5th Grade Curriculum

Language Arts

Reading:

Students in fifth grade will be completing reading and language activities through various texts. We will continue to develop phonemic awareness which is the awareness of the sounds in spoken language. Educational research has shown that phonemic awareness is significantly related to success in learning to read and spell.

In fifth grade students will practice oral fluency. Research recognizes fluency as a strong indicator of efficient, proficient reading. A fluent reader reads with accuracy at an appropriate rate, attending to phrasing. When the reading is oral, it reflects a speech-like pace.

Fluent readers can:

• Recognize words automatically
• Group individual words into meaningful phrases
• Apply strategies rapidly to identify unknown words
• Determine where to place emphasis or to pause to make sense of text

Also, the 5th grade teachers will continue to read aloud to the students on a regular basis. Reading aloud to students contributes to their motivation, comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, knowledge base, literary understanding, familiarity with academic and literary terms, sense of community, enjoyment and perhaps to a lifetime love of literature.

We will continue to practice comprehension. Reading comprehension is the complex process of constructing meaning from texts. Recent comprehension research has been guided by the idea that the process is strategic and interactive. Most students continue to need explicit instruction in comprehension skills and strategies. Typically direct instruction will consists of:

• An explanation of what the skills or strategy is and how it aids comprehension
• Teacher modeling on how to use the skill or strategy
• Working directly with students as they apply the skill or strategy, offering assistance as needed
• Having students apply the skill or strategy independently and repeatedly

Students need to learn strategies for comprehending a wide variety of texts, including fiction and nonfiction. In Grades 1-3 students learn to use specific language of literature study, such as point of view and character trait. By grades 4-6, students must have the skills, strategies, and knowledge of text structures to comprehend complex texts. Students need to be explicitly and systematically taught the organizational structure of expository text such as compare/contrast, cause/effect, and main idea and details.

Students acquire vocabulary knowledge through extensive reading in a variety of texts. A large and flexible vocabulary is characteristic of an educated person. The more words students acquire, the better chance they will have for success in reading, writing, and spelling.

Writing:

Good writing skills are critical both to students’ success and to the future of their success in society. In grade 5 instruction will continue to build advance spelling, grammar, and mechanics skills and students will then be asked to apply these skills when writing narratives, descriptions, and other extended compositions. Students will be systematically taught to apply writing conventions in purposeful writing activities linked to all subject areas.

Students will be asked to pay particular attention to adding, deleting, clarifying and rearranging text. Your child should apply these strategies to their own work on a regular basis. When writing, your child must have a clear focus, organize their ideas, use effective words and sentence structure, and be able to express their own viewpoint. In other words, continue to develop their writer's craft.

Effective writing is an art and a science.

Listening and Speaking:

By grade 5 students should be increasingly capable of :

• Delivering both narrative and expository presentations using a wide range of devices
• Model their own presentation on text structures that they have read
• Orally respond to literature that demonstrates advanced understanding and insight
• Support their interpretations with facts and specific examples
• Interpret verbal and nonverbal messages
• Analyze oral and visual messages, purposes and persuasive techniques

Listening and speaking skills are essential to achievement in both reading and writing.

Assessment:

A variety of assessment tools will be used to provide a comprehensive picture of your student’s achievement. All assessments will be sent home for your perusal and signature. These assessments need to be returned to the teacher by the next day. Thank you for your consideration.

Harcourt Reading/Language Arts Program
Distant Voyages
Senior Authors: Beck, Farr, and Strickland
Copyright: 2007 Edition