Fifth grade at CHES requires our students to draw on the skills and strategies they have learned in school. School work becomes more challenging and more planning and organization is necessary. Rigor and relevance to our world play an important role.

Many leadership opportunities will arise for our fifth-graders. The Student Council Association is the student body government which organizes school events as well as service projects throughout the year. The CHES Green Team takes care of all the recycling in our school. Safety Patrol, morning announcements, and Buddy Classes with our Kindergarten and first graders are also ways for our students to become involved.

Children’s Engineering projects are incorporated into the curriculum throughout the school year. These projects are hands-on activities which allow the students to use their knowledge of concepts learned as well as problem solving skills.

Battle of the Books is an exciting and fun way to keep our students reading. Students are given a list of 25 books of varying genres and they must read and comprehend at least ten of the books in order to compete in a school competition.

Reading comprehension strategies include predicting, visualizing, questioning, determining importance, inferencing, clarifying, synthesizing, and making connections.

Writing – improving upon organization, word choice, sentence fluency and conventions.

Fifth grade – multi-step word problems, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimals, graphing, adding and subtracting fractions, geometry, probability, measurement, elapsed time, perimeter, area, volume, circumference and order of operations.

Sixth grade – exponents, order of operations, problem solving, integers, algebra and equations, multiplying and dividing decimals, graphing, geometry, area, perimeter, volume and surface area, ratios, fractions, decimals, and percent relationships, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions, measurement and probability.

Fifth-grade units include scientific method, cells, geology, light, matter, oceans, and sound.  Since the SOL is comprehensive for the fourth- and fifth-grade curriculum, we review earth and space, organisms and ecosystems, Virginia resources, weather, motion and energy, and plants.

Geography of the World, history and cultures of North and South America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia.