Grade 5

To the left are links to brief overviews of what your child will learn in Grade 5.  Below is a calendar outlining the CREC Units of Study.  If you should have any questions about your child's curriculum, please reach out to your child's classroom teacher.

Grade 5 Curriculum Scope and Sequence

Note:  Implementation of the CREC curriculum units outlined below may vary between schools.  Please contact your child’s teacher for specific implementation information.
 


Reading and Writing

Math

Science

Social Studies

September

Stories of Human Rights

Unit 1: Human Rights

Students read the novel Esperanza Rising - a complex coming-of-age story set in Mexico and rural California during the early 1930s.  Throughout the unit, they also read selected articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UHDR) related to events in the novel where human rights are threatened.

ALL (Additional Language and Literacy) Block

Small group work with a focus on: 

-Additional Work with Complex Text; 

-Reading and Speaking Fluency 

-GUM (Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics); -Writing Practice; -Word Study and Vocabulary; 

-Independent Reading

Unit 1: Finding Volume

Students will find the volume of right rectangular prisms and solid figures composed of two right rectangular prisms.

Unit 1: Shooting Stars

Students will explore the phenomena of shooting stars to learn more about stars, patterns in space, and the phases of matter in this unit.

Unit 1: Connecticut Kid Governor

Connecticut’s Kid Governor® (CTKG) is a national award-winning statewide civics program for 5th graders created by the Connecticut Public Affairs Network (CPAN) in 2015. Timed to coincide with Election Day in November, the program offers each school in Connecticut the opportunity to enter one student candidate into a statewide election that other 5th graders vote in.   Students learn about Connecticut’s three branches of government, the role of the governor, the history and process of voting, identifying and researching important community issues, researching issues, and developing campaign platforms and speeches.

Unit 2: Threats to Human Rights in Esperanza Rising

Students finish reading Esperanza Rising focusing on the characters’ reactions and responses to events when their human rights are threatened.  They write both a poem and a literary essay that compares the response of two characters to a selected event from the novel.

October

Unit 2: Fractions as Quotients and Fraction Multiplication

Students will develop an understanding of fractions as division of the numerator by the denominator and solve problems that involve the multiplication of a whole number and a fraction, including fractions greater than 1.

Unit 3: Overcoming Learning Challenges - Reading

Students plan, write, and perform monologues based on events from Esperanza Rising where human rights are threatened.

November

Biodiversity in the Rainforest

Unit 1: Why Scientists Study the Rainforest

Students build background knowledge on biodiversity in the rainforest and rainforest deforestation to understand why scientists study the rainforest.  They research to identify ways they can help the rainforest and the challenges associated with being an ethical consumer.

Unit 3: Fraction Multiplication and Division

Students will extend multiplication and division of whole numbers to multiply fractions by fractions and divide a whole number and a unit fraction.

Unit 2: Early Exploration and First Contact in the Americas

The unit will take students on an exploratory journey of Early American History from the time before European exploration, through first contact, and ending with European settlements and contact between cultures.  There will be a focus on cultural perspectives as students investigate different people’s experiences through a historical lens.  

December

Unit 2: Using Writing to Inform

Students explore how authors of narrative texts about the rainforest help the reader to understand what it is like in the rainforest.  

Unit 2: Surviving Antarctica

Students will become part of an expedition research team in the Antarctic.  Their team loses communication with their transport, so they must hike back to the research base on their own.  Using their survival supplies and scientific discovery, they have to make their way to safety.


Unit 7: Shapes on the Coordinate Plane (Part 1)

Students will plot coordinate pairs on a coordinate grid and classify triangles and quadrilaterals in a hierarchy based on properties of side length and angle measure.  

January

Unit 3: Using Writing to Entertain

Students write first person narratives that incorporate their knowledge of the rainforest.

Unit 4: Wrapping Up Multiplication and Division with Multi-Digit Numbers

Students will use the standard algorithm to multiply multi-digit whole numbers.  They divide whole numbers up to four-digits by two-digits divisors using strategies based on place value and properties of operations.

Athlete Leaders of Social Change

Unit 1: Case Study: Jackie Robinson

Students build background knowledge about Jackie Robinson by reading Promises to Keep, written by Jackie’s daughter, Sharon.  They think about what factors led to Jackie Robinson’s success in leading social change.

February

Unit 2: The Most Important Factors in Jackie Robinson’s Success

Students develop an opinion on which factor(s) were most important in Jackie Robinson’s success.  

Unit 5: Place Value Patterns and Decimal Operations

Students will build from place value understanding in grade 4 to recognise that in a multi-digit number, a digit in one place represents 10 times as much as it represents in the the place to its right and one-tenth of what it represents in the place to its left.  They will use this place value understanding to round, compare, order, add, subtract, multiply, and divide decimals.

Unit 3:  Colonial America

This unit will take students on a journey/simulation that will help them to understand who the people were in the American Colonies.  As they delve deeper into the unit, students will learn how life was similar or different across the American Colonies from the New England Colonies, to the Middle Colonies, and the Southern Colonies.  There will be a focus on the opportunities that the colonists had by coming to the New World and settling along the eastern coast. 

March

Unit 3: Common Factors that Contribute to Success in Leading Social Change

Students read about other athletes who were also leaders of social change, beginning with Jim Abbott.  They consider the common factors that contribute to being an effective leader of social change and create a multimedia presentation highlighting those factors.

Unit 3: Golden Jellyfish of Lake Palau

Students will study the Golden Jellyfish of Lake Palau in order to understand life on Earth and the factors which allow species to survive and thrive and humanity’s role in this. 


Unit 6: More Decimal and Fraction Operations

Students will solve multi-step problems involving measurement conversions, line plots, and fraction operations, inducing addition and subtraction of fractions with unlike denominators.  They will also explain patterns when multiplying and dividing by powers of 10 and interpret multiplication as scaling by comparing products with factors.

April

The Impact of Natural Disasters












Unit 1: Physical Impact

Students work in groups to research a natural disaster, focusing on how the natural disaster affects the people and places that experience them.  They create a public service announcement explaining how to stay safe during a natural disaster.

Unit 4: Revolutionary America

Students will begin to learn and understand what led to the colonists' frustration with Great Britain and ultimately to the revolution.  They will continue on in the unit to learn about the varying perspectives of the colonists and their impact in the many battles of the American Revolution.  As the unit concludes, students will learn about how significant the revolution was to the creation of our nation as well as how the essence of what the major historical figures created during this time still impacts us to this day.

Unit 2: Human Impact

Students read and analyze literary texts about the aftermath of natural disasters.  

May

Unit 3: Preparing for Natural Disasters

Students take action to help others prepare for a natural disaster.  They research supplies to include in an emergency preparedness kit and write opinion essays on the most important items to include.

Unit 7: Shapes on the Coordinate Plane (Part 2)

Students will generate, identify, and graph relationships between corresponding terms in two numeric patterns, given two rules, and represent and interpret real world and mathematical problems on a coordinate grid.

June




Unit 8: Putting it All Together

Students will consolidate and solidify their understanding of the major skills of the grade.  They will also continue to work towards fluency goals of the grade.


Updated Summer 2023
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