What Ontario grade 4 students learn in science and technology

Your child will be able to use a step-by-step process, like the scientific method, to explore questions and conduct experiments.

Your child will be able to use a scientific process to investigate questions and solve problems.

Your child will be able to use an engineering design process to plan, build, and test different devices, models, structures, or systems. This process helps them solve problems by imagining, creating, and improving their designs.

Your child will learn to follow important health and safety rules when doing science activities, including wearing the right safety gear and using tools and materials carefully.

Your child will be able to share what they've learned in science, using the right words and ways to present information so that different people can understand it.

Your child will be able to write and use simple computer programs to explore ideas and create different kinds of results for various projects.

Your child will be able to explain how coding and new technologies affect our daily lives, including jobs like electricians or plumbers.

Your child will learn how science and technology are used in different jobs, including hands-on trades, to solve everyday problems.

Your child will investigate how science and technology, combined with other school subjects, can help solve problems we face in the real world.

Your child will learn about how different groups of people have contributed to science and technology throughout history.

Your child will be able to understand how human actions can help or harm animal homes and groups, considering different viewpoints.

Your child will learn how losing a type of plant or animal affects its home and the other living things around it. They will also think about ways to prevent species from disappearing.

Your child will be able to explain that a habitat is a place where living things, like plants and animals, find everything they need to survive. They will also be able to point out how a nearby habitat provides these essential things.

Your child will learn that a community is a group of different living things that share the same home and depend on each other. They will also understand what helps or harms these plants and animals in their local environment.

Your child will understand how living things depend on each other for food, and be able to sort them into groups like producers (who make their own food), consumers (who eat other organisms), and decomposers (who break down dead things).

Your child will understand that a food web shows how different food chains in nature are connected, explaining who eats whom in an ecosystem.

Your child will learn that animals are grouped by what they eat and will be able to sort different animals into categories like carnivores (meat-eaters), herbivores (plant-eaters), or omnivores (eat both).

Your child will learn about the special body parts (like sharp claws or thick fur) that help different plants and animals live and survive in their specific homes.

Your child will be able to explain why every habitat can only support a certain number of plants and animals.

Your child will be able to understand how devices that use light or sound affect people's lives.

Your child will learn how light and sound from different technologies can affect the environment, considering various points of view.

Your child will be able to tell the difference between natural light sources, like the sun, and artificial light sources, like a lamp.

Your child will learn the difference between things that make their own light, like the sun, and things that just reflect light from another source, like the moon.

Your child will learn about the characteristics of light, including how it travels in a straight line and how it can be soaked up (absorbed), bounced off surfaces (reflected), or bent (refracted).

Your child will learn about the characteristics of sound, including how it moves through different materials as a wave, and how sound can be soaked up, bounced back, or changed.

Your child will be able to explain how sounds are made when something vibrates, which means it moves back and forth very quickly.

Your child will be able to explain how light and sound interact with different objects and materials.

Your child will be able to tell the difference between light sources that also give off a lot of heat (like an old light bulb) and those that give off light but very little heat (like an LED light).

Your child will learn about the body parts we use to see and hear, like eyes and ears, and how devices like glasses or hearing aids use light and sound to help us.

Your child will understand how machines and their parts affect people's daily lives in different communities.

Your child will be able to compare different machines that do similar jobs and understand how each one might affect the environment.

Your child will be able to recognize different machines they use every day and understand what each machine is for.

Your child will be able to identify the different parts of a machine and explain what each part does.

Your child will be able to explain how different parts of a machine move other parts, like how a spinning motion (rotary motion) can make something else move back and forth.

Your child will learn how different parts of a machine (called mechanisms) can change how something moves. This includes understanding how they can make movement go in a different direction, speed up or slow down, or even move in a different plane (like from up-and-down to side-to-side).

Your child will be able to explain how machines change forces to make work easier.

Your child will be able to understand how natural changes to the Earth, like earthquakes or volcanoes, affect people and the environment around them.

Your child will be able to understand how taking rocks and minerals from the earth, turning them into products, and then getting rid of those products can affect both people and the environment. They will also learn that different people might have different ideas about these effects.

Your child will learn about the rock cycle and be able to explain how different types of rocks like igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks are formed through natural geological processes.

Your child will be able to tell the difference between the three main types of rocks—igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic—by looking at their physical characteristics, like how they were formed or what they look like.

Your child will learn to sort different rocks and minerals by looking closely at what they're made of and how they look and feel, using simple tests to tell them apart.

Your child will be able to explain how rocks and minerals are used in our daily lives.

Your child will learn how fossils are made and what they can tell us about Earth's past.

Your child will learn about the traditional knowledge of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples, specifically how they understood rocks and minerals. This includes understanding why certain rocks were chosen for particular uses.