Welcome to 5th grade!

Both in and out of the classroom, students are expected to be leaders in demonstrating Harrowgate’s SOAR behaviors of self-control, ownership, attitude, and respect as well as our core values of honesty, respect, responsibility, and accountability.

Our school day begins a greeting and getting organized for our day. This allows students and teachers to gather and share as a community with a common goal of becoming self-directed, independent learners. Parents and guardians are encouraged to assist their children in achieving this goal by checking students’ planners every day and by reviewing the signed papers that are sent home every other Thursday.

Students in 5th grade take SOL (Standards of Learning) tests in Reading, Mathematics, and Science.

In Language Arts, all aspects of literacy are taught through a balanced framework for instruction, enabling students to become independent and strategic readers, writers, thinkers, and communicators. Students receive Guided Reading and Small Group instruction and practice their skills during Independent Reading. Emphasis is placed on developing a variety of reading comprehension strategies, fluency, stamina, and increased rigor. In writing, students plan, draft, revise, and edit. They learn how to write to describe, to persuade, to entertain, and to explain.

In Mathematics, students develop a strong number sense that will lay the groundwork for working with mathematics through the rest of their time in school and into their adult lives. Emphasis is placed on number relationships, multiplication, division, estimation, place value, money, patterns, graphing, measurement, geometry, fractions, decimals, algebra, word problems, and problem solving. Students learn to apply math skills to real-life situations through complex, multistep word problems that require a complete understanding of basic computation skills.

In Social Studies, students are introduced to World History through: the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The content is international in scope, with an emphasis on geography and history along with economic development, political systems and current world issues from selected countries. The major focus is the interdependence of nations, with an understanding and appreciation of the cultures of others.

In Science, students use scientific investigation to study matter, cells, classification, ocean environments, plants, animals, geology, sound, light, weather, watersheds, light, electricity, motion, and space. Focus is placed on student growth in understanding the nature of science. Students learn how to think like scientists using logic and reason through hands-on activities and literature connections.