Camp STAAR: 4th Grade 15-Day RLA Review

STAAR season is here and your students need structured, engaging practice — without you spending your weekend building it from scratch. Camp STAAR is a 15-day reading and language arts review designed for 4th grade Texas classrooms, organized around a camp theme that keeps students engaged while hitting the skills that matter most before the test.

Every day follows the same I Do / We Do / You Do format so students know what to expect and you can focus on teaching instead of explaining directions. You model with an original I Do passage included in the resource. Students practice with STAAR released passages they download directly from TEA — no copyright issues, no workarounds.

The 15 days are organized into three weeks:

• Week 1 covers fiction skills including genre review, analyzing fiction, plot elements, character interactions, and author's purpose. Students work with the same passage across multiple days, building depth rather than jumping from text to text.

• Week 2 shifts to informational and argumentative text, covering central idea, author's purpose, organizational patterns, and argumentative text structure. Students also practice the six-square Ranger's Case File organizer before taking on short constructed response writing.

• Week 3 hits the genre variety section of STAAR with paired text, poetry, and drama. Days 11 and 12 are intentionally split so students analyze each passage individually before comparing — exactly the way STAAR tests it. Day 15 sends students to the computer to take the full 2023 STAAR released test online, with a recording sheet included so you can still collect and score their responses.

STAAR released passages used in this resource:

• Surprise Kick by Zach Riley — 2024
• Junior Park Rangers — 2022
• Do What You Can — 2022
• How Six Sons Rescued Anansi — 2022
• Make More Time for Music — 2022
• Digging Up the Truth — 2022
• Year-Long Summer — 2025
• Rock Star Dad by Rhett Miller — 2025

All passages are available free at tea.texas.gov. Instructions for accessing each one are included in the resource.

What's inside:

• 15 lesson plans with purpose, materials, directions, support, and extension
• Original I Do passages for every day — fiction, informational, argumentative, poetry, and drama
• Camp-themed activity cards — Genre Sort, Trail or Tall Tale, Take a Stand on the Trail, Campfire Court, Basecamp Debate, and more
• Six-part graphic organizer instructions for fiction, informational, argumentative, and paired text
• STAAR stems reference cards organized by skill and genre
• You Do question sets with multiselect, multipart, and short constructed response
• Answer keys for every multiple choice and multiselect question set
• Week 1, Week 2, and final cumulative assessments
• Online test practice directions and student recording sheet for the 2023 STAAR released test
• 15-day pacing guide
• 
  

This resource is $10. That is less than a dollar a day for a complete, ready-to-teach STAAR review.

If you are a 4th grade teacher in Texas looking for something you can open on Monday morning and teach without spending Sunday night recreating it — this is it.

A 5th grade version is also available in my Payhip store