Tenacre Country Day School

Curriculum

Select a Department

Grade 5

With the ability to ponder more abstract concepts, Fifth Graders enjoy the opportunity to expand their thinking, learn time-management skills and how to study more effectively. As part of a yearlong focus on United States history, students read historical fiction, engage in lively debates, and visit historic sites around Boston. Academic letter grades are introduced for the first time in 5th Grade. Students read and perform a Shakespearean play, visit the Farm School in western Massachusetts, and participate in a community service project.

  • Reading

    • Comprehension skills - factual, inferential
    • Literary analysis - character, plot, theme, setting
    • Vocabulary development
    • Intro. to Wm. Shakespeare: read & perform a play
    • Novels relating to social studies topics, historical fiction
    • Oral reading/public speaking
    • Independent reading

  • Writing

    • Writing process, emphasizing sensory imagery, description, imagination
    • Journal writing, newspaper articles
    • Proofreading and editing skills
    • Mechanics of writing
    • Grammar, parts of speech
    • 5-paragraph essay, creative writing
    • Spelling

  • Mathematics

    Utilizing the Singapore Math program, fifth graders develop a strong understanding of mathematical concepts and proficiency with computation. They build solid number sense and robust reasoning skills, spending part of every 60-minute math period in daily practice with mental arithmetic and problem solving. Fifth grade math is taught in three small flexible groups to allow teachers to differentiate material to best support each child. At the beginning of each unit, students are pretested and assessment results are used as part of the planning process for instruction.
     
    Concepts/Skills:
    • Place value concepts to 1 billion 
    • Using various strategies (including bar models) to solve multi-step word problems
    • Accurately add, subtract, multiply, and divide whole numbers, fractions and decimals
    • Understand and represent numbers using ratios
    • Convert fractions and decimals to percents
    • Calculate mean, median, range, and mode
    • Calculate the area and perimeter of triangles and quadrilaterals 

  • Social Studies

    • Presidential election (every 4 years)
    • American History - Explorers through Westward Migration
    • U.S. geography west of the 13 Colonies
    • Physical maps, graphs, charts, tables
    • Research skills, independent research projects
    • Field trips to The Farm School, Freedom Trail, and the JFK Museum during presidential election years
    • Current events

  • Science

    In Grades 4-6 grade science, classes include lectures, discussions, hands-on independent and collaborative projects, labs, outdoor garden/nature classes, animal care, and field trips. Listed below are units of study and highlights of content and skills covered.

    Fifth-grade science begins with a deep dive into the Engineering Design Process (EDP) with the hot air balloon project. In this long-time tradition and favorite STEM project, students work in collaborative groups to design and build 3-meter tall hot air balloons that they launch on our campus. Through this process, students learn about such science concepts as the behavior and properties of gases, the atmosphere, buoyancy, energy, weather, and gravity. Students pay close attention to the weather on a daily basis and decide what the optimal conditions are for launching their balloons. They do this by navigating various online weather sites and collecting weather data daily for several weeks. At the same time, they are following the EDP and learning how to collaborate and problem-solve with their teammates.

    This is a challenging project with a huge reward. After launching their balloons, students begin to learn about Earth’s atmosphere in more depth and become more familiar with what’s going on outside of the troposphere, eventually leading us to outer space to study astronomy. Fifth-grade science is quite a journey!

    Science Process Skills:
    • Students continue to practice and hone basic skills, including observation, inference, measurement, communication, classification and predicting.
    • Students develop and practice integrated skills, including controlling and identifying variables, forming hypotheses, creating graphs and interpreting data, experimenting (including designing experiments), and formulating models to communicate understanding.
    Other Major Topics of Study/Projects/Highlights:
    • Life Science: cell structure, comparing plant and animal cells.
    • Earth/Space Science: weather and climate Studies, Earth’s atmosphere, water cycle, astronomy (Constellation Project, STEM)
    • Physical Science: hot air balloons (STEM, buoyancy), electricity (STEM, Operation game)
    • Animal care
    • Gardening
    • RAG (Random Acts of Greenness, environmental club)
    • Field trip to the Christa McAuliffe Challenger Center (planetarium and simulated mission to Mars)

  • Spanish

    In fifth grade, performance-based instruction becomes more important. This type of instruction focuses on what students can do with what they know, allowing them to achieve mastery of grade-level vocabulary and proficiency in grammar while becoming more conversational. Language settings and classroom activities that engage students in meaningful and purposeful language use are fostered. Translation is minimized and guessing meaning by context is encouraged. Language instruction turns to 90% in the target language, and it is expected that fifth graders start expressing themselves in full sentences in the target language in written and oral form. Errors are expected: they are part of the learning process. 

    In the cultural focus, students continue to learn about the history of different Spanish speaking countries, expressing historical facts in the present form. Students continue to learn about the influence of other cultures in Spanish-speaking countries and explore how a binary language fits in the plurality of our society.

    Fifth Graders will:
    • Participate in classroom activities that engage students in meaningful and purposeful language use, as instruction transitions to 90% in the target language
    • Begin expressing themselves in full sentences in Spanish in written and in oral form. Errors are expected and are part of the learning process.
    • Speak in the present tense with regular and irregular and reflexives verbs
    • Master the use of verbs “ser” and “estar” to express “to be”
    • Express the immediate future with the expression “to be going to plus the verb infinitive”
    • Frequently used vocabulary is extended with approximately 300 new words 
    • Continue to learn about different Spanish speaking countries, centering on history and expressing historical facts in the historical present form
    • Keep learning more about the influence of other cultures in Spanish-speaking countries and explore how a binary language fits in the plurality of our society

  • Music

    Fifth-grade musicians start to take more ownership of their creativity. As they work towards performance goals, they are now in a position to improvise and direct some of their work. The fifth grade play is a straight (non-musical) play, allowing students to become more comfortable with acting. They participate in the spring musical, taking on increased responsibility on stage. They also continue to improve their vocal technique and instrumental skills. Areas of focus include:
    •  Singing technique
    • Hand signs solfege
    • Melody and harmony
    • Theme and variations
    • Performance preparation for December Celebration
    • Science of Sound
    • Ukulele
    • Participation in the spring musical

  • Art

    Students in fifth-grade continue to explore a variety of materials and different techniques. They begin to engage in personal expression through art and deeper level thinking. Students learn how to accurately render people, places, and objects through figure drawing and still life studies. They take a field trip to the Museum of Fine Arts in connection with their colonial revolution unit and delve into a biography study of an artist of their choice. 
    Skills: 
    • to explore and practice using media that relate with their own artistic style 
    • to study master artists and learn from their body of work 
    • to focus on creative expression through creating a body of work accompanied by an artist statement 
    • to select and use a variety of subject matter, symbols, and ideas to communicate meaning
    • to reflect upon the artistic process of gathering ideas, planning, designing, creating, refining, and critiquing

  • Technology

    Grade 5 students continue their design technology education via inquiry and empathy-based challenges, as well as emphasis on entrepreneurialism and marketing. Recent project highlights include Shoe Factory 3D CAD and fabrication challenge and the Techademy Awards video production and critique challenge.

    Main knowledge skills focus:
    • programming and robotics
    • 2D CAD
    • 3D CAD
    • engineering/fabrication
    • design and iterative process
    • video production
    • digital image editing
    • digital music composition

  • Physical Education


    • Skills in interscholastic team sports (3 seasons): soccer/field hockey, basketball, baseball/softball
    • Cooperative games and activities
    • Tennis
    • Healthy lifestyles unit
    • Fitness
    • Football/lacrosse mini-unit
    • Handball
    • Ultimate Frisbee
    • Street hockey
    • Outdoor winter adventure program: cross-country skiing, downhill skiing

  • Library

    Grade 5: Formal research process and information literacy skills with emphasis on evaluating resources for accuracy and readability

    Literature appreciation
    • Share love of literature and authors with formal and informal book reviews and recommendations
    • Choose a variety of genre books for pleasure 
    Information Literacy Skills
    • Inquiry based research: how do art styles change over time and why?
    • Cite sources
    • Evaluate a variety of resources, especially web based sites for credibility, relevancy, authorship, bias, design, and ease of location of information, and purpose
    • Assess questions to determine which can be answered by fact finding and which require deeper inquiry based synthesis
    • Distinguish between and use appropriately main idea facts and their supporting details
    • Use an organizational system such as graphic organizers or traditional outline to arrange information logically
    Lifelong learning
    • Identify genre preferences
    • Recommend titles to others
    Develop curiosity for information problems and solutions

Faculty

Tenacre Country Day School

78 Benvenue Street, Wellesley, MA 02482
P. 781-235-2282      F. 781-237-7057
Summer Programs 781-235-3238
Tenacre Country Day School

About Tenacre

We are a private school for
pre-kindergarten to grade 6.