Course Description: 5th grade math students begin the year working on furthering their understanding of place value and extending it to the billions place.  They also specifically focus on comparing the value of digits according to their place value. For example, 5th grade math students learn that a 5 in the “tens” place is 100 times less than a 5 in the “thousands” place.  They then focus on multiplying and dividing multi-digit numbers. During the second quarter, students focus primarily on understanding the concept of decimals and then applying the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to numbers involving decimals.  The 3rd quarter focuses primarily on understanding fraction concepts and then adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions. 5th grade math students also learn how to convert length, weight and capacity measurements between metric and standard units and how to classify shapes based on measurable attributes and describe the properties of 3-dimensional shapes.  5th grade math students also learn how to translate a written math problem or expression into an algebraic expression involving a variable.