About the Teacher

Mrs. Kinzinger

Fourth Grade Teacher

Salem Lutheran School

Mrs. Kinzinger has a love for children and teaching.

She believes that positive reinforcement and steady encouragement lead to a fun and fulfilling learning environment.

She earned her Bachelor’s degree at California Lutheran and her Master’s degree from Cal State Los Angeles.

Mrs. Kinzinger has been teaching fourth grade at Salem for 35 years.

Curriculum & Information

Fourth Grade is a year of logical reasoning. Students will develop skills using context clues, making bar graphs, identifying cause and effect, using graphic sources, understanding range, median, and mode, and make predictions and assessments.
Spelling is a priority, as is developing personal writing skills.

Subjects covered in Fourth grade include, but are not limited to:

Science

Studies include: plant and animal structure and function, food chains, habitats, and survival. Children will learn about electricity and magnetism, geology, the solar system, and the human body. Science for fourth graders also includes a unit on keeping the body healthy by being safe, eating right, and not using drugs. Students will participate in Salem’s Science Fair as well.

Physical Education

Fourth graders attend P.E. class in the gym three times a week. Fitness, health, and sportsmanship are taught through games, sports, and exercise.

Social Studies

Students focus on the great state of California diving into its rich history and learning about the infrastructure of today. Each year, students take a daylong field trip to Sacramento by plane to pan for gold, visit Sutter’s Fort, the Capitol Building and Old Town.

Math

Students cover addition and subtraction facts, place value for numbers through millions, compare whole numbers, round numbers, and work out word problems.
Multiplication and division facts are learned, missing factors are found, long division is used, and digit quotients and remainders are understood. Decimals are introduced, and Geometry using plane figures, line segments, end points, intersecting lines, parallel lines, rays and angles are learned. Students will also classify polygons, identify congruent and similar figures, and understand perimeter, area and volume.

Music

Children in grades first through sixth will develop skills in singing, playing instruments and movement.

Spanish

Children are exposed to Spanish twice a week through songs, flash cards and stories. They expand their vocabulary and read.

Art

Salem art classes are relevant, fun and challenging. Students will develop artistic awareness and hands-on skills by using a variety of tools and mediums. They will also learn about well-known artists and works of art, as well as create age appropriate art projects.

Language Arts

Reading, language and spelling are taught in conjunction with the Open Court Curriculum. Exercises will include time and order words, place and location words, author’s point of view, pronouns, topic sentences, paragraph form, sequence, verbs, thesis sentence, supporting details, effective beginnings and endings, telling time, drawing conclusions and making inferences.
Students will learn about comparative and superlative adjectives and adverbs, organization of a narrative, suspense and surprise, exaggeration, characterization, double negatives, and mood. They will have a firm grasp of figurative language, phrases, clauses, alliteration, assonance, rhythm, onomatopoeia, irregular verbs, repetition and tenses.

Computers

Fourth graders expand on computer usage in Salem’s computer lab once a week. In word processing they will learn to set up Columns, Headers, Footers, Text Justification, and Page Orientation. Students will be introduced to PowerPoint with beginning projects, and expand their research skills on the Internet. Fourth graders will create an analysis of sites on the Internet, and learn to make bibliographic notations of Internet sites in their reports.

Bible

Classroom religious studies cover the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi. The class has daily devotions, and a different Bible memory assignment each week.
All students (Junior Kindergarten through sixth grade) attend chapel services each Wednesday at 8:45 conducted by the School Chaplain. Parents are always welcome to attend chapel.

In Addition

Fourth graders will cover six different themes throughout the year:

1. Risks and Consequences: highlights the risks people take to achieve their goals and the consequences of their actions.

2. Dollars and Sense: uses a variety of genre to convey famous business people and how they started a business or venture.

3. From Mystery to Medicine: explores pioneers in the medical fields and scientific community.

4. Survival: stories about people and things they’ve had to endure and/or overcome. Anne Frank, Arctic Explorer, etc.

5. Communication: the invention of the printing press, Louis Braille, how whales communicate and the like.

6. A Changing America: the history of America, going West, the Transcontinental Railroad, and much more.

More information is available about the General Curriculum used at Salem.