Fifth Grade

Students have the opportunity to investigate ruptured relationships that have existed throughout American history since the settlement of Paleo-Indians. With an opportunity to delve deeply into culture, fifth graders learn that they are not only historians, but they also have the opportunity and responsibility to make a positive, personal history. Practicing wearing others’ shoes, our fifth-grade boys spend time reading memoirs and writing their own. Fifth grade is a great time to try something new. Many fifth graders choose to do just that by joining the PDS Band or participating on the Lego Robotics team.

Language Arts

• Appreciate and respond to literature during Reader’s Workshop
• Integrate comprehension strategies while reading to gain understanding of text
• Understand literary elements as conventions in reading and writing
• Apply metacognitive skills while reading
• Examine word choice to develop accuracy and precision of language
• Complete analogies and state their relationships
• Use figurative language to gain understanding while reading
• Apply the six traits of writing to all Writer’s Workshop narrative, informational, and opinion texts
• Use MLA format to write an evaluative, research-based essay on topic of choice
• Analyze sentence structure and edit writing samples for proper use of parts of speech, phrases, subject-verb agreement, clauses, mechanics, and spelling rules

Math

• Perform calculations with multi-digit whole numbers, fractions, and decimals
• Process and solve word problems using all operations
• Explain prime and composite numbers
• Convert fractions to percents and percents to fractions
• Convert fractions to ratios
• Explore geometric properties and relationships of lines, angles, polygons, and circles
• Discover different types of angles, polygons, and triangles
• Use formulas to find area, perimeter, volume, circumference, and diameter
• Demonstrate an understanding of elementary algebraic patterns and relationships
• Construct various graphs to communicate data appropriately
• Analyze data using basic statistical terms

Social Studies

• Survey and examine events in U.S. history from pre-contact America through the Civil War
• Make connections from the past to the present and possibly the future
• Read for understanding and summarize historical events
• Conduct internet research
• Determine main ideas and worthy conclusions within texts and take informative notes
• State a claim and support it with historical data
• Apply understanding of vocabulary and sentence structure to write an essay featuring content and opinions of American history
• Use critical and creative-thinking skills to write a reflection on historical topics

Science

• Observe, investigate, and describe Newton’s Laws of Motion
• Understand the impact of friction on a moving object
• Relate potential energy to kinetic energy
• Describe the action and reaction forces involved in motion
• Discover and demonstrate the properties of air
• Build and launch parachutes; observe how the shape and size of parachutes affect flight
• Investigate and construct model airplanes
• Relate an increase in power to an increase in thrust
• Build a model rocket complete with internal fuel source
• Observe how air pressure provides thrust needed to launch a spacecraft into orbit