UPVA 5th Grade | Course Descriptions
UPVA 5th Grade | Course Descriptions
UPVA 5th Grade | Course Descriptions
Language Arts 500
In English Language Arts 5, students solidify their foundational skills in reading, writing, spelling, speaking, and listening. Students read a variety of texts this year, including fiction, nonfiction, and informational texts. They identify the author’s purpose in multiple forms of writing, such as descriptive, expository, technical, persuasive, and narrative passages. Through these texts, they learn to make inferences and analyze multiple accounts of the same event. They also identify, interpret, and compare similes, metaphors, and idioms used in writing and learn to draw a plot diagram and to identify common themes in literature. This year, students write a five-paragraph essay and an effective thesis statement. They follow the writing process to develop essays, create outlines to organize their ideas, and revise and improve their original draft. Students also write a persuasive letter, a speech, and a script. This course teaches and reinforces spelling rules, such as i before e, while also focusing on the spelling of words ending in a silent e, commonly misspelled words, and words with multiple syllables. Students sharpen their research skills by learning to use notecards for research, gathering information about the same topic from multiple sources, and understanding plagiarism and the importance of writing in their own words. They also practice citing sources by creating a bibliography. Students enhance their presentation skills by reporting on a text or topic, telling a story, retelling an experience, or presenting an opinion in an organized way while using facts and details to support the main idea.
Math 500
Mathematics 5 focuses on developing students’ math skills and problem-solving strategies. Problems and activities are designed to get students reasoning abstractly and quantitatively, constructing arguments, and modeling with mathematics. Students add, subtract, and multiply fractions, divide fractions by whole numbers, and divide whole numbers by fractions. They perform multiple operations with decimals in addition to comparing, ordering, and rounding them. They use exponents to denote powers of 10. Students are introduced to volume and how to calculate it and classify two-dimensional shapes into categories. They also graph data on a plot line and the coordinate plane, using graphs to solve real-word and mathematical problems..
Science 500
Science 5 puts the emphasis on doing science. Students build their knowledge by crafting models, conducting experiments, creating terrariums, and making electromagnets. They learn about plant and animal cells and their functions, photosynthesis, and the roles of producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem. Students explore the global water cycle, the negative impacts of weather, and the relationship between weather and climate. They deepen their understanding of their home planet by investigating landforms, volcanic activity, the layers of the Earth’s atmosphere and geosphere, the tilt of the Earth’s axis, the impacts of its revolution around the Sun, and the Sun’s role as source of energy for life on Earth. Students are introduced to elements as the basic substances of all matter and the relationship between matter and particles; they also encounter such core concepts of physics as energy transformation, gravitation, and Newton’s first and second laws of motion. They design simple and parallel circuits and use the engineering design process to generate solutions to real-world problems. Finally, they conduct research, formulate questions, make predictions and observations, conduct fair tests using the scientific method, record their findings, and draw conclusions for future investigation.
Social Studies 500
Social Studies 5 puts American history front and center, as students learn about the Native American civilizations of the Americas, the discovery of the New World by European explorers, the founding of the United States, westward expansion, and the coming of the Industrial Revolution. Students leverage research skills to analyze historical events and documents, and they present their findings using arguments based on reliable sources with supporting facts. They refine their ability to distinguish fact from opinion in the context of historical investigation. Students also broaden their understanding of government by recognizing how the system of checks and balances works at both national and state levels, and they identify and interpret important songs and symbols of the United States. Civic responsibility is woven throughout the curriculum, and students recognize the value of public service and the traits of good leaders. Social Studies 5 also explores the themes, tools, and techniques of geography. Students learn how human interaction with the environment has caused change, both beneficial and detrimental, in the past and in the present. Finally, they learn how the U.S. economy functions, including the role of government and multinational organizations in domestic and international trade.
Spelling 500
In the fifth-grade spelling course, students will delve into relevant spelling rules and word families throughout thirty weeks of instruction. Students will practice phonics skills including phonograms, compound words, and vowel-consonant-vowel patterns. Course units also include significant incorporation of word parts such as prefixes and suffixes. Units include review of base and root words, silent words, and homophones. These lessons not only meet instructional needs for spelling, but also reinforce language arts skills including application of the writing process and reading comprehension. Each unit represents a specific spelling rule or word family.