Curriculum Overview
Fifth-grade students read a wide range of materials, including literature from different times and cultures and informational text on grade-level topics in all subject areas. They practice the foundational reading skills learned in previous grades to read accurately and fluently, but the emphasis in fifth grade is on students’ comprehension of complex narrative and informational texts. Students read two or more texts on a topic and use a variety of comprehension strategies to compare, contrast, and integrate information from the texts. They analyze how structure, point of view, visual elements, and figurative language contribute to the meaning or tone of texts. In their writing, students learn to group related information logically; use words, phrases, and clauses to link opinions to reasons and to connect ideas to related ideas; and use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing, to develop the story line or characters. Students engage in the writing process. Students conduct research projects that provide them with practice in gathering information, using print and digital sources, and summarizing information. Students engage effectively in collaborative discussions on fifth-grade topics and texts, identify and analyze logical fallacies in speakers’ presentations or from media sources, and learn to deliver speeches in which they state an opinion and support it with a logical sequence of evidence. To support their writing and speaking, they learn the conventions of standard English grammar and usage, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling, such as using commas and quotations to set off dialogue. Students learn to use print and digital reference materials in all fifth-grade content areas.
