Parent Handbook (English and Spanish):
   Helpful Information For Language Learners and Their Parents

   Información para estudiantes de segunda lengua y sus padres

The fifth grade curriculum places a strong emphasis on research allowing fifth graders to investigate their rapidly expanding range of individual interests. Students learn to seek information for different purposes, analyze their findings, and present the results for different purposes and different audiences.
Reading Units include:
• Chapter books
• Selections from reading text
All literature selections are chosen thematically to complement science and social studies units
Writing Units include:
• Paragraph, topic and supporting sentences
• Note taking and reconstructing from notes
• Personal narrative journals
• Imaginary writing
• Tall Tales
• Poetry, similes and metaphors
• Persuasive writing
• Descriptive writing
• Autobiography, class yearbook

Grammar Units include:
• Parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, contractions, homophones, synonyms, antonyms
• Sentence structure: types, run-ons, subject and predicate, simple and compound





Through practice, fifth graders focus on mastering the concepts introduced in earlier grades. Students improve their math reasoning and analytical skills as they learn multiple strategies to solve open-ended and real world problems.
Teaching Units include:
• Surveys, tally marks, graphing, time, data
• Patterns and predictions
• Basic operation strategies and properties, emphasis on multiplication
• Attributes and sets, logical operators
• Million: relationships, estimation, number line, place value to billions
• Volume and capacity: price per unit, perimeter, area
• Fractions as part of a whole & set, equivalent fractions, addition, subtraction, multiplication
• Angles, triangles, polygons, tessellation
• Probability, sampling, possible outcomes
• Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division: 2 & 3-digit quotients
• Geometry
• Decimals: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division
• Ratio, percent probability





Fifth graders add to their knowledge in science through studies in the earth sciences and life sciences. Through activities that integrate language arts, science, and/or social studies, students use the Big 6 Research Skills to study systems, subsystems, and changes over time.
Teaching Units include:
• Structures of Life:
Tissue (plant and animal)
Organs, systems, cells, cell parts and reproduction (meiosis and mitosis)
Kingdoms and classification
• The Changing Earth:
Weathering
Tectonic plates
Formation of salt and coal
Earth changes over time
Rocks (types and cycle)
Theories of Earth’s origin





Fifth graders naturally begin to question why things are the way they are, and the fifth grade focus on research skills gives students the tools they need to seek answers. Through activities that integrate language arts, social studies, and/or science, students use the Big 6 Research Skills as they learn history from pre-Columbian times through the mid Nineteenth Century.
Teaching Units include:
• Exploration, Discovery and Colonization:
Pre-Columbian civilizations in America
Spanish and English exploration & discovery
Early English settlements in North America Thirteen Colonies
Map skills
• Independence and Expansion:
Relationships of Colonies and Britain
Reasons for Conflict and War of Independence
Industrial Revolution
Westward Expansion: California Gold Rush