Supplies Needed for 5th Grade

Your fifth-grader knows what's hot at school -- make sure you know what's necessary. Here's a list of supplies he'll need.

Most classroom teachers will require these supplies, and some teachers may ask that you provide additional items as well:

#2 pencils

12" ruler with centimeters and inches

Assignment notebook

Blue, black, and red ballpoint pens

Colored pencils

Crayons

Erasers

Glue

Highlighter

Map pencil

Pencil pouch

Pocket folders

Protractor

Sharp-pointed scissors

Spiral notebooks

Three-ring binder

Tissues

Water-based markers

Wide-lined notebook paper

Homework Help for Parents

1. Show an interest in your child's homework assignments. Ask about the subjects and the work to be done.

2. Be a role model -- take the opportunity to read a book or newspaper while your child studies. Reading together helps create a learning atmosphere.

3. Teach your child how to be organized. Be sure he or she keeps a homework assignment book.

4. Eliminate as many distractions as possible during study time.

5. Develop a strategy for dealing with homework. Find a plan that works for your family and stick with it.

6. Try to relate the homework to your child's everyday life. For instance, fractions and measurements can be learned as the child prepares a favorite food.

7. Encourage your child to establish a regular time to do homework. Developing a schedule might help avoid procrastination.

8. Meet with your child's teacher to discuss the nature of the approach to reading, spelling and other topics that your child is being taught.

9. Make sure your child has a specific place to do homework that offers ample lighting, minimal noise and plenty of work space.

10. Praise your child for successfully completing homework. Nothing builds self-esteem like praise from parents.

Reprinted from the Coordinated Campaign for Learning Disabilities (CCLD). Call 1-888-478-6463 for important resources and information about learning disabilities.

Your Growing 5th Grader

Where They Are
The average ten-year-old has a positive approach to life. She:

Tends to be obedient, good natured, and fun.

Possesses a surprising scope of interests.

Finds TV very important and identifies with TV characters.

Is capable of increasing independence.

Is becoming more truthful and dependable.

Tends to be improving her self-concept and acceptance of others.

Forms good personal relationships with teachers and counselors.

Where They're Going
At ten years old, your child is developing communication skills and becoming more mature. You can help by encouraging him as he:

Improves his listening and responding skills.

Increases his problem-solving abilities.

Begins to undergo maturational changes.

Gains awareness of peer and adult expectations.

Brought to you by the American School Counselor Association

Common Questions

What's the right size for my child's class?

Parents have an intuitive sense that the class should be small during the earliest years of school, from kindergarten through third grade. But class size is also very important throughout the intermediate grades. Ideally, a fifth-grade classroom should have fewer than 22 children, although 22 to 25 is an acceptable size.

Class size should be designed to allow plenty of individual attention. The more attention the teacher can give to each child, and the more experiences the teacher can help each child have, the better. As class size goes beyond 25 students, the potential for individual interaction decreases considerably.

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How much time should my child spend on homework each night?

Homework is commonly assigned by teachers in the intermediate grades. While some teachers believe that homework is unnecessary, I believe homework can be useful, especially if it's interesting, goes beyond the daily school activities, and is aimed at deepening you child's understanding of what is being studied. A good homework assignment, prompted by a powerful question, might ask the student to interpret, synthesize, or reconstruct something (an idea or problem).

Homework assignments in the fifth grade might include:

Read the new story you wrote to your mother or father.

Read for 40 minutes on your own.

Think about words related to democracy or responsibility.

Write an essay about fairness or about ways to improve the school.

Scan the editorial page of your local newspaper and note the themes: economic issues, personalities, and world events.

A fifth-grader might also be expected to complete some mathematics problems or design a science experiment. But at this age homework should not take more than 70 minutes. If your child's assignments regularly exceed this limit--or if there's no homework--ask to speak with her teacher.

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Should my child use a computer?

Many children today use computers at home at age 5 or 6, and a growing number of schools have installed computers in primary-grade classrooms. Much can be done with computers, especially in word processing, mathematics, model building, and problem-solving exercises. And some of the programs now available give children access to large museums and artistic collections, as well as to various archives and their documents. In addition, some video games emphasize problem solving and could be used in the classroom.

By fifth grade, children should be far along in their ability to use the computer for a variety of purposes. Parents should be attuned to their child's level of knowledge and skill regarding computers. If your fifth-grader is not a confident computer user, you should talk with his teacher.

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When should my child begin studying a foreign language?

Some schools -- and the numbers are still very small -- begin foreign languages in the early primary grades, often in two-way bilingual programs. In such programs, half the children might be Spanish speakers, for example, and the other half would speak no Spanish. Each group learns the other's language.

In most schools that offer foreign language study for elementary students, however, such study usually begins in the intermediate grades. The United States is far behind most other industrialized countries in second-language programs. All schools should offer a second language at the intermediate level, if not before. Studying a second language not only provides valuable insights into another culture and enriches the child's world, but also greatly strengthens the child's understanding of his or her native language. Make sure that your child's school understands the importance of foreign-language programs.

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Are field trips a good use of class time?

Fifth-grade children become more engaged in activities outside of school, such as field trips to museums, nature preserves, planetariums, craft centers, businesses, and service organizations. Some parents question the purpose of such activities and wonder what their children are learning from them. Parents may be concerned that children are missing the "real" education by visiting a museum when they should be having math class.

It's clear, however, that field trips do enhance classroom learning. A field trip to a museum or factory can make real and concrete what's being studied in the classroom -- it's one thing to read about dinosaurs and look at pictures of them and quite another to stand gazing up at the skeleton of a T-Rex. In fact, rather than worrying about too much out-of-classroom activity, parents should be concerned if their children seem to spend virtually all of every day within the confines of the school.

Reprinted from 101 Educational Conversations with Your 5th Grader by Vito Perrone, published by Chelsea House Publishers.
Copyright 1994 by Chelsea House Publishers, a division of Main Line Book Co. All rights reserved.

Talking to Your 5th Grader about Language and the Arts

• You should try to do some reading with your child on a regular basis. By now you know that as your child moves forward through the grades, his or her schedule becomes more active and self-initiated. You have probably find that it is not as easy as it once was to engage in daily reading together. At a minimum, though, try to spend some time on Sunday afternoons or evenings to read from authors such as Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Fenimore Cooper, Charlotte Bronte, Jack London, Langston Hughes, Virginia Sneve, Bret Harte, Alex Haley, or Louisa May Alcott, Edith Hamilton, C.S. Lewis, Sally Benson, or Paul Laurence Dunbar. Your child's interest in the stories you read will tell you a great deal about his or her development in listening and comprehension.
• Begin making a journal of good times together -- possibly the highlights of a trip, vacation, or family holiday. You and your child can each make entries. Read through what you have written from time to time.
• Read newspaper headlines together and try to figure out what the story is about. You might also make a point of reading aloud to each other one newspaper story every day. This will help make the newspaper important to your child, as well as provide reading practice. Moreover, it does not take a great deal of time.
• Get in the habit of clipping from the newspaper things you think your child might find interesting -- human interest stories, cartoons, news related to the local environment. Such pieces are natural starting points for conversation.
• Committing things to memory is a good exercise throughout the intermediate and middle school years. Each of you memorize a poem or story to tell to the other -- one in the fall and one in the spring. The presentations can be family events.
• Buy books for your child for special occasions. This is a way to tell your child that you value reading and ideas. It also gives you a chance to build later conversations around the books you have bought, by asking, "How was the book? What was the mystery?" and the like.
• As your child reads, find time to ask, "What is the book about? Who are the characters? What are they like? Where does the story take place?" Most children like to talk about what they are reading, as long as they do not perceive the questions to be either suspicious inquisitions or rote inquiries devoid of real interest.
• Take your child to the movies occasionally -- rather than just sending him or her to the movies. You will not only enjoy the outing together, but the event will give you a natural opportunity for conversation about the film's character, setting, theme, moral dilemmas, and so on.
• Each of you write an explanation of how to do something. For example, your child might decide to write a description of how to ride a bike while you will describe how to swim. Then see if your descriptions make sense to one another. Would your child's explanation help someone ride a bike for the first time?

Reprinted from 101 Educational Conversations with Your 5th Grader by Vito Perrone, published by Chelsea House Publishers.
Copyright 1994 by Chelsea House Publishers, a division of Main Line Book Co. All rights reserved.

Language Arts in 5th Grade

What Kids Should Already Know
As children enter the fifth grade, most are capable enough as readers and writers, and they have also learned to use spoken language successfully. As I pointed out earlier, they are able to use books both for enjoyment and as useful sources of information. They also know how to use a library and are comfortable doing so. They use writing for a variety of purposes; they understand the writing process, including the value of responses from their peers and revisions; and they have a good sense of authorship. They can also use spoken language effectively in a variety of settings -- in discussions, oral reports, plays, explanations, and the like. They understand that language can be used in many different ways.

What Kids Should Learn in Reading
Where reading is concerned, the teacher's main task in grade five -- and throughout the intermediate grades -- is to keep children reading. This means continually enlarging classroom libraries, making extensive use of school and community libraries, referring the children to new books, talking about books, reading to the children from increasingly complex works, and working with librarians and other teachers to organize such events as schoolwide book fairs and author visits for the children.

While some schools have organized the language arts curriculum around American literature in the fifth grade, most teachers believe it is more important to keep children reading many different kinds of literature, as their interests guide them, than to concentrate exclusively on a particular country, genre, or period. Regardless of the geographic focus, if any, the study of literature may be organized around themes. Survival is a popular theme in fifth grade classrooms. When reading is organized around this theme, for example, students will

• read stories of adventure
• be asked to compare and contrast elements of the various accounts they read
• explain similarities and differences
• give their own definitions of such concepts as fear and courage
• write their own survival tales.

But even in classrooms that use this thematic approach to literature, the teacher's attitude toward reading should be inclusive, rather than narrowly limiting. Children need to know that when they become readers, a very large world is available to them. In the best settings, teachers will do everything they can to help children step into that large world -- and stay in it.

What Kids Should Learn About Writing
Writing is closely related to reading. Teachers should make sure that children write every day and that they see themselves as active communicators: writers of journals and letters, authors of poetry, biography, and fiction. Teachers know that writing improves with practice and that writing and thinking are closely intertwined, so they hold daily writing workshops -- periods when children write, revise, and discuss their work. In some schools teachers say that there is not enough time for daily writing workshops. There has to be time!

Writing portfolios that contain files of children's past writing, recently completed works, and writing in progress should be well established by the fifth grade. Viewing this work over time is important to a child's self-evaluation and growth; in addition, the portfolio helps the teacher determine what kind of guidance and assistance each child needs.

Fifth grade children will confidently be writing cursive script rather than printing. They should get a good deal of practice with cursive writing in the course of their studies, although they will also do much of their formal writing -- reports, essays, and the like -- on the computer. Because teachers know that autobiographical and reflective writing is a good means of reinforcing the writing-thinking connection, children are encouraged to keep journals in which they record questions and insights about the various subjects they study as well as personal reflections.

Children will know how to use most of the common writing conventions, including punctuation marks, paragraphing, and verb tenses. They will also know how to write dialogues, explanations, and comparisons, although they may not be equally skilled in all of these types of writing. They should, however, be reasonably familiar with narrative, descriptive writing, explanatory exposition, persuasive writing, business writing, and letters to friends.

What Kids Should Learn About Speaking
The oral aspects of language -- especially effective speaking -- are always important. Teachers view both speaking and listening as closely related to reading and writing. Children are given many opportunities to speak in a variety of contexts: telling and retelling stories, participating in focused discussions about particular topics, sharing information with other children, giving formal speeches, appearing in plays and readers' theater, reading published poems or their own writings aloud.

Children are also encouraged to examine how language is used in the home, the neighborhood, and the media and to develop an understanding of the power of the spoken word. It would be good if all children became anthropologists of language, observing the various ways that different people use words to say hello or good bye, to name things, and to express emotions such as joy and anger. Children should develop an appreciation of dialects and of cultural differences in language use; this will help make them aware of the diversity and flexibility of language.

Reprinted from 101 Educational Conversations with Your 5th Grader by Vito Perrone, published by Chelsea House Publishers.
Copyright 1994 by Chelsea House Publishers, a division of Main Line Book Co. All rights reserved.

Talking to Your 5th Grader about Social Studies

• Watch the television news together on occasion. Let the events on the news -- human interest stories, hurricanes, elections, and the peoples and circumstances of other countries -- become a basis for conversation. You might also watch documentaries about historical figures with your child; biography is a good basis for helping children learn about history. Such documentaries are becoming more common, especially on public television and certain cable networks. Documentary programs are also available on videocassette and can be checked out of libraries and rented from many video stores.
• Children in intermediate grades will notice and ask about the problems that they see around them: homelessness drugs, and conflict. It is good to talk about these issues. Ask your child whether he or she is discussing such topics in school. Does your child have unanswered questions?
• Look at photographs together. Family pictures showing you and your child at different ages are a good choice. Ask, "What can you remember about these earlier times? What is different now?" You will find that your child will not tire of looking at pictures of family members.
• Ask your child about how we know the actual shape of North America, South America, and the other countries. This is a way to see what your child understands about mapmaking, and it also offers an opportunity to discuss and examine maps and satellite photos of the earth.
• Using a map of the United States, discuss each region: its topography, its largest cities, its industries or economic activity, its population demographics, the historical events that happened there, and so on. You might start with a region where your family has lived in the past, or where a relative or friend lives, and then branch out into other regions.
• Have your child place various events into chronological order. Try the following events: the voyages of Christopher Columbus, the Mayflower Compact, the establishment of Jamestown Colony by the British, the Norse exploration of North America, and the development of Native American societies.
• The era of European exploration -- roughly the 15th through 18th centuries -- fascinates children. You and your child can discuss many questions related to this era: Why were the European governments so interested in exploring the world? What was Columbus's purpose in sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean? What did people know about the world when Columbus set sail? Why has Columbus become so controversial?
• Children study the American colonies in considerable detail in the fifth grade. There are many ways to get your child to share what he or she is learning. You might inquire, "How much religious freedom did the Massachusetts Puritans allow? Why did they take the position they took on religious freedom? What were some of the differences between the colonies? Why did slavery take hold in the Americas? What have you learned about the Middle Passage?
• The American Revolution is covered in fifth-grade social studies. See whether your child knows why some colonists were opposed to the revolution and remained loyal to Britain.

Social Studies in 5th Grade

History and geography are distinct fields of study in the fifth grade, although they should be linked whenever possible to what is being studied in language arts and in science. By fifth grade children are able to use several different kinds of maps. Further, they are able to use primary sources -- historical records, diaries, newspapers, and the like -- to enlarge their understanding of other people and other time periods; and they have had a fair amount of experience interviewing their parents and grandparents about other times.

These skills are enhanced during the intermediate grades as children continue to work with maps and primary documents, and as they become involved in active inquiry to answer questions they have posed.

At the same time, children are helped to frame historical questions in a more conceptual fashion: Why did that happen? What are the facts? What are the interpretations? What other possibilities were there? What were the effects? How do we know? How have things changed or stayed the same since then? Whose voice is not being heard?

The fifth grade curriculum concentrates on United States history and geography. But in the best classrooms, the social studies curriculum also continues to follow world events. Children in the intermediate and middle school years tend to be attracted to the mythic, and mythic stories can teach much about various peoples and cultures. Furthermore, the teacher uses the children's interests as the springboard for investigations into people's origins in Europe, Africa, Asia, or Latin America. Whenever possible, social studies also highlights legends, those mythical stories that have been handed down across the generations. Tales of Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, Brer Rabbit, and Native American folk heroes, among others, are not only fascinating entertainment but offer excellent starting points for discussions of cultural traditions and historical eras.

Regarding American history, children generally study

• the geographic environment
• Native American inhabitants and their ways of life
• the European gentry
• the development of towns, cities, and governmental structures
• colonial life and the struggle for freedom.

Concepts such as freedom of religion and speech, liberty, justice, and democracy are closely examined. Teachers will want students to understand that Europe greatly influenced the development of the United States -- its culture, governmental institutions, educational practices, and values. But they will also want children to be aware that the United States has developed distinctive characteristics from the influence of the Native American peoples, the new and challenging physical environment, and the presence of a large population of Africans brought as slaves as well as of an ongoing flow of immigrants from Asia, the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico.

As part of their study of history, children will read biographies of people who influenced American history. They will also make more visits to historical sites and museums, and they will make a variety of personal investigations that might involve interviewing family and community members about past events, visiting a county courthouse to see old records, and the like. Teachers will foster the recognition that history is more than just a collection of facts and dates -- that it is the story of everyday life and ordinary people as well as of blockbuster events and famous individuals. Finally, teachers will encourage the children to read the daily newspaper, watch news on television, and talk regularly with their parents or guardians about local, state, national, and world events.

Reprinted from 101 Educational Conversations with Your 5th Grader by Vito Perrone, published by Chelsea House Publishers.
Copyright 1994 by Chelsea House Publishers, a division of Main Line Book Co. All rights reserved.

Arts in the 5th Grade

Experience with the arts is important throughout elementary school. Children often have specialist art teachers, especially in the intermediate grades. These twice-weekly sessions are most often devoted to vocal music, which is certainly beneficial; yet it would be far better if the arts program also included regular sessions of dance, painting, and instrumental music. The arts have an unstable history in our schools -- arts programs are sometimes viewed as less important than other programs, and they are often among the first to be cut when budgets are tight. Parents should therefore be vigilant, insisting that strong, balanced arts programs are essential and must be made available to their children.

Ideally, the classroom time devoted to the arts program is supplemented by after-school enrichment programs and small group lessons, particularly in music and the visual arts. The intermediate years are an especially fertile time for children who are interested in string instruments. Many children develop new interests in music at this time, and their physical growth enables them to handle a bow, to manipulate strings, and to hear sounds better than they could before. Throughout the intermediate grades, children are readily drawn to painting as a means of self-expression, and they are also attracted to group choral singing.

The fifth grade is a good time to make art museums, art exhibitions, and musical performances a regular part of the curriculum. And discussions on the arts should be incorporated into all areas of study. For example, in social studies, much can be learned about American history from an examination of the nation's art, music, and literature in different eras. One way fifth grade teachers integrate the arts into the curriculum is by having the children read biographies of musicians, dancers, and painters as part of their language arts work; children can also read the lyrics of both classical and contemporary songs. Another way children gain enhanced awareness of the arts is by putting on plays or concerts for which they design and paint sets and write scripts and music. In social studies, the arts are introduced as cultural aspects of life -- for example, various art forms can be related to their regions of origin. Even science touches the arts when topics such as sound and color appear in the science curriculum.

Teachers and parents should encourage fifth grade children to watch performance programs on public television; these broadcasts can do a great deal to enrich children's knowledge and appreciation of a wide range of music and drama. So can visits to rehearsals of high school orchestras and dance and theater groups. Even opera can

be quite accessible and enjoyable to a child, if care is taken to tell the child what to expect and how to interpret what he or she views.

Reprinted with permission from 101 Educational Conversations with Your 5th Grader by Vito Perrone, published by Chelsea House Publishers

Talking to Your 5th Grader about Science and Health

• When you see a living creature on a walk, on television, or in a book or movie, classify it as an amphibian, mammal, bird, reptile, fish, insect, or crustacean. If you are not sure of a particular creature's category, research it together in a directory, encyclopedia, or animal book.
• Observe the moon together over several weeks; note whether you are looking at it at the same time every day or at different times. (You and your child could do this exercise once a year for several years -- perhaps at a different season each year -- and learn something new each time.) Note the moon's location and draw its various shapes; be aware of the stars around it. Examine the moon chart in the weather section of your daily newspaper or on a calendar. There is almost no end to the astronomical observations you and your child can make. If, like many parents, you are not especially familiar with the sky, this exercise will be a good learning experience for you as well as for your child.
• Ask about the scientists your child is currently studying. Are men and women represented? What about people of color? What does your child know about these scientists and their work?
• Your child is learning about life in the oceans. See what your child can tell you about the following topics: whether there is more water or land on our planet; what kinds of plants and animals live in the different parts of the oceans; what we know about the ocean floor; marine fossils; and the potential for farming in the oceans.
• Your child is learning more about the human body. Ask, "What happens when your heart beats?" Your child should have some basic knowledge about the circulatory system.
• See whether your child can find his or her own pulse. How about your pulse? Have your child measure your heartbeats. Ask, "What would happen if I ran a mile and then you measured again?"
• What does your child know about the effects of caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin?
• See what your child knows about the digestive system. Ask, "How does food change as we digest it?"
• Together think about the many ways the idea of time comes up in everyday life. Take turns pointing it out. You might say, "I have time on my hands," and your child might say, "Once upon a time." See how many you can get.
• Ask why it isn't the same time everywhere in the world. Why, when it is 12 noon in Boston, is it 11 am in Chicago?

Reprinted from 101 Educational Conversations with Your 5th Grader by Vito Perrone, published by Chelsea House Publishers.
Copyright 1994 by Chelsea House Publishers, a division of Main Line Book Co. All rights reserved.

Science and Health in 5th Grade

The goal of science study
Children's interest in science often seems to decline in grade 4 and after. I suspect that this happens because science study is too often textbook-driven, passive, formal, and narrow in its scope. But the major goal of science study in these grades should be to keep children interested in science and cause them to believe that they can be successful science students. Not an easy task -- but one that is critically important. Science in the world
It is vital that children see and recognize "science" all around them in their everyday lives. Basic scientific principles are at work whenever a child rides a bicycle, puts air in the bike's tires and oils the moving parts, runs, throws a ball, gets water from a well or a faucet, uses a flashlight, takes pictures with a camera, or flies a kite. And science is also a basis for understanding what is happening when a child watches cloud formations change or planes move across the sky, plants a garden or trims bushes, reads about drought and gypsy moth infestations, or sees the effects of aging or infirmity in others. Good teachers draw heavily on such examples of "science in the world."

What kids should learn in Science
Physical Science and Technology
The natural world was the focus of science study during the primary years of school. While nature studies continue during the intermediate years, physical science and technology come in for an increasing share of attention in the fifth grade. Children will work, for example, with "mystery powders," which are especially conducive to a wide range of scientific experiments. The powders are of the kitchen variety -- flour, salt, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cream of tartar -- and can be observed in water that is heated, mixed, and so on. They will learn about and examine machines of all kinds, including computers and mass communication systems. They are often asked about "the role of technology in our lives." In the process of answering this question they will begin to explore the link between science and ethics. Fifth grade is not too early for children to talk about such ethical issues as the cost of prolonging life through advanced medical treatment, or the possible environmental damage caused by dams that provide drinking water to cities.

Flight and Space Exploration
Flight and space exploration are commonly studied in the fifth grade. You can expect your child to make time lines of flight and space exploration, to build gliders and examine their aerodynamic properties, and to learn how flight is possible. Meteorology, which is clearly connected to these subjects, is also important. Children gain a fairly sophisticated understanding of weather patterns, wind directions, temperature, precipitation, air pressure with high and low systems, and so on. They will be able to examine weather maps and follow weather reports on television.

The intermediate years are a good time for classes to visit science museums, or for scientists and technologists to visit classrooms. Children may be exposed to more of these experiences in the fifth grade than in earlier grades.

Inquiry
Inquiry -- an open-ended approach to the study of science -- has a large role in the fifth grade. Children will be asked to engage in the process of inquiry, experimenting with ways of finding answers both to their own questions and to questions posed by the teacher. Such questions might include: What shapes or designs will support the most weight? Why do some objects stand and others fall? How can I get my glider to fly farther? Or not spin so much? Or land more smoothly? How much of the school's waste is recyclable? How old are the trees in the school yard? How about the trees along the river? What are the differences between a pig's liver and a human liver? Children's questions arc unending, and good teachers use those questions to teach students about the process of inquiry -- how to go about examining something. The children thus do what scientists do: define a problem and then figure out how to solve it.

What kids should learn in Health
In regard to the study of health, children continue the exploration of the life cycle that was begun in the earlier grades. What it means to stay healthy -- to maintain wellness -- cannot be overemphasized. Fifth grade children will continue to pay attention to life-style choices such as smoking, and they learn about the effects of various kinds of consumption upon health as well as upon the environment. They also learn something about medicine and its effect on health. And because fifth graders are approaching or have reached puberty, some attention is given to bodily changes and the further changes that children can expect as they grow. In many schools, children receive fairly concrete information about human reproduction, AIDS, and condoms within a framework of personal responsibility. Programs of this nature are controversial, and some parents and educators question whether topics such as birth control and sexually transmitted diseases should be introduced in fifth grade classrooms. But most of the programs of this nature that I have observed are extremely sensitive to the children's developmental status and cultural backgrounds. In the best settings, the teachers who present the material have received training in how to assess students' readiness to receive the information and how to communicate it effectively. Schools that offer such programs usually try to maintain close communication with individual parents and parents' groups; if your child is going to learn about sexuality and reproduction in school, you will be aware of it -- and you will have a voice in determining what material is to be presented, and how.

Reprinted from 101 Educational Conversations with Your 5th Grader by Vito Perrone, published by Chelsea House Publishers.
Copyright 1994 by Chelsea House Publishers, a division of Main Line Book Co. All rights reserved.

Math in 5th Grade

What kids should learn in Math
In the fifth grade, mathematics continues to be something that is used, something children see as extending far beyond school. While children are expected to do basic computational functions such as adding, subtracting, dividing, and multiplying, in the best classrooms math consists of much more than worksheets filled with problems or drills on number facts. Children:

• understand when to add and subtract, to use a calculator, to estimate, and to arrange information on a graph;
• begin to have an understanding of probability and how to judge it;
• learn to see how relationships among numbers, patterns, or events can be made more understandable with mathematical formulations;
• establish models for problem solving.

Much of this learning is embedded in the computer programs that your child uses at school.

Teachers spend a good deal of time helping the children develop mental models -- that is, teaching the children how to visualize problems and solutions. They will also ask the children to develop personal theories by thinking about different ways to solve mathematical problems. Because math cannot be completely understood at this age, when it stands apart from all other subjects, math will continue to be used in social studies, science, and language arts work.

What you should expect from your fifth grader
You should expect to see your fifth grade child become a much better estimator than he or she was before. Further, your child will be able to see patterns in numbers more easily -- for example, he or she will recognize that if a sequence of numbers begins with 1, 2, 4,8 the subsequent numbers will lie 16, 32, 64. Your child will also begin to understand probability -- that is, he or she will have a sense of how likely it is that a flipped coin will show heads twice as often as tails.

A fifth grade child should also be able to measure things with precision and to manage fractions fairly well -- although, because of their use of calculators, children are increasingly familiar with decimals. Children are also encouraged to think out ways to solve problems -- teachers often ask, "How can we solve this problem?"

"If your kite got stuck on the roof of the school, how would you know how long a ladder you would need to get it down?" The emphasis is less on finding the correct answer than on showing that there are multiple ways of approaching the problem.

The goal of mathematics in the fifth grade is to help children maintain a good sense of what numbers mean and to make them feel that math is as commonplace and accessible as any other subject in school. Mathematics is not a mystery that only a select few can master. It should be -- and in the best settings it is -- fully available to all.

Reprinted from 101 Educational Conversations with Your 5th Grader by Vito Perrone published by Chelsea House Publishers.
Copyright 1994 by Chelsea House Publishers, a division of Main Line Book Co. All rights reserved.

What Will They Learn in 5th Grade?

By the time she's in fifth grade, your child will need to take almost full responsibility for her homework. She will be using assignment notepads and learning good studying and note-taking habits. Find out what else your child will learn this year.

Follow all capitalization rules. Use all punctuation marks appropriately. Appreciate different forms of literature. Increase their vocabularies through the use of synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and analogies. Recognize and use all parts of speech. Add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions and decimals. Recognize relationships between fractions, decimals, and percents. Determine the perimeter of polygons and the area of squares and rectangles. Use basic spelling rules. Understand basic United States history, geography, economics, and government. Use mathematics in the study of science. Understand the major topics of physical, life, and earth sciences in greater depth.

Welcome Back!

Welcome to 5th Grade at Sutro Elementary!

Your child's classroom is going to be in ROOM 11 on the second floor of the main building, located next to the computer lab. School begins at 8:40 a.m. promptly. Class 11 lines up on the main yard and waits for instruction.

Please do not be late or tardy. If you do so, your child misses out on opportunities to learn that they may never get back. Also, the day is much more difficult for the student who arrives after class has already begun. In addition, a late arriving student disrupts the class by distracting other students from their important duties and work.

Please make it easier on everyone by arriving on time, consistently and without fail.