Your Fifth-Grader and Reading
In Your Child's Classroom
Reading fluently
Fifth-graders are expected to read complex text fluently, and with strong comprehension. Your child spends a lot of time discussing, reflecting and responding to a wide variety of literature and informational texts. By critically analyzing texts, he gains a deeper understanding of what he reads. He may also read for pleasure, choosing books based on personal interests, topics, genre or author.
"Engaging in interactive discussion and exploration centered on a work of fiction with peers allows for a greater in-depth understanding of literature." — Karen Heath
Research through reading
Fifth-graders improve and expand on the research skills they learned in fourth grade. When doing research, your child will continue to gather information from a variety of sources- the Internet, encyclopedias, text books, maps and resources at the library. She'll locate information in different sections of a book, such as the index, glossary, title page, introduction, preface and appendix. She'll begin to learn to evaluate and cite sources. She will take notes, highlight important parts of what she reads and make outlines of what she is reading. She will produce research projects on a variety of subjects throughout the year, such as animals and their habitats or early American explorers.
Reading for meaning
Fifth-graders read and respond to significant works of literature, delving deeper to find the meaning in what they read. Your child learns about the elements of a plot, including the set-up, the rising action, the climax and the resolution. He engages in a more critical look at characters, settings and themes in stories. He analyzes the author's purpose for writing and understands how that purpose influences the text. He learns about the use of literary devices in text, such as imagery (the use of vivid language to create a picture in the reader's mind), metaphor (a comparison between two seemingly unrelated subjects) and symbolism (the use of an object to represent something else).
Through discussions, journals and other activities, fifth-graders have many opportunities to respond to what they read. They demonstrate understanding of what they've read by creating book reports, skits, illustrations, mobiles, character puppets and time lines.
Answering questions
Fifth-graders engage in different levels of questioning to help them identify main ideas, make inferences and draw conclusions from text. A common strategy for teaching questioning is the Question-Answer Relationship or QAR. Students are asked to tell where they found the answers to questions. They discover there are "right there" questions (answers found in the text), "think and search" questions (answers found in several places of the text), "author and you" questions (through high-level thinking, students read information in the text and call upon prior knowledge to arrive at an answer) and "on my own" questions (the answer requires just using your prior knowledge). To prepare for state tests in reading, students continue to practice by reading passages and answering open-ended short answer questions, as well as multiple-choice and true-false questions, to show their understanding of the text and vocabulary.
To get an idea of what your fifth-grader will be expected to know toward the end of the school year, take a look at these fifth-grade released English language arts standardized test questions from the California Department of Education:
