Science and Technology

In this unit you will learn how living things share habitats and form communities. You will find out how a habitat provides the necessities of life, how species in a community interact, and which natural, living and human factors help or harm a community. You will sort animals as herbivores, carnivores and omnivores, follow energy from the Sun through food chains of producers, consumers and decomposers, and see how food chains connect into food webs. You will explore the structural adaptations that help plants and animals survive in Ontario forests, wetlands, bogs and the Arctic, and discover why every habitat has limits. Finally, you will weigh the impacts of human activities from different perspectives, including First Nations, Métis and Inuit perspectives, and analyse what happens when a species is depleted or becomes extinct, and how people can help.

Remember from earlier grades: in Grade 2 you learned how animals grow and adapt, and in Grade 3 you learned how plants grow, make food from sunlight and depend on animals. Grade 4 puts plants and animals together into whole communities.

Along the way you will work like a scientist, engineer and coder: running fair tests with pill bugs, model beaks and waxy leaves, coding a diet-sorting program and a population model, and designing a wildlife crossing.

Curriculum expectations covered: B1.1, B1.2, B2.1, B2.2, B2.3, B2.4, B2.5, B2.6, B2.7, A1.1, A1.2, A1.3, A1.4, A1.5, A2.1, A2.2, A3.1, A3.2, A3.3 (Ontario Science and Technology, Grade 4, 2022).

In this unit you will explore two forms of energy that you use every second of the day: light and sound.

First you will become a light scientist. You will sort natural and artificial light sources, find out which things emit their own light and which only reflect it, and prove that light travels in straight lines by making shadows. You will test how light is reflected, absorbed and refracted (bent), build a periscope, make a spectrum of colours, and compare light sources that give off a lot of heat with those that give off very little, including the Inuit qulliq and modern LED bulbs.

Then you will become a sound scientist. You will discover that every sound comes from vibrations, change the pitch and loudness of homemade instruments, learn how sound travels through a medium, echoes and is absorbed, and design a sound shield. You will study how your eyes and ears work, find devices that use light and sound, and code an automatic night light. Finally, you will assess how light and sound technologies affect people and the environment, including light pollution and noise pollution.

Remember from Grade 1: you learned that the Sun gives us light and heat and is our most important energy source. Grade 4 looks much more closely at what light and sound are and how they behave. Safety first: never look at the Sun or into a laser, and protect your hearing. Every lesson has hands-on activities with things from home, lots of practice and a short quiz.

Curriculum expectations covered: C1.1, C1.2, C2.1, C2.2, C2.3, C2.4, C2.5, C2.6, C2.7, C2.8 (Ontario Science and Technology, Grade 4, 2022), with STEM skills and connections from Strand A (A1.1, A1.2, A1.3, A1.4, A1.5, A2.1, A2.2, A3.1, A3.2, A3.3).

In this unit you will look inside machines like a mechanical engineer! You will learn that a mechanism is the group of moving parts inside a machine, find the input and output of mechanisms such as bicycles and egg beaters, and describe the purpose of each part. You will name four kinds of motion (linear, rotary, reciprocating and oscillating) and see how axles, gears, chains and belts transmit motion from one part to another.

Then you will dig into pulleys and gears. You will build pulley systems and count rope sections to predict how much force they save, predict which way every gear in a gear train turns (meshing gears turn opposite ways!), count teeth to work out speed, and meet mechanisms that transform motion, like the rack and pinion, the cam, bevel gears and the worm gear. You will measure how machines change forces and learn the big trade-off: less force means more distance.

Finally, you will assess how machines affect people in different communities, including jobs in the skilled trades, robots and automation, and technologies from Inuit and Métis communities, compare the environmental impacts of machines that do the same job, and design and build your own lifting machine.

Remember from earlier grades: In Grade 2 you met the six simple machines, and in Grade 3 you studied forces and strong, stable structures. Grade 4 goes inside machines to see how their mechanisms work.

Every lesson has a hands-on activity using things from home, lots of practice and a short quiz.

Curriculum expectations covered: D1.1, D1.2, D2.1 to D2.5 (Ontario Science and Technology, Grade 4, 2022, Strand D: Machines and Their Mechanisms), with STEM skills and connections from Strand A (A1.1, A1.2, A1.3, A1.4, A1.5, A2.1, A2.2, A3.1, A3.2, A3.3).

In this unit you will become a rock detective! You will learn the difference between rocks and minerals, and test minerals the way geologists do, with streak, hardness (the Mohs scale), lustre and more. You will find out how the three kinds of rock form: igneous rocks from cooling magma and lava, sedimentary rocks from layers of sediment (like the cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment), and metamorphic rocks changed by heat and pressure (like the gneiss of the Canadian Shield). Then you will put them together in the rock cycle, and even code it.

You will read the clues in fossils from the ancient sea that once covered southern Ontario, and see how weathering, erosion, glaciers, earthquakes and volcanoes shape the land and affect people and the environment. You will hunt for rocks and minerals in your own home, learn how First Nations, Métis and Inuit knowledges guide the choice of rocks and minerals for specific purposes, and assess the impacts of mining, refining and recycling from many points of view.

Remember from Grade 3: you learned that soil is made partly of tiny bits of rock, that weathering breaks rock and erosion moves it, and (in Social Studies) that the Canadian Shield is rich in minerals. Every lesson has a hands-on activity using things from home, safety notes, practice questions and a short quiz.

Curriculum expectations covered: E1.1, E1.2, E2.1 to E2.6 (Ontario Science and Technology, Grade 4, 2022, Strand E: Rocks, Minerals, and Geological Processes), with STEM skills from Strand A (A1.1, A1.2, A1.4, A1.5, A2.1, A3.1, A3.2, A3.3).