Fifth Grade is a thrilling time for you soon-to-be Middle Schooler!
Fifth Grade is the age when academic strengths and weaknesses are reasonably evident to parents, students, and teachers alike. For example, your child might suddenly dread history because she finds it boring and can’t keep the time periods straight. In addition, a struggling reader often can’t control the high level of content material and necessary school skills needed for 5th Grade and Middle School.
While preparing for 5th Grade, find out the skills your child should have by the end of the year. This is a significant change ahead, and parents should be proactive.
Kids on the Yard State Certified Teachers prepare customized lessons for their students based on their academic and emotional intelligence growth. We work alongside school curriculum and state standards to ensure their educational development is aligned with their classroom.
All our tutors have in-classroom experience and have worked with students with varying abilities and learning styles throughout their careers.
This is a period in their academic journey where your 5th Grader’s academic strengths and weaknesses are reasonably evident to your child and their teachers.
Personal ownership becomes a primary quality to learn and develop before Middle School. When parents wait for their soon-to-be middle schooler to learn executive function skills such as organizational, desire to learn, etc., there’s stakes and consequences to their future adequately to Middle School skills.
What Fifth Graders should know!
Fifth Grade Reading
Your Fifth Grader will be reading longer chapter books, as well as nonfiction books and texts. Teachers increase the length and complexity of the passages and textbooks. Developing stamina is also an essential skill for Middle School preparation.
A Fifth Grader should know the following:
- Find main ideas and supporting details using more advanced reading comprehension strategies (like inference)
- Summarize what’s been read through writing or speaking
- Synthesize information from two texts
- Think analytically and give specific examples from the text
- Interpret information from charts, images, videos, timelines, and diagrams
- Compare and contrast the information that’s being read
- Proficiently read at grade level five in both fiction and nonfiction texts
- Learn new vocabulary words using context clues
- Use the Internet to access and research information
Fifth Grade Writing
Fifth-grader will write informational reports in complete paragraphs, higher-level vocabulary, and specific details about the knowledge. Writing is one of those skills that Fifth Graders should have a stronghold of before Middle School.
A Fifth Grader should know:
- Write in a variety of formats for a variety of subjects
- Understand that writing a book report is different than writing an email or writing a PowerPoint presentation
- Understand the nuance of who’s the audience (Why are you writing this, and what does the audience need to know?)
- Know the basic parts of speech
- Write a structured paragraph with a topic sentence, supporting details, and a closing sentence.
- Use punctuation such as commas, apostrophes, and quotation marks appropriately.
- Understand synonyms, antonyms, and homophones
- Identify prefixes and suffixes
- Use research to write an informational report
- Write a description and persuasive texts
Fifth Grade Math
In Fifth Grade, students are expected to have higher “operational fluency” and much higher math knowledge.
Your Fifth Grader should be able to:
- Write and evaluate numerical expressions with parentheses
- Identify mistakes involving the order of operations
- Complete a table for a two-variable relationship and graph it
- Understand place value
- Multiply and divide by a power of ten with decimals
- Read, write, and compare decimals to thousandths
- Use place value understanding to round decimals to any place
- Fluently multiply multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm
- Divide 4-digit numbers by 2-digit numbers
- Add, subtract, multiply, and divide decimals to hundredths
- Add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators (including mixed numbers)
- Apply and extend previous understandings of multiplication and division to multiply and divide fractions
- Solve word problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division of whole numbers leading to answers in the form of fractions or mixed numbers
- Interpret multiplication as scaling (resizing)
- Convert like measurement units within a given measurement system
- Make a line plot to display a data set of measurements in fractions of a unit (1/2, 1/4, 1/8)
- Understand concepts of volume and relate volume to multiplication and to addition
- Measure volumes by counting unit cubes using cubic centimeters, cubic inches, cubic feet, and improvised units
- Relate volume to the operations of multiplication and addition and solve real-world and mathematical problems involving volume
- Graph points on the coordinate plane to solve real-world and mathematical problems
- Classify two-dimensional figures based on their properties
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) for Fifth Grade
The five competencies are:
1. Self–awareness: Accurately recognize one’s own
emotions, thoughts, values, and how their behavior influences others.
2. Self-management: Successfully regulate one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in different situations — effectively managing stress, controlling impulses, and motivating oneself.
3. Social awareness: The ability to review another’s perspective and empathize with others’ feelings.
4. Relationship skills: Compatible to establish and maintain healthy and meaningful relationships with individuals and groups.
5. Responsible decision-making: Compatible to make proactive choices about their behaviors and social interactions.
