Fifth Grade

Our classroom focuses on collaboration, teamwork, kindness, and building each other’s confidence. We value each other’s opinions and constantly look for ways to learn from each other. Students work diligently to make academic progress and to create a safe and caring learning environment for all. 

 

Learning in 5th Grade

Our elementary schools are engaged in a multi-year process to create an aligned literacy curriculum and shared best practices for instruction at grades pre K - 5th.  This work is well underway and is producing collaboration within the two elementary schools.  We are looking forward to sharing more details soon. 

In Grade 5, instructional time is focused on three critical areas:

  1. developing fluency with addition and subtraction of fractions, and developing understanding of the multiplication of fractions and of division of fractions in limited cases (unit fractions divided by whole numbers and whole numbers divided by unit fractions);
  2. extending division to 2-digit divisors, integrating decimal fractions into the place value system and developing understanding of operations with decimals to hundredths, and developing fluency with whole number and decimal operations;
  3. developing understanding of volume. 

In 5th grade science we collaborate with the Montshire Museum through workshops and science kits. The units covered include Matter, Animals and Plants: Energy Transfer, Earth Science: Interconnected Systems, Space: Earth, Sun and Stars, and Engineering. Also, through a partnership with the Hulbert Science center, students visit the center every other Friday to work on community building, problem solving, and curriculum-based work. 

Students work on the following units: Early Civilization—Fertile Crescent/Mesopotamia, River Civilizations in Africa and Asia, Central/South America—Inca, Aztec, Maya, European Colonization, and Governments and Economies.