Give students practice in answering the types of questions used in standardized tests. High-interest stories, primary source documents, and comprehension questions encourage the use of higher order thinking skills.

Build Grade 4 students' comprehension and critical-thinking skills and prepare them for standardized tests with high-interest nonfiction articles from TIME For Kids®. This easy-to-implement resource includes accompanying document-based questions that focus on key strategies for breaking down informational text to help students build cross-curricular reading skills. A document-based assessment sheet is also provided for each passage so students can investigate the text in even deeper and more meaningful ways. This resource is aligned to state and national standards and supports the development of college and career readiness skills.

Foster your fourth graders critical thinking skills and see confidence soar! Children are naturally inquisitive from infancy, yet creative and problem-solving skills need to be nurtured as children grow. Like reading and math skills, critical thinking skills require practice.

Radically change the way students learn from texts, extending beyond comprehension to critical reasoning and problem solving. Is your reading comprehension instruction just a pile of strategies? There is no evidence that teaching one strategy at a time, especially with pieces of text that require that readers use a variety of strategies to successfully negotiate meaning, is effective. And how can we extend comprehension beyond simple meaning? Bestselling authors Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Nicole Law propose a new, comprehensive model of reading instruction that goes beyond teaching skills to fostering engagement and motivation. Using a structured, three-pronged approach—skill, will, and thrill—students learn to experience reading as a purposeful act and embrace struggle as a natural part of the reading process. Instruction occurs in three phases: Skill. Holistically developing skills and strategies necessary for students to comprehend text, such as monitoring, predicting, summarizing, questioning, and inferring. Will. Creating the mindsets, motivations, and habits, including goal setting and choice, necessary for students to engage fully with texts. Thrill. Fostering the thrill of comprehension, so that students share their thinking with others or use their knowledge for something else. Comprehension is the structured framework you need to empower students to comprehend text and take action in the world.

Use these step-by-step guides to build students' comprehension and critical thinking skills as they prepare for standardized tests that feature document-based questions. Step 1 has students reading high-interest nonfiction articles from TIME For Kids authors. Step 2 has students strengthening comprehension skills by responding to follow-up questions from all levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. Step 3 has students studying primary source documents (such as maps, census reports, population reports, charts, and graphs) that are related to the articles. Step 4 has students demonstrating critical thinking skills by responding to questions based on these primary sources. Teacher Resource CD includes reproducible pages of articles, primary source documents, and questions.

Approach analogies as puzzles. To solve them, students need to use cognitive processes and critical-thinking skills. These exercises present word and/or picture relationships in several different ways. The goal is to develop skills in visual imagery, reading comprehension, vocabulary development, reasoning and test-taking.

Fun and challenging activities and exercises to strengthen children's thinking skills such as logic and problem solving.

Evidence-Based Reading for grade 4 offers 64 pages of reading practice. It is aligned with the Common Core State Standards and includes a reading comprehension rubric, a standards alignment chart, and pages of reading passages with evidence-based questions to encourage higher-level thinking and thoughtful answers. Each question is designed so that students learn to support their answers with evidence from the text. A variety of literature and informational passages are included to engage learners in a range of texts. The Applying the Standards: Evidence-Based Reading series emphasizes close reading by requiring students to answer text-dependent questions in both literary and informational texts. This is a series of six 64-page books for students in kindergarten to grade 5. Various reading and vocabulary skills are covered, and a culminating reflection question for each passage engages students' higher-level thinking skills. Of particular emphasis throughout the series are the Common Core State Standards and the teaching of evidence-based reading.

Get students in grade 4 reading with Reading Engagement! This 128-page resource provides instructional reading practice for below-average and reluctant readers, independent reading activities for average readers, and supplemental reading for more-competent readers. The book includes high-interest, low-readability stories, a reading-level analysis for reading selections, and answer keys.