This was one of the first productive weeks I’ve had in a LONG time. ☺️ To be fair, I only studied for around 5 hours and all the content I got through was simple, but I just about finished three units in 4^th Grade Reading and Vocab, and now only have two exercises and the course challenge left to do to finish this off the course! Even though all the work I did was quite easy, one thing I’m happy about is that I think I’m getting better at concentrating and paying attention to the things I’m reading. All of the questions that come up in the unit tests and exercises asked me to read little passages of text around 200-400 words long. The writing was pretty easy to grasp but the content in each passage was usually varied quite a bit, so I always needed to focus on what I was reading in order to answer the question the first time and not have to reread the text. Like I said, it wasn’t hard, but it did force me to concentrate. I think I’m getting better at going into focus-mode as soon as I start reading. So, overall, I’d say it was a pretty solid week and I’m happy with my effort! 👍🏼

I started this week at the beginning of Unit 5, Craft and Structure: Long Passage Practice:

Unit 5 – Craft and Structure: Long Passage Practice

Lesson 3 – Reading Argumentative Texts

Exercise – Tesla VS Edison: Who was the Better Inventor?

Question 1

This question was from the very last exercise in Unit 5. You can see that it asked me to determine the writing structure of the article which, as you can see from the paragraphs on the left, is pretty clear. I think I got through the exercise in about 3 minutes. 🙃

This entire unit probably took me an hour to complete. There were three articles, and seven exercises, all of which contained questions like the one from above. Overall, it was super easy, but I was still happy to do it to practice focusing on and paying attention to what I was reading, and to get a better grasp on the different writing structures and have them sink in a bit deeper. Plus, I actually found some of the articles pretty interesting! 🤯

Unit 6 – Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Lesson 1 – Understanding Different Types of Sources

Exercise – Different Types of Sources

Question 2

Question 3

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but Khan Academy splits each unit up into “Lessons” which contain videos, exercises and articles. The lesson that this exercise was from was all about visual information like graphs, tables, images, etc. You can see that the questions in this exercise were about exactly that. They were pretty easy but still good practice having to read through and pay attention to what texts were saying.

Lesson 2 – Analyzing Reasons and Evidence

Exercise – Reasons and Evidence

Question 4

This was a simple exercise that just asked me to read through different texts that made arguments for one thing or another, then I’d be asked what the author’s reasons/evidence were/was for their claims. Simple stuff. 

Lesson 3 – Connecting Texts

Exercise – Connecting Texts

Question 5

This exercise got me to read through two different passages of texts and figure out what the texts shared in common and how they differed. The question in the screenshots above was the hardest one, and you can see that it was pretty simple…

Unit Test

Question 6

Question 7

I did this unit test on Friday morning and it only took me about 10-15 minutes to finish, although I did fail once. I’d seen 50% of the questions before in previous exercises which made the unit test that much easier. Plus, you can see that the questions weren’t too hard. Question 7 from above was probably the hardest one I was given and it really wasn’t difficult at all. (Clearly, I am a GENUIS being able to crush these Grade 4 questions. 😬)

Unit 7 – Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Long Passage Practice

Lesson 2 – Reading Informational Texts

Exercise – Maria Merian: Artist and Scientist

Question 8

This exercise wasn’t too hard, but the passages of texts that were given were noticeably longer than in previous exercises, meaning there was more information I needed to pay attention to and remember as I was reading in order to answer the questions. One strategy I started to use was reading the questions and given solutions before reading the paragraphs which made it easier. I went 4/4 in less than 5 minutes so it wasn’t difficult, but it was still helpful practice tuning things out and focusing on/paying attention to what I was reading. As I said in my post last week, if I can get better at concentrating on the things I’m reading while I’m reading them — especially when they’re things I’m not naturally that interested in — that alone would make going through this Grade 4 course worthwhile. (I’m TERRIBLE for reading things, getting to the end of whatever I’m reading, realizing I have no idea what I read, and then having to start over again.)

And that was it for this week. As I said, I still have two exercises left to get through in Unit 7 and the Course Challenge, but then I’ll be moving on to Grade 5! 🥳 I just glanced through the Grade 5 course and there’s substantially more content in it than Grade 4. I was hoping to get through ELA quickly and then move on to Physics, but now I’m thinking it’s going to take me much longer than I anticipated… I guess that’s ok because I’d rather take my time and really learn everything I work through, but it’s still a bit of a bummer. 😒 The good news it I’m feeling quite motivated to get through English Language Arts as quickly as possible, so I’ve at least got that going for me which is nice!

As always, fingers crossed I can have a productive upcoming week so that I can get through ELA in less time than the 349 weeks it took me to get through the Math section of KA! 🤞🏼