Grade 5

As the culminating year of elementary school, fifth grade offers an opportunity for students to showcase all that they’ve learned throughout the years and prepare themselves for what awaits them in middle school. Our fifth grade classrooms are communities of learning, where students learn and work collaboratively while applying and extending the many skills and strategies they have acquired. Students are expected to demonstrate increasing independence toward themselves and their learning.

Reading, writing, speaking and listening are taught across all content areas, providing our diverse student population with multiple opportunities for sharing and growing. Students are encouraged to cooperate, create, connect, reflect and make meaning in a risk-free environment. Classrooms of learners work together and in small groups to develop social skills and cooperative work habits. Lessons are tailored to embrace different learning styles and aptitudes.

Each day in grade five, there is time for balanced literacy work and mathematics. Students read together and independently on a wide variety of topics, sometimes enjoying a whole-class novel study or literature circle book. Social studies learning and scientific exploration take place throughout the week, as does music and art classes, physical education classes and lessons for developing digital literacy and research skills. Fifth graders receive 45 minutes of daily, leveled French instruction.

Non-proficient English language learners in the fifth grade receive support during language arts instruction. Fifth graders who have had an educational evaluation that identifies specific learning needs receive support during the French instructional block and do not participate in the French program at ISD.

Please click on the program guide to learn more about our fifth grade program.