Religion Students will deepen their understanding of the Catholic faith by studying each of the Seven Sacraments thoroughly. They will continue learning about the saints and determine how they can live by their example. Fifth grade students will participate in service activities throughout the year, such as gathering donations for Hastings Family Services and Feed My Starving Children.
Reading Students will continue to practice essential reading skills, such as drawing inferences, finding main ideas, summarizing, recognizing cause and effect, comparing and contrasting, referring to details, determining author's purpose, and analyzing characters. Vocabulary instruction will involve students using context clues, prior knowledge, and word parts to learn unknown words. Students will read selections from various types of genres and build reading fluency through oral, peer, and independent reading opportunities.
Language Arts Writing instruction will focus on producing clear and coherent writing. With input from peers and teachers, students will use the writing process to develop and strengthen their writing. Studying figurative language, parts of speech, punctuation, and sentence types will help develop writing skills.
Math Instruction will strengthen students' ability to solve real-world mathematical problems. Students will work on how to read, write, add, subtract, multiply, divide, and compare decimals. Converting between fractions and decimals will practiced. There will be a review of adding and subtracting fractions, and they will be introduced to how to multiply and divide them. Dividing multi-digit numbers will be introduced. Students will interpret and create equations involving variables and whole numbers. They will work on displaying and understanding data, as well as identifying mean, median, and mode. Students will determine the area of triangles and quadrilaterals and the surface area and volume of rectangular prisms.
Social Studies Instruction will focus on the history of the United States, as well as North America, up to the year 1800. Students will learn about societies that existed before 1500 and how events led to a period of colonization and settlement. They will study the American Revolution that culminated in the creation of a new and independent nation. Students will learn basic principles of democracy that were set forth in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
Science
Students will learn and apply the Scientific Method in their investigations throughout the year. They will learn and recognize the different forces that act on objects. Simple machines will also be introduced. Students will recognize the diversity of life and the characteristics that help species survive. Students will understand the interactions in natural systems. We will study Minnesota’s biomes. Students will learn that the Earth’s surface is continually changing by different processes; some slow and some rapid. Students will understand that humans interact with natural systems; with varying results.