Grade 5
While Grade 5 students still spend the majority of their academic time in homerooms, they continue to build their skills as independent and collaborative workers and begin to develop the self-advocacy, organization, and study skills that will serve them well when they transition into our Upper School.
Grade 5 students begin to gain a global perspective and learn to view the world through an inclusive lens, focusing on connections across the curriculum, and culminating with International Night.
Grade 5 Highlights
- Literature Circles
- International Night
- Worm and Squid Dissections
- Camp Wing Outdoor Ed
- Pals program
- Malawi Pen Pals and Facetime
- Lunch Buddies
- Student Council
- Bridge Engineering Contest
- Christa McAuliffe Space Center Visit
In the Classroom:
By the end of Grade 5, students are confident in math concepts such as the mechanics of multiplication and division, locating coordinates, and writing explanations for solutions to problems in their own words. They become more familiar with calculating surface area and volume, algebraic concepts and probability, ratios, and rates as they apply creative techniques to solve non-routine math problems.
Our Grade 5 science students use a hands-on approach to understanding science concepts such as astronomy, simple machines, and ecology, while using the scientific method and conducting research projects and presentations, laboratory investigations, dissection, and exciting estuary field work. Spanish classes advance their vocabulary and grammatical structures as they formulate more complex sentences, write paragraphs, and begin to explore Spanish literature.
Grade 5 students hone their skills as readers and writers through a combination of content area exploration and explicit language arts instruction. Students experiment with both creative and expository writing through stories and poetry, personal response essays, research papers, lab and research reports, refining Students continue to develop on their journey as competent and confident public speakers through a wide variety of presentation experiences, including International Night.
Grade 5 dives into the creative writing process, explores stories and poems, and crafts personal responses to readings and essays. Students refine their paragraph development, and learn to correctly format papers and add proper documentation to their research. Grammar and mechanics are incorporated into classwork as students study sentence parts and types, sentence diagramming, and parts of speech.
One-two choice novels are selected in addition to multiple class novels, assorted poetry, legends, and short stories to develop vocabulary, characterization, and creative thinking. Literature circles drive class discussions regarding themes, plot, setting and text connections, and students answer both interpretive and evaluative questions around their work.
