By 5th grade, students are urged to concern themselves with metacognitive issues: not just what they are learning, but how they go about learning now and in the future as they get ready to begin to prepare for their futures as middle and high school students. They explore their own learning styles, asking how they learn best and how they organize their materials and their assignment notations as well as their learning to optimize their efforts. They emphasize time management and independence, taking responsibility for their own learning. Skill sets include note-taking, outlining and studying for tests and quizzes. This involves a great deal of self-reflection as well as cooperative learning and they work together to help one another grow in skill acquisition as well as discovery. They work a great deal on their writing, workshopping and editing their work.
Critical and independent thinking is central to all their work. They read and write in all genres and they publish their own work, holding a publishing party to celebrate their output.
The following is an outline of the Core Knowledge curriculum for fifth grade:
Language Arts/English
I. Writing, Grammar and Usage
A. Writing and Research
B. Grammar and Usage
C. Vocabulary (Latin prefixes and suffixes)
D. Persuasive Essays
E. Poetry
F. Content Writing
II. Poetry
A. British: Tennyson, Blake, Lewis Carroll.
B. American: 19th Century: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow
C. American: 20th Century: Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen.
III. Fiction and Drama
A. Stories (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Don Quixote, Little Women, The Secret Garden, Sherlock Holmes.)
B. Myths and Legends
C. Drama (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
D. Literary Terms
IV. Speeches: Gettysburg Address; Chief Joseph, “I will fight no more forever.”
V. Sayings and Phrases
World History/Geography
I. World Geography
A. Spatial Sense
B. Great Lakes of the World
II. Meso-American Civilizations
A. Geography
B. Maya, Inca and Aztec Civilizations
C. Spanish Conquerors
III. European Exploration, Trade, Colonization and the Clash of Cultures
A. Portugal
B. Spain
C. England and France
D. Holland
E. Trade and Slavery
IV. The Renaissance and the Reformation
V. England from the Golden Age to the Glorious Revolution
VI. Russia: Early Growth and Expansion
VII. Feudal Japan
American History/Geography
I. Westward Expansion : Pre- and Post-Civil War
A. Pioneers
B. Indian resistance
C. “Manifest Destiny”
D. The Mexican War
E. 1862 Homestead Act
F. Transcontinental Railroad
G. 1890: The closing of the American Frontier
II. The Civil War: Causes, Conflicts, Consequences
A. Toward the Civil War
B. The Civil War
C. Reconstruction
III. Native Americans: Cultures and Conflicts
A. Culture and life
B. American Government Policies
C. Conflicts
IV. US Geography
Visual Arts (for a complete listing, click HERE)
Music (for a complete listing, click HERE)
Mathematics
I. Numbers & Number Sense
II. Ratios & Percent
III. Fractions & Decimals
A. Fractions: LCD
B. Decimals: estimate by rounding
IV. Computation
A. Addition: commutative & associative properties
B. Multiplication: by 2 factors
C. Division
D. Solving Problems & Equations
V. Measurement
VI. Geometry
VII. Probability & Statistics
VIII. Pre-Algebra
Science
I. Classifying Living Things
II. Cells: Structures & Processes
III. Plant Structures & Processes
A. Structure: Non-Vascular & Vascular Plants
B. Photosynthesis
C. Reproduction
IV. Life Cycles & Reproduction
V. The Human Body
A. Changes in Human Adolescence
B. The Endocrine System
C. The Reproductive System
VI. Chemistry: Matter & Change
A. Atoms, Molecules, & Compounds
B. Elements
C. Chemical & Physical Change
VII. Science Biographies: Galileo; Percy Lavon Julian; Just; Linnaeus
Lehrman Community Day School
727 Lehrman Drive/77th Street • Miami Beach FL 33141-2299 • v (305) 866.2771 • f (305) 865.6575
e-mail: LCDS@lehrmanschool.org