Overview & Highlights

Curriculum Highlights

Religion: 

The religion curriculum that the fifth grade works from is called “One in Christ”, from Concordia Publishing House.

Social Studies: 

The first semester the class concentrates on the first Americans, and when they meet and have conflict with the Native Americans. In the second semester the class starts to learn about the fight the colonies have for independence and when they join to make a new nation. Also in the second semester the class learns about slavery and the civil war.

Science:

The class covers many topics starting with learning more about “life science” and how to classify plants and animals. Then they will continue to learn about plants; their characteristics, parts, life cycle and the interactions and changes in different ecosystems. The class also covers the systems of the human body and how the cells of our body form to create our systems. “Earth science” is studied to learn about the water cycle and weather patterns. The class also studies the changes in the Earth surface, and protecting Earth’s natural resources. In “physical science,” the class learns about the properties and changes of matter, electricity, changing forms of energy, and objects in motion.

Math:

The 5th grade Math program starts with a review of what was learned in fourth grade. After the review, we begin collecting, organizing and using data, and then jump into measurement and parts of geometry. We work on division and multiplication of decimals. The class will end the year with more work on geometry; different types of shapes, measuring and drawing angles.

Language Arts: 

In 5th grade language arts students begin by learning and reviewing all eight parts of speech. Following this we turn our attention to phrases, clauses and different types of sentence structures. This is designed to help them become better writers as they begin to enter the upper grades. Punctuation is also examined, as is the way each part of speech functions within sentences with various structures.

Reading:

In 5th grade, we work out of basal reading books in addition to doing novel studies. The novels include The Sign of the Beaver and The Phantom Tollbooth. 

We also work on different reading concepts including drawing conclusions, summarizing, using context clues, cause and effect, compare and contrast, setting and picking out plots.

Accelerated Reader:  Accelerated Reader is designed to build a student’s comprehension of stories. Accelerated Reader books are worth a certain amount of points; students earn points once they have completed and passed a quiz on a book. At the beginning of the year each student is given a goal, once they reach their goal, a prize is given to those students who reach or double their goals. The Accelerated Reader program can be incorporated into our ’20 minutes of reading per day’ that is required in 5th grade and our BOOK IT reading program.

Physical Education:

Our Physical Education program covers all of the major sports while concentrating of gross motor skills. In the winter, we have a unit on bowling utilizing carpet bowling lanes from Wood Dale Bowl. We wrap this unit up with a Valentine’s Bowling Party at Wood Dale Bowl!

Field Trips:

 We enhance classroom learning with field trips. In the past, we have visited the Itasca Nature Center, and the zoo. Also, we try to take advantage of the incredible museums that the city of Chicago offers.