GENERAL STUDIES

CURRICULUM

OVERVIEW

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FIFTH GRADE

GENERAL STUDIES PARENT GUIDEBOOK

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Fifth grade continues to build skills to prepare for junior high. Students read more complex essays, hone core math skills, and have more long-term assignments. Academic demands increase, coursework is more challenging, and students are expected to be more independent, focused and responsible. While there are different academic and developmental benchmarks most fifth graders should be able to meet, it is important to remember that children mature at different rates, and there is a huge range of what “typical” looks like at this age. Schools recognize that children entering fifth grade have different skill levels, and teachers are prepared to partner with you in working with children who have a wide variety of skills and learning aptitudes. Developing routines play a significant role in healthy development. Routines for a sleep schedule, meals, homework and chores are needed for a child to feel se-cure, confident, and accomplished. Here are some global milestones to be aware of for fifth grade:

“There are two great things that we can give our children; one is roots, the other is wings.” -Hodding Carter, Author

OUR MISSION

For seven decades, the Academy’s mission has been to imbue students with a love of G-d, Torah and Eretz Yisrael and to prepare them to achieve excellence in Torah and general knowledge based on successful cooperation among family, Judaic and General Studies faculty and community. The Academy’s comprehensive curriculum is designed to meet the various needs of the student body and has set national standards. The focus of our award-winning faculty goes beyond teaching the curriculum to teaching the whole child. Character development, community service, inter-generational and enrichment programs are indispensable components of the Academy experience. They reinforce the school’s mission and serve to ignite the minds and inspire the hearts of our youth.

Reach out to your child’s teacher. There’s a lot of variation in the pace at which kids develop skills throughout fifth grade. Your child may meet social and emotional milestones before physical milestones or vice versa. If you have concerns about your child’s progress, or if your child is having any problems in school, be sure to talk to your child’s teacher or the administrative team. Parents play a vital role in promoting responsibility. Students must learn to be responsible for keeping track of assignments and completing all school demands in a timely fashion. Parents should always be encouraging and supportive, but students need to take responsibility for the completion of school-based tasks. If something does not get done, do not come to the rescue. Let your child grow with independency. Setting academic goals is another important milestone for students. These goals should be realistic with measurable outcomes so students can gain confidence, assess progress, and learn to manage their academic duties. Parents can be most helpful in this process. In closing, this will be a year of big changes. Your child will learn a great deal, and you will play a big part in his success. Parents should strive to be consistently positive and supportive, and show interest. With your support and guidance, your child is sure to find success, not only in fifth grade, but for years to come. Looking forward to a wonderful year! Dr. Yoel Schwartz Mrs. Tehillah Stelzer Principal, General Studies Principal, General Studies, Girls

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT: Fifth graders generally have improved coordination, balance, and stamina, which enables them to participate in a wide variety of physical activities. Independent play is important, but children this age also benefit from physical activities and games. Increased appetite and need for more sleep also signal physical development occurring at a more rapid rate.

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: Cognitive development means growing abilities to think, explore and figure things out. It is the development of knowledge, skills, problem-solving and outlooks, which help children to think about and understand the world around them. Brain development is part of cognitive development. School changes dramatically for students in fifth grade. Students will be applying reading skills in content areas such as Social Studies and Science. Fifth graders begin to use this knowledge to form opinions about world events or social issues. In addition, study skills will become increasingly important as well, as students need to use more research skills and handle longer and more involved assignments. In fifth grade, most students can: Add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions and decimals. Recognize the relationship between fractions, decimals,

and percentages. Appreciate different forms of literature. Understand and use the revision process to complete a

final draft of an essay and research assignment.

SOCIAL/EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Fifth graders enjoy working and interacting with groups of peers. They are learning how to set goals and understand the consequences of their actions. Fifth graders: Show more self-assertion and curiosity. Are competitive and socially aware. Have a range of intensity of emotions. Are more independent as they begin to explore their

unique identities. Continue to develop their own point of view, which may be

different than their parents.

JOURNEYS

Houghton Mifflin provides a comprehensive K-6 English Language Arts program. Journeys, the K-5 program, provides an instructional system for reading both literature and informational texts, for acquiring foundational skills and for developing mastery of speaking, listening and writing. Journeys provides: Exposure to various genres of literature including

humorous fiction, informational texts, realistic fiction, historical fiction, biography, poetry, narrative non-fiction, traditional tales, expository nonfiction, journal entries, drama and news articles.

Identify cause and effect, asking and answering questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for answers.

Compare and contrast the themes, settings, plots and key details of stories.

Access to literary and informational texts of appropriate grade-level text complexity in order to develop close reading and text analysis skills.

Weekly practice to deepen their word knowledge of academic and domain-specific vocabulary to help students build their vocabulary knowledge.

By the end of fifth grade, students will be able to: Read and comprehend literature, including stories,

dramas and poetry of appropriate complexity for grade level.

Read informational texts including content areas with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions building on others’ ideas and expressing them clearly.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

ARTS OVERVIEW

The concept of Growth Mindset from Dr. Carol Dweck is a core underlying pillar of all general studies educational programming. Dr. Dweck stresses the powerful role the personal assessment of our intellectual capabilities plays in development. What is Mindset? In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They are born smart and talented or they are not and there is nothing to do about it. In addition, they also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—innate abilities are just the starting point. Our brain is a muscle that grows the more that we use it. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Mistakes are viewed merely as opportunities to learn. For example, the acronym F.A.I.L really just stands for First Attempt In Learning. The power of resilience and grit are crucial for development of each individual’s potential. Virtually all great and successful people have a growth mindset and this is the guiding force we strive to inculcate into all of the students throughout the academic day and curriculum.

Growth Mindset Approach at the Hebrew Academy

“Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his or her society… But for me, education means making creators… You have to make inventors, innovators, and people who believe in themselves. That is true education.” -Jean Piaget

The Hebrew Academy of Cleveland engages students in the Project-Based Learning methodology throughout their General Studies experience. Students are presented with an open-ended Driving Question, then actively pursue the knowledge necessary to enable them to answer the question. Finally, they creatively present their findings with real-world applications culminating in a public display of learning. Students are meaningfully engaged in the process of learning, and take great pride in and ownership of their final products. All this, while teachers are meeting Ohio State Standards and our own curricular goals! The results of this pedagogic philosophy include helping students develop confidence and critical-thinking skills as they learn to work independently and collaboratively as responsible problem-solvers engaged in their academic studies. Wax Museum (English Language Arts and Social Studies) Driving Question: What can I do to get into the ‘Making A Difference Wax Museum’ considering my future career path? We invite you to attend our Presentation Days, and see for yourself!

Commitment to Project Based Learning

Each year, students should demonstrate increasing sophistication in all aspects of language use including growth of vocabulary and syntax development and organization of ideas. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards while retaining the skills mastered in proceeding grades. There are three types of writing: Informative, Opinion, and Narrative.

GRADE LEVEL STANDARDS INFORMATIVE WRITING

Introduce a topic clearly and group related information in paragraphs and sections; include formatting, illustrations.

Develop the topic with facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples related to the topic.

Link ideas within categories of information using words and phrases.

Provide a concluding statement or section related to the information or explanation presented.

GRADE LEVEL STANDARDS OPINION WRITING

Introduce a topic or text clearly, state an opinion, and create an organizational structure in which related ideas are grouped to support the writer’s purpose.

Provide reasons that are supported by facts and details. Link opinion and reasons using words and phrases. Provide a concluding statement or section related to the

opinion presented.

GRADE LEVEL STANDARDS NARRATIVE WRITING

Orient the reader and introduce a narrator/characters, then organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally.

Use dialogue and description to develop experiences and events.

Use a variety of transitional words and phrases to manage the sequence of events.

Provide a conclusion that follows from the narrated experiences or events.

WRITING OVERVIEW

Our math program is built on the Ohio Learning Standards for Mathematics. Instructional methods promote understanding of concepts and then becoming fluent in procedures. This is accomplished in a variety of ways, but include the use of manipulatives, then drawings, and then the use of numbers and equations.

In fifth grade, students perform multi-digit operations with whole numbers, decimals, and fractions. They extend their conceptual understanding of the base-ten system to include decimals. They: Explain patterns in the number of zeros when

multiplying by powers of 10 and in the placement of the decimal point when a decimal is multiplied or divided by a power of 10.

Read, write and compare decimals. Round decimals.

Fifth graders learn to write simple expressions from a contextual situation. In addition, they create contextual situations from given numerical expressions without evaluating them. Fifth graders explore the concept of volume and graphing on the coordinate plane. Tools that help fifth graders include Base 10 Blocks, 10x10 grids, and fraction tiles.

The major work in fifth grade includes: Understanding the place value system. Performing operations with multi-digit whole numbers

and decimals to hundredths. Using equivalent fractions as a strategy to add and

subtract fractions. Understanding the concept of volume and relating

volume to multiplication and to addition. Graphing points in the coordinate plane to solve

real-world and mathematical problems. Fluency standard: Multiply multi-digit numbers using the standard algorithm.

MATHEMATICS OVERVIEW

The goal of a rich curriculum is to integrate and bring real world learning into the classrooms. While integrating much of our Social Studies and Science standards into the English Language Arts blocks, our Project Based Learning and other extension projects allow for deeper learning opportunities. The strands covered in Ohio’s Social Studies curriculum include History, Geography, Government, and Economics. In Science the three Strands in each grade level include Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Earth and Space Sciences. The fifth grade themes in social studies investigate regions and people in the Western Hemisphere. The sciences cover topics in the astronomy, light, sound and motion, and include a trip to a local watershed. By the end of fifth grade students will have a better understanding of the Social Studies and Science content within their grade level.

Even though the Hebrew Academy is a private school, we follow the guidelines for state testing starting in third grade. The administration, academic coaches, and individual classroom teachers work to prepare all students throughout the school year for the state tests. Students take the Ohio State Tests in Reading, Math and Science in the Spring.

SCIENCE AND

SOCIAL STUDIES

STATE TESTING