4th and 5th Grade Guided Lessons : Page 2

Has your child heard of the Tonkinese cat breed? Or the moons Ganymede and Charon? There are so many different names of moons! Through these typing proper noun games, your child will learn some fantastic new place names and famous people as they learn to use the shift key to capitalize letters and type accurately.

Sentences are the building blocks of paragraphs. A sentence is a complete thought that can stand alone and in this unit students will learn what comprises a complete sentence and how to identify a fragment, or incomplete sentence. They will explore different kinds of sentences and how to punctuate them. And, to sharpen their craft, students will learn how to spice up their own writing by adding sentence pattern variety.

In this 5th grade division unit, students will take their understanding to the next level by applying division skills with multi-digit numbers. Students will also begin to explore division with decimals and practice using estimation to check the reasonableness of their answers. Last, students will use their knowledge of the base ten number system to divide decimals by base ten exponents (i.e. .4 ➗ 104).

Students will have a basic understanding of fractions coming into 4th grade. In this unit students will get to explore new ways of representing fractions, including in a set of data, on number lines and using area models. Students will use their knowledge of fractions to compare fractions with like and unlike denominators.

Understanding our base-ten number system is the foundation for many skills to come. In this unit, students will add on to their understanding of place value and extend to the millions! They will also learn how to read, write and order larger numbers, in addition to decimals to the tenths and hundredths.

Words are like legos - they can have interchangeable parts. In this unit students will study the construction of words including roots, prefixes and suffixes. Students will also explore how to modify words to make them possessive, a different part of speech and adjust to signify singular and plural. Understanding the basic building blocks of words, will increase students’ vocabulary, improve their spelling and add strategies for decoding unfamiliar words.

This geometry unit engages students in analytical thinking as they learn about the properties of two dimensional figures and consider the different ways they can be sorted based on those properties. Students also learn to plot points, lines and shapes on a coordinate graph.

In this unit, students are encouraged to write letters to family and friends about a book they are reading. In the letters the will apply the skills learned in this unit, including how to structure a letter, punctuating titles of books and short stories, using possessives (in reference to the characters or ideas in the book), contractions and addressing an envelope. Don’t forget to request a response - getting a personal letter in the mail in this electronic age can be a thrill!

Letter writing is a very engaging and authentic way to learn formatting, punctuation and grammar. The activities in this unit should be learned in tandem with actual letter writing to aunts, uncles or other special far-away people. That way, students can learn and practice the letter writing skills and then apply them in their own letters. It would be especially rich to include their thoughts about books they are reading.

Understanding data and graphs is a critical skill that we use on a regular basis to read news articles, reports and other media to interpret information. In this unit, students investigate data collection, data organization and visual representation in different kinds of graphics (i.e. line plots, pie charts). Learners also apply concepts of probability and statistics to analyze data.

Calculating the volume of rectangular prisms is a new skill that is introduced in 5th grade. Students will apply mathematical formulas to find the volume of different kinds of figures and also determine the volume of a figure composed of two connected rectangular prisms. Learners will also work with other kinds of measurement when they make larger or smaller versions of figures (to scale) and learn to convert measurements.

When students learn the patterns and structures of words they become word wizards! They are able to more fluently convert a word from one part of speech to another, adjust the meaning, or translate a word from singular to plural (or vice versa). In this set of activities students will build on their knowledge of word structure and practice adding prefixes and suffixes, changing tenses and using contractions.