5th Grade Academics

Throughout fifth grade Visual Art, students will explore many different materials and techniques including pencil, watercolor, and acrylic paint. Each lesson is meant to encourage and improve their overall skill and development. Students will also have a nine week quarter of sculpture inspired by a culture. 

The fifth grade English Language Arts curriculum is designed to build literacy skills by engaging students within rigorous reading, writing, speaking and listening opportunities.  Throughout the year, students will deepen their understanding of fiction text by developing a repertoire of comprehension strategies. Students will grow theories about characters, recurring themes, and reflect on literature and their own ideas with text evidence through written, oral and collaborative expression. 

Increased exposure and guided practice within informational text across core subjects will support student understanding of how informational text is organized, and also teach them how to determine and make sense out of the important ideas within.

In addition, fifth grade students will compose and reflect on their reading in all content areas while direct instruction will continue within narrative, opinion and informational units. Teachers will foster positive habits for future success in literacy by guiding students with individualized goal setting, building stamina, and progress monitoring to help prepare them for sixth grade and beyond. 

Fifth grade band and orchestra are yearlong elective classes that meet 2-3 times a week during Academic 30 time. Students will not miss any other special class or instruction time during band class. 

Fifth grade band is a beginning band class that teaches the basic fundamentals of playing wind, brass or percussion instruments. Students can choose flute, clarinet, oboe, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, baritone, french horn, tuba or percussion. Students who desire to play percussion will need to choose a woodwind or brass instrument and will have the opportunity to audition for percussion mid year.

Fifth grade orchestra is a beginning string class that teaches the basic fundamentals of playing a string instrument: violin, viola, cello or bass.

Band and orchestra students are expected to practice 80 minutes a week. Students will learn valuable team building skills, setting and meeting short- and long-term goals, individual responsibility, and many other lifelong lessons. Fifth grade band and orchestra will have one concert in the spring.

Physical Education Curriculum 

• Adventure Education: Team Building 

• Fitness Testing: Pre-test (PACER and 1-minute sit-up test).

• Soccer: Passing, trapping, kicking, dribbling, with modified game play 
• Lacrosse: Passing and catching, with modified game play
• Badminton/Pickleball: Serving and Ground strokes, with modified game play.
• Team Handball: Modified game play
• Pillo Polo: Stick handling, Passing, Shooting, with game modified game play
• Volleyball: Serving, Forearm Pass and Overhead Set, with modified game play
• Basketball: Dribbling, Passing and Shooting with station work
• Base Games: Whiffleball and Kickball-style games
• Fitness Testing: Post-test (PACER and 1-minute sit-up test)
• Football: Passing and Catching, with modified game play
• Invasion Games: Capture-the-flag style games

Expectations/Assessment:

All students will be able to:

 

• Demonstrate age appropriate motor skills, fitness skills and sport skills

• Come to class prepared with appropriate gym shoes

• Actively participate in daily activity, demonstrating best effort

• Follow rules and directions

• Use good sportsmanship

• Work cooperatively with others

• Stay on task during daily activities

Students are assessed on the above with a 3, 2,1 scale with 3 being the highest.

Fifth grade science begins with the Earth and Sun module, which focuses on Earth and Sun as a system.  Students collect and analyze shadow data and observe the changes in the moon's appearance over time to explain why the moon, sun, and stars seem to move across the sky. Then students explore the properties of the atmosphere, energy transfer from the sun to earth, and water cycling the earth's atmosphere.  

 The Mixtures and Solutions module introduces students to the properties, behaviors, and changes in substances -- fundamental ideas in chemistry.  Students work with others as scientists and engineers to create conceptual and physical models to explain how something works. With an emphasis on designing and carrying out scientific investigations, students separate mixtures, explore differing concentrations of liquids, and compare saturated solutions. 

 In the Living Systems module, students explore earth as a system, focusing on the biosphere and describing ecosystems by looking at feeding relationships and energy transfers, described as food webs. Each group of students sets up a redworm habitat to study detritivores and the role of decomposition in ecosystems. For several weeks, students observe caterpillars as they transform into butterflies in the classroom habitat.  Students compare nutrient and transport systems in both plants and animals and sensory systems in animals. 

5th grade Social Studies starts with Exploration, the connection between the Three Worlds of Europe, Africa, and The Americas.

From there we dive into the Colonization of North America by the British and the creation of the 13 colonies. Once the colonies have been established and expanded, we study the issues that caused the 13 colonies to separate from Britain. We end the year with the Revolutionary War and the creation of the U.S. Government. 

 

Course Description and Units

Vocal Music provides an opportunity to learn music fundamentals with an emphasis on the voice. Students learn and practice proper vocal technique including breath control, diction and tone quality, through singing a variety of music. Music reading skills, part-singing, and common vocabulary are also studied in this class. Students develop ensemble skills and incorporate choreography, fostering individual coordination, as well as teamwork. A developed solo voice is not essential; however, a willingness to improve singing skills is vital.

 

Technique Unit:

• Demonstrate correct posture
• Sing with clear diction and choral vowels while blending with others
• Use breath control for long phrases and sustained notes
• Manage head and chest voices appropriately

Reading Music Unit:

• Decode rhythms & pitches to sight-read simple patterns
• Identify and demonstrate musical forms and tonality, as well as the meaning of common musical symbols and vocabulary
• Read music in 2-3 parts on the grand staff

Expression Unit:

• Identify and demonstrate vocal articulation, dynamic markings, tempo markings, musical tonality & phrasing

Performance Unit: 

• Follow the cues of a conductor
• Use music vocabulary to create criteria for evaluation of performances
• Demonstrate appropriate audience and riser behaviors
• Sing songs from memory in 2-3 parts
• Demonstrate stage presence & perform choreography accurately

 

The World Language program offers the unique opportunity for fifth and sixth grade students to explore languages and cultures of the world. The languages of study include French, German, Japanese and Spanish.  After the exploration, students will be able to make a more informed decision about which language they would like to pursue in middle school and high school.