Throughout the year, students participate in physical education, music, library, computer class, Spanish, and art. Students also attend a variety of educational field trips.
Reading: The fifth grade reading program is one that teaches the love of reading while incorporating important skills. Building vocabulary and developing a love of language are important parts of our reading curriculum. We focus on comprehension, making predictions, story mapping, reviewing the author’s purpose, and teaching other strategies to enable students to learn to understand what they read. Basal readers, as well as novels, are used to accomplish our goals. Both of these many times relate wonderfully to our social studies topics. The Accelerated Reader program is used as a supplementary tool to strengthen reading comprehension.
Social Studies: The fifth grade social studies curriculum covers American History beginning with the first inhabitants of North America through the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction and on into the 1920s. Before the historical study begins, map skills are reviewed. Various skills are incorporated into chapters throughout our studies. Novels from our reading curriculum are often chosen based on social studies topics as a way to enhance and connect both reading and social studies programs.
Spelling: The fifth grade spelling curriculum develops strategic spellers. Students learn how to spell words through applying strategies in making choices about how to spell unknown words. Students practice strategies using weekly word lists.
English: In English, the curriculum focuses on the eight parts of speech and writing correct and interesting sentences and paragraphs. We concentrate on several forms of writing: personal narratives, expository paragraphs, how-to paragraphs, poetry, and more.
Math: In fifth grade math we add, subtract, multiply, and divide whole numbers, decimal numbers, and fractions. We study plane and solid figures, factors and rules of divisibility, prime and composite numbers, graphing number pairs, and customary and metric measurement.
Science: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Science Fusion is our science curriculum. Interactive digital lessons, virtual labs, and in-class labs are used alongside textbook. Students study cells and body systems, bones, ecosystems, Earth’s changes, rocks, fossils, oceans, and matter.