boy when war destroyed his village. Walking with thousands of other orphaned boys, Garang travels thousands of dangerous miles from southern Sudan to a refugee camp in Ethiopia.

As a young Muslim girl, Zahrah wore her hijab to school on what is considered to be the most important day of the week in Islam—Friday. Not everyone at Zahrah's school understands her religious traditions, but a visit from her mom changes this.

“He said, 'When the border patrol changes shifts, you're going to run.'”

“Every brain is a little bit different...”

“And I asked him everything that I ever wanted to ask. I asked him to tell me the real story.”

“What was the saddest moment of your life?”

“I felt alone and tried to hide it...”

The novel's main character, Joey, is introduced in this excerpt. Joey is full of spunk, but he also has trouble focusing and controlling all of his urges—which sometimes leads him to make bad choices.

This cartoon eye chart tests for perfect vision, which sees beyond stereotypes and bias and encourages a lens of compassion.

Every night Bailey dreams about dresses, but each day his mother, father, and brother remind him that he is a boy and dresses aren't for him. Finally, he finds a friend who embraces both his love for dresses and the individual he feels he is inside.