Fifth grade: What your child should know
Keep tabs on your fifth-grader's development with this handy checklist.
No two kids are alike, especially when it comes to hitting developmental benchmarks. But it helps to have a rough idea of which academic and social skills your child should acquire at his or her grade level. Learn more about the fifth-grade classroom in these subject areas: reading, writing, math, science, technology, social studies, the arts, and physical education and health.
By the end of the year, you can expect your child to:
- Be generally truthful and dependable
- Develop increasing independence
- Improve problem-solving skills
- Acquire more-advanced listening and responding skills
- Enjoy organizing and classifying objects and ideas
- Be able to read and concentrate for long periods of time
- Read complex text fluently and with good comprehension
- Research a topic using a variety of sources, and use the features of a book (for example, the index, glossary, and appendix) to find information
- Identify conflict, climax, and resolution in a story
- Write an organized, multi-paragraph composition in sequential order with a central idea
- Use problem-solving strategies to solve real-world math problems
- Add and subtract fractions and decimals
- Identify and describe three-dimensional shapes, and find their volumes and surface areas
- Use long division to divide large numbers by multi-digit numbers
