Grade Five

Language Arts

Speaking Skills. Given daily practice in choral and individual speaking in poetry, prose, story recapitulation and oral reports generated from curriculum areas students will demonstrate:

• Good Diction
• Appropriate Cadence
• Proper Meter
• Appropriate Syntax
• Appropriate Volume
• Appropriate Rate
• Artistic Expression (*Skills increase noticeably throughout the school year!)

Listening Skills. Given daily practice, students will exhibit sustained attention to the primary speaker. Students will follow directions up to six sequential tasks without continuous need for repetition.

Spelling Skills. Given a dictionary and oral instructions of its use, students will be able to find words as needed for writing. Given a dictionary, students will be able to identify and use guide words to find a word. Students will be able to pronounce words given simple phonetic dictionary rules. Given rules for syllabication, students will be able to syllabicate words that follow the rules. Given a list of ten or more words beginning with at least the same first three letters, students will be able to correctly alphabetize them.

Students will learn the spelling of at least ten words per week generated from the curriculum or from misspelling in individual work. Given corrected compositions of their own and simple editing instructions, students will increase their ability to proofread for spelling. Given teacher and pupil generated weekly tests and spelling strategies, students will develop strategies that allow them to obtain an expected average accuracy on tests. (Expectations are set according to visual memory abilities.) Given previously generated spelling lists, students will maintain an expected accuracy on the words appearing on lists throughout the year. (Expectations are set up according to visual memory abilities.) Students will maintain an expected standard of correctly spelled words per 100 on homework and in class compositions. Standards are individually set according to ability.

Writing Skills. Given oral and written presentations in all curriculum areas, students will develop simple outlines, emphasizing main idea and supporting details.

Given biographies of novel and curriculum-related oral and written material, students will develop paragraphs based on the following items:

• Main characters
• Setting
• Summary
• Descriptions
• Personal Opinions

Given examples of poetry with simple rhyming patterns, students will generate their own poems that have correct meter. Given examples of biographical sketches, students will be able to generate a sketch of their own from material they have heard or read. Given an hour of time and appropriate background material, students will be able to generate 250 words comfortably then use writing samples to edit it for a second draft. Given main lesson presentations and independent readings, students will write reports on their independently chosen aspects of research in the history curriculum. (See social studies and science.) Students will learn to write business and friendly letters. Following instruction, students will practice writing self-generated letters of both friendly and business genres. Students will write stories from their own personal experience.

Grammar and Syntax. Given presentations, reviews and oral descriptions, students will demonstrate accuracy in editing samples using the following:

• Simple Declarative, Interrogative, Exclamatory with Punctuation
• Eight Parts of Speech and Articles
• Active and Passive Voice
• Prepositional Phrases
• Proper Use of Period
• Question Mark
• Exclamation Mark
• Commas
• Quotation Marks
• Proper Capitalization
• Colon, Dash, and Semicolon

Reading Skills. Students will read at least one book per month (this depends on the child’s capacities) per school year without teacher prompting, thereby increasing recreational reading. The number of required readings is set according to ability. Students will demonstrate oral and written recall from fifth grade level and above reading material from research curriculum areas, biographies and recreational readings. The following areas of recall will be assessed:

• Main Sequence of Events (Summary)
• Factual Recall
• Difference Between Facts and Opinions
• Setting, Mood
• Main Idea, Supporting Details, Foreshadowing
• Description of Characters

Mathematics

Computation Skills. Given oral presentation, teacher-designed materials, worksheets, presentations and revision, students will demonstrate competency in the following areas:

• Addition of Multi-Digit Whole Number Columns with Carrying
• Addition of Simple Fractions with Common Denominators
• Addition of Mixed Numbers/Fractions with Unlike Denominators
• Addition of Decimals
• Addition Using Expanded Notation
• Subtraction of Multi-Digit Whole Numbers Using Borrowing
• Subtraction of Simple Fractions with Common Denominators
• Subtraction of Mixed Numbers Containing Fractions with Unlike Denominators
• Subtraction of Decimals
• All Times Tables are Memorized out of Sequential Order
• Multiplication Tables Oral and Written
• Multiplication of Multi-Digit Whole Numbers
• Multiplication of Simple Fractions with Like Denominators
• Multiplication of Fractions with Unlike Denominators
• Expansion of Fractions
• Comparison of Fractions Through Multiplication Processes
• Finding Common Denominators Using Multiplication
• Changing Mixed Numbers to Improper Fractions
• Multiplication of Decimals, Moving Decimal Points Correctly
• Identification of Reciprocals
• Division of Simple Fractions, Using Reciprocals
• Division of Mixed Numbers
• Reduction of Fractions to Lowest Terms
• Division of Decimals with Decimal Point in Dividend
• Division of Fractions with Decimal in Divisor and Dividend.

Math Concepts. Given teacher presentation, written material and revision, students will be able to define and express the conceptual meaning using oral explanations, written and pictorial methods for the following:

• Four Basic Operations
• Whole Numbers
• Fractions
• Mixed Numbers
• Improper Fractions
• Proper Fractions
• Addition of Fractions
• Subtraction of Fractions
• Multiplication of Fractions
• Ordering by Value, Decimals and Fractions
• Division of Fractions and Why the Second Term is Inverted.

Word Problems. Given oral presentations and standard and teacher designed worksheets, students will discern the proper operation in word problems up to and including the skill of division of fractions and decimals. Given the above criteria, students will demonstrate the ability to order decimals and fractions by value. Optionally students will demonstrate a preliminary understanding of percent through oral and written expression when given instruction and practice. Students will demonstrate the ability to convert fractions to decimals, decimals to fractions, fractions and decimals to percents and visa versa.

History and Social Science

Given 20 to 45 minute stories, myths, legends and presentations of a factual nature taken from the Ancient Cultures III: From East to West: The Civilizations of India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece students will demonstrate competencies in the following areas:

• Oral recall of the main sequence of the presentation after 24-hour interval
• Oral recall of the factual details of the presentation after 24-hour interval
• Oral recall, after a number of days, of factual details demonstrating simultaneous and sequential memory
• Collaborative written recall of main sequence of the presentation after a 24-hour interval
• Collaborative written recall of factual details of the presentation after a 24-hour interval
• Choral and individual recitation of poetry, prose and dramatizations taken from the curriculum
• Ability to follow oral and written directions related to the study of the above areas and to general classroom protocol
• Written dictations of varying lengths generated and spoken orally by the teacher from the above material. Individual goals regarding the number of words recalled are set
• Ability to draw, paint, sculpt or represent orally presented materials from curriculum areas

The following stories are a selection of those presented orally throughout the fifth grade — The Ramayana, Stories of the Buddha, Zarathustra, Gilgamesh, Isis and Osiris, Prometheus, The Fall of Troy and Alexander the Great.

Science and Geography

Given oral presentations of teachers, guest speakers and fellow students, field trips, independent and group research and projects using maps and globes and artistic experiences, students will develop an understanding of the geography of North America (Latin America is optional). The following information will be covered:

• Bordering countries
• States, capitals
• Major mountains, rivers and bodies of water
• Seasonal changes
• Specific land forms e.g., glaciers, volcanoes
• Comparisons and contrasts of various climatic zones

Students will be able to make comparisons and determine contrasts of various vegetation e.g., Alaska and Arizona, Florida and Maine). Students will express their understanding of the above experiences through the following means:

• Written work in Main Lesson books
• Drawings for Main Lesson books
• Oral reports
• Models
• Songs
• Poetry
• Biographies
• Map making

Botany

Given oral presentations, illustrations and drawings, the students are introduced to the major tenets of botany. Students will produce written work and illustrations of:

• Major categories of plants
• Terminology of plant growth and plant parts
• Cycle of plant germination and growth
• Geographical and climatologically regions of plant growth