Grade 5 Curriculum









Language Arts (English)

Reading & Literature

  • Read historical fiction related to the colonial, Revolutionary War, and pioneer periods
  • Identify and summarize plot of story
  • Recognize important themes in a piece of literature
  • Recognize and identify foreshadowing
  • Recognize figurative language and personification
  • Review similes and metaphors
  • Read for information; select important facts
  • Recognize and identify the development of the main characters in a story

Writing

  • Use figurative language: similes, metaphors, personification
  • Use first person narrative
  • Write a friendly letter using appropriate format
  • Write a 4 or 5 paragraph book report that includes a plot summary, description of main character(s), and a critique
  • Express the main idea in the first of several paragraphs
  • Use details and examples to support main idea
  • Work to eliminate sentence fragments and run-ons
  • Use quotation marks properly
  • Use and spell correctly homonyms, synonyms, antonyms
  • Write a research paper on an assigned topic; include bibliography

Mathematics

  • Explore multi-digit multiplication and division using a variety of methods including algorithms
  • Make sense of remainders in a variety of contexts
  • Use fraction, percent, and decimal equivalencies
  • Represent, compare, and order fractions, decimals, and percents
  • Find decimals that are smaller than, larger than, or in between other decimals
  • Add and subtract fractions with common and different denominators
  • Reduce fractions to lowest terms
  • Add and subtract decimals
  • Approximate data as familiar fractions and percents, and in circle graphs
  • Work with multiples, primes, composites, square numbers
  • Design 3D shapes
  • Solve problems with one solution and more than one solution; recognize that some problems have no solutions
  • Understand place value to billions and thousandths
  • Develop strategies for determining and comparing distances between numbers
  • Understand the concept of volume and units of volume
  • Develop, use, describe, and justify methods of determining volume
  • Use geometric solids to design models and to determine their volume
  • Use the cubic centimeter as a unit for measuring volume
  • Identify mean, median, mode and know when to use each; use the ordered data in a stem plot to locate measures of center (median and mode) and measure of spread

Tanakh

  • Study selections from Numbers, Leviticus, Joshua, Judges, Ruth
  • Discuss social skills and code of behavior, past and present
  • Focus on mitzvot of reverence for parents and loving one’s neighbor
  • Recognize the strengths and flaws of leaders
  • Study the geography of Israel and conquest of Canaan
  • Understand the methods and tactics used by Joshua to conquer the land
  • Understand that leaving people without a leader creates anarchism

Hebrew

  • Begin to drop vowels in reading
  • Use correct infinitive form
  • Use connecting words and prepositions; conjugate and recognize conjugated prepositions
  • Read Rashi script
  • Write paragraph with main idea and supporting details
  • Summarize and evaluate Hebrew texts orally and in writing
  • Identify and understand the structure of compound words
  • Understand the difference between direct and indirect speech and learn to identify it in a given text

Science

Hands-on and inquiry-based

Earth Science - Geology: Stories in Stone

  • Compare the properties of various rocks and minerals
  • Build clay models of the rock cycle to demonstrate the formation of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks
  • Make crystals to understand their formations

Life Science - Botany

  • Plant and grow Wisconsin fast plants; record daily growth and development; harvest and thresh
  • Conduct hands-on experiment with plants
  • Learn terms and vocabulary related to plant cycle: germination, cotyledon, growth spurt; identify terms and articulate function of flower parts
  • Pollinate flowers with a bee

Physical Science - Astronomy

  • Understand the reasons for seasons
  • Understand reasons for variations in hours of daylight at different times of year and in different locations
  • Track changes in the length of the day
  • Track the path of the sun
  • Study the moon’s size and distance from earth
  • Observe lunar surface features
  • Model the moon’s phases
  • Construct a telescope
  • Recognize constellation groups in relation to earth’s orbit around the sun

Special unit: Learn vocabulary and concepts related to adolescent development

Social Studies

Theme: Understanding Change and Diversity

  • Study history as a process, using primary sources, with an emphasis on evolving views
  • Study explorers and early settlers of the New World
  • Understand different perspectives (i.e. Native American vs. European)
  • Study the “other” 1492 – Expulsion of Jews from Spain; learn about the Inquisition
  • Examine the early settlements and thirteen colonies; note similarities and differences among colonies and regions
  • Study the Jewish experience in New Amsterdam and Newport
  • Investigate the slave trade
  • Explore the growing unrest in the colonies
  • Understand causes of the Revolution: French and Indian War; taxation without representation
  • Examine Revolutionary War strategies and the importance of help from other countries
  • Examine the influence of geography on history and importance of natural resources
  • Examine landforms of the United States
  • Identify natural resources of the New World
  • Use different types of maps
  • Study the westward expansion and acquisition of territory
  • Examine the pioneer experience
  • Take a walking tour of Boston sites

Fine Arts

Music

Topic: Early Americana

  • Focus on early settlers and lyrical analysis
  • Learn function of drum and fife; compare drum and fife to chalil and pentatonic modes
  • Learn and perform contra dance and song games of colonial America
  • Learn and sing patriotic songs
  • Perform revue of American musicology
  • Emphasize part singing
  • Understand differences between sacred and secular music and their societal functions; work directly from the machzor
  • Passover – focus on more esoteric melodies and hand drumming for nirtzah section (sephardi, Iraqu, etc.)
  • Study symphonic music; attend symphony concerts; listen to Carnival of the Animals

Art

  • View and learn history of Jewish paper cuts; create an original design for decoration of the beit tefillah area
  • Learn styles of calligraphy: italics, uncial, old English, Hebrew; design a piece based on the haggadah
  • Use copper wire and pliers to create the human form in the correct proportions
  • Make etrog box
  • Create multi-media poster on subject of diversity for Anti-Defamation League calendar contest

Library

  • Solve problems posed in Standing on One Foot
  • Work on research project about New World explorers in conjunction with social studies curriculum
  • Learn to use biography database section of the library page of the SSDS website
  • Evaluate a website to determine reliability
  • Learn to use public library websites and other resources to locate books that are not part of the Jay Orlin Library collection
  • Listen carefully to Longfellow poem about Paul Revere’s ride; determine how to find facts to differentiate what really happened and what did not
  • Read historical fiction book about a person or family that immigrates to another country

Physical Education

Two-year curriculum for grades 4 and 5

  • Begin every class with warm-ups: running, jumping jacks, stretching
  • Work on skills, sportsmanship, critical thinking, teamwork, and game rules related to soccer, flag football, field hockey, floor hockey, basketball, volleyball, whiffleball (introduction to baseball

Tefillot (Prayers)

  • Learn the introduction to morning service
  • Chant Birkot HaShahar, P’sukei D’zimra
  • Understand the construction of the Shema and its blessing; recognize that the Shema is a central prayer focusing on the love between God and the people of Israel
  • Understand the subject of Yotzer: God the creator of light and darkness
  • Understand the concept of Gevurot: God’s heroism in the Amidah prayer
  • Comprehend main ideas of Al Ha-Nissim, blessing for candle-lighting
  • Become familiar with the musical “trope” system of chanting and chant from the Torah scroll

Social Competency

Schechter’s emphasis on Jewish values promotes derekh eretz, behavior that is respectful and considerate of others. The Second Step Program involves regular discussions on topics including:

  • Empathy training: cause and effect, intentions, fairness, active listening, expressing concern, accepting differences
  • Impulse control: resisting the impulse to lie, dealing with peer pressure, dealing with gossip, resisting the temptation to cheat, setting goals

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