Reading

Writing

Math

Science

Social Studies

September

Unit 1: Interpretation Book Clubs

Readers have the opportunity to do close reading across texts in the company of others in order to investigate themes and issues.  They compare and contrast the way a theme is handled similarly and differently across texts and how different authors approach the same theme.

Integrated Unit: Connecticut Kid Governor

In conjunction with the Social Studies Unit, writers will choose a community issue to research in order to write a persuasive essay and produce a speech for the Kid Governor.

Unit 1: FInding Volume

Students will find the volume of right rectangular prisms and solid figures composed of two right rectangular prisms.

Unit 1: Shooting Stars

Students will explore the phenomena of shooting stars to learn more about stars, patterns in space, and the phases of matter in this unit.

Unit 1: Connecticut Kid Governor

Connecticut’s Kid Governor® (CTKG) is a national award-winning statewide civics program for 5th graders created by the Connecticut Public Affairs Network (CPAN) in 2015. Timed to coincide with Election Day in November, the program offers each school in Connecticut the opportunity to enter one student candidate into a statewide election that other 5th graders vote in.   Students learn about Connecticut’s three branches of government, the role of the governor, the history and process of voting, identifying and researching important community issues, researching issues, and developing campaign platforms and speeches.

October

Unit 2: Fractions as Quotients and Fraction Multiplication

Students will develop an understanding of fractions as division of the numerator by the denominator and solve problems that involve the multiplication of a whole number and a fraction, including fractions greater than 1.

Unit 1: Narrative Craft

In this unit, students will write strong narratives, self-assess using student-facing rubrics, and set goals that accelerate their achievement.

November

Unit 2: Tackling Complexity: Moving Up Levels of Nonfiction

This unit teaches students to embrace the complexities of their high-interest nonfiction texts. Students will investigate the ways nonfiction texts are becoming more complex, and they’ll learn strategies to tackle these new challenges. Students will pursue independent inquiry projects, drawing on all their skills to tackle complex texts.

Unit 3: Fraction Multiplication and Division

Students will extend multiplication and division of whole numbers to multiply fractions by fractions and divide a whole number and a unit fraction.

Unit 2: Early Exploration and First Contact in the Americas

The unit will take students on an exploratory journey of Early American History from the time before European exploration, through first contact, and ending with European settlements and contact between cultures.  There will be a focus on cultural perspectives as students investigate different people’s experiences through a historical lens.  

December

Unit 2: Surviving Antarctica

Students will become part of an expedition research team in the Antarctic.  Their team loses communication with their transport, so they must hike back to the research base on their own.  Using their survival supplies and scientific discovery, they have to make their way to safety.

Poetry

In this unit, students will  write poems in response to the topics and themes that surround them.  Students will study  craft from both the reader’s and the writer’s perspective.

Unit 4: Wrapping Up Multiplication and Division with Multi-Digit Numbers

Students will use the standard algorithm to multiply multi-digit whole numbers.  THey divide whole numbers up to four-digits by two-digits divisors using strategies based on place value and properties of operations.

January

Unit 3:  Argument and Advocacy - Researching Debatable Issues

Readers learn to read rapidly, to evaluate and compare resources, and to construct in-depth, critical understandings of research topics.  An emphasis is placed on students reading about debatable issues.

Unit 2: The Research-Based Argument Essay

The goals of this unit are rigorous.  As argument writers, students are expected to structure their writing so that it includes claims that are supported by reasons that are backed by evidence.

February

Unit 5: Place Value Patterns and Decimal Operations

Students will build from place value understanding in grade 4 to recognise that in a multi-digit number, a digit in one place represents 10 times as much as it represents in the the place to its right and one-tenth of what it represents in the place to its left.  They will use this place value understanding to round, compare, order, add, subtract, multiply, and divide decimals.

Unit 3:  Colonial America

This unit will take students on a journey/simulation that will help them to understand who the people were in the American Colonies.  As they delve deeper into the unit students will learn how life was similar or different across the American Colonies from the New England Colonies, to the Middle Colonies, and the Southern Colonies.  There will be a focus on the opportunities that the colonists had by coming to the New World and settling along the eastern coast. 

March

Unit 3: Golden Jellyfish of Lake Palau

Students will study the Golden Jellyfish of Lake Palau in order to understand life on Earth and the factors which allow species to survive and thrive and humanity’s role in this. 

Poetry

Readers will read a variety of poetry and prose with a focus on the topics and themes that permeate through the text.   Students will study the  craft from both the reader’s and the writer’s perspective. 

Unit 3: The Lens of History, Research Reports

The Lens of History unit is designed to support students’ writing of informational texts within a social studies unit making use of primary sources. 

April

Unit 4: Fantasy Book Clubs - Themes and Symbols

In this unit, readers will work in clubs to become deeply immersed in the fantasy genre and further develop higher-level thinking skills to study how authors develop characters and themes over time.

Unit 6: More Decimal and Fraction Operations

Students will solve multi-step problems involving measurement conversions, line plots, and fraction operations, inducing addition and subtraction of fractions with unlike denominators.  They will also explain patterns when multiplying and dividing by powers of 10 and interpret multiplication as scaling by comparing products with factors.

Unit 4: Revolutionary America

Students will begin to learn and understand what led to the colonists frustration with Great Britain and ultimately to the revolution.  They will continue on in the unit to learn about the varying perspectives of the colonists and their impact in the many battles of the American Revolution.  As the unit concludes, students will learn about how significant the revolution was to the creation of our nation as well as how the essence of what the major historical figures created during this time, still impacts us to this day.

Unit 4: Shaping Text from Narrative and Essay to Memoir

This unit gives your students a chance to define themselves, a chance to author life stories that they can take with them as they leave the safety of childhood and head out into the world.

Unit 7: Shapes on the Coordinate Plane

Students will plot coordinate pairs on a coordinate grid and classify triangles and quadrilaterals in a hierarchy based on properties of side length and angle measure.  They will generate, identify, and graph relationships between corresponding terms in two numeric patterns, given two rules, and represent and interpret real world and mathematical problems on a coordinate grid.

May

June

Unit 8: Putting it All Together

Students will consolidate and solidify their understanding of the major skills of the grade.  They will also continue to work towards fluency goals of the grade.