• The Common Core State Standards were created to help ensure that all students are college and career ready by the end of high school.  The standards are designed to reflect the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. A common set of learning goals helps teachers and parents ensure students are challenged and making appropriate progress. 

     

     Social Studies:

     

    •       Varying levels of text complexity

     

    •       Primary and secondary sources

     

    •       Depth, as opposed to breadth of content

     

    •       Reading from multiple perspectives to see how history has multiple sides

     

    •       Writing arguments, not persuasion

     

    •       Writing informative/explanatory text

     

    •       Publishing student work to an audience

     

    •       Computer literacy skills

     

    •       Utilizing multiple sources

     

    •       Self-generated research questions

     

    •       The research process

     

    •       Deep, critical thinking about Social Studies

     

    •       All literacy domains: reading, writing, listening, speaking

     To see the 5th grade Social Studies standards, click here: 

     

          Writing:

    • We will do a variety of writing including RACES, writing strong paragraphs, opinion, and informational writing.

    • Language skills are taught and reinforced using a program called NoRedInk.  Students are introduced to a skill at the beginning of the week, have class time to practice the skill, are encouraged to bring this skill into their writing, and take a quiz over the skill at the end of the week.

    • Arizona ELA standards include a cursive handwriting component.  Students will learn to "read and write cursive letters, upper and lower case" as well as to "transcribe ideas legibly and fluently with appropriate spacing and indentation" (AZCCR ).   Since cursive was introduced and taught in both 3rd and 4th grade, cursive at the 5th grade will be a review/refresher using weekly practice sheets.

    • Students are expected to write legibly at all times.  If we cannot read it, we cannot grade it.  Therefore, if work is submitted with difficult-to-read handwriting, students might be encouraged to redo the task in order for it to be legible.  Depending on the nature of the assignment, it is possible that the grade will be reduced due to the lack of readability.

    • Typing is a grade level standard.  Students are expected to "demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills in order to complete a writing task" (AZCCR 5.W.6).  We will be using Google Typing Club to track typing progress as well as other "on-demand" typing tasks that will gauge WPM typing speed.