Family and Community Guide for 5th Grade

Working Together: To support families, communities, and teachers in realizing the goals of the Colorado Academic Standards (CAS), this guide provides an overview of the learning expectations for 5th Grade. This guide offers some learning experiences students may engage in at school that may also be supported at home.

Why Standards? Created by Coloradans for Colorado students, the Colorado Academic Standards provide a grade-by-grade road map to help ensure students are successful in college, careers, and life. The standards aim to improve what students learn and how they learn in 12 content areas while emphasizing critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, collaboration, and communication as essential skills for life in the 21st century.

See all of the Family and Community Guides here.

• Comprehensive Health
• Computer Science
• Dance
• Drama and Theatre Arts

• Mathematics
• Music
• Physical Education
• Reading, Writing, and Communicating

• Science
• Social Studies
• Visual Art
• World Languages

Comprehensive Health (adopted 2018)

The comprehensive health standards in the elementary years focus on developing individual skills to enhance physical, emotional, and social wellness and using those individual skills in family, school, and community environments. In each grade, the standards ask students to investigate healthy eating and living habits, explore positive communication strategies, examine effective decision-making, and identify ways to ensure personal and community safety.

Expectations for 5th Grade Students:

• Physical and Personal Wellness: Communicate personal health problems to establish and maintain personal health and wellness; describe the physical, social, and emotional changes occurring at puberty; explain the structure, function, and major parts of the human reproductive system; comprehend concepts, and identify strategies to prevent the transmission of disease; demonstrate the ability to engage in healthy eating behaviors.
• Emotional and Social Wellness:  Analyze internal and external factors that influence mental and emotional health.
• Prevention and Risk Management: Access valid information about the effects of tobacco use and exposure to second-hand smoke, and prescription and over-the-counter drugs; demonstrate basic first aid and safety procedures; demonstrate behaviors that reduce the likelihood of physical fighting, violence, and bullying.

Throughout 5th Grade You May Find Students:

• Demonstrating the ability to make good decisions about healthy eating behaviors.
• Examining influences on the physical, social, and emotional changes that occur at puberty, including hormones, nutrition, and the environment.
• Utilizing interpersonal communication skills to talk about health conditions, the prevention of disease, and the importance of maintaining good health.
• Demonstrating tolerance, appreciation, and understanding of others.
• Examining research on the harmful effects of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other drugs.
• Discussing bullying and violence and the emotional and physical consequences.
• Utilizing basic first aid training to facilitate a quick response in emergency situations; demonstrating the ability to call 911 and poison control dispatchers to help in an emergency situation.
• Identifying how society, media and the use of modern technology can influence mental and emotional health.

Computer Science (adopted 2018)

Computer science may be taught at all levels preschool through high school, but the State of Colorado only has standards for computer science in high school.

Read the high school computer science family and community guide.

Dance (adopted 2022)

The dance standards in the preschool or elementary years focus on general dance knowledge and skills. In each grade, students learn and perform dances, discuss and create dances, describe and critique dances, and give feedback about dances.

Drama and Theatre Arts (adopted 2022)

The Drama and Theatre Arts standards in the preschool and elementary years focus on general theatrical knowledge and skills. Students learn acting techniques, create and perform scenes and plays, read plays, and discuss what they like about theatre. 

Mathematics (adopted 2018)

The mathematics standards in the elementary years focus on number and operations. Ideas from measurement and geometry help students learn about numbers and quantities. In each grade, students make sense of problems, explain their thinking, and describe their world with mathematics.

Expectations for 5th Grade Students:

• Number and Quantity: Fluently (consistently) multiply multi-digit whole numbers; extend the idea of place value to decimals; begin to divide using multi-digit divisors (fluency isn't expected until sixth grade); multiply fractions; add and subtract fractions by creating equivalent fractions (1/2 is the same as 2/4); understand the relationship between fractions and division (2/5 means 2 ÷ 5); solve simple word problems involving the division of fractions with pictures (the formal procedure for dividing fractions is taught in sixth grade).
• Algebra and Function: Write and interpret numerical expressions.
• Data, Statistics, and Probability: Convert within the metric system; find the volumes of rectangular prisms using multiplication.
• Geometry: Graph points on a grid using positive numbers.

Throughout 5th Grade You May Find Students:

• Exploring patterns (using a calculator) that occur when multiplying by powers of ten (10, 100, 1/10, 1/100).
• Making connections between whole numbers and decimals.
• Playing with money to explore how to add and subtract numbers involving decimals.
• Solving fair share problems (3 submarine sandwiches fairly shared among 4 people) to explore the relationship between fractions and division.
• Drawing pictures to solve simple word problems involving the division of fractions by whole numbers and whole numbers by fractions.
• Filling boxes with cubes to explore the concept of volume and its connection to area.
• Exploring how to find the volume of objects that can be broken into several rectangular boxes.
• Playing games involving coordinates-location on a grid (“Battleship”).

Music (adopted 2022)

The music standards in the preschool and elementary years focus on general music knowledge and skills. In each grade, students perform a variety of music styles, identify and write music notation, practice musical creativity, and describe their own musical preferences. 

Physical Education (adopted 2018)

Expectations for 5th Grade Students:

• Movement Competence and Understanding: Demonstrate mature form for all basic locomotor (e.g., walking, running), non-locomotor (e.g., twisting, stretching), manipulative skills (e.g., catching, throwing, striking) and rhythmic skills (e.g., dancing, jumping rope); demonstrate understanding of how to combine and apply movement concepts and principles to learn and develop motor skills; understand why feedback can improve performance.
• Physical and Personal Wellness: Demonstrate understanding of skill-related components of fitness (agility, balance, coordination, power, reaction time, speed) and how they affect physical performance; set personal goals for improving health-related fitness.
• Social and Emotional Wellness: Identify personal activity interests and abilities and take responsibility for individual and team performance; work cooperatively and productively in a group.
• Prevention and Risk Management: Implement safety procedures in the utilization of space and equipment.

Throughout 5th Grade You May Find Students:

• Throwing and catching an object demonstrating both accuracy and force.
• Dribbling a ball (by hand or foot) while preventing another person from stealing the ball.
• Developing and refining a gymnastics or creative dance sequence, and demonstrating smooth transitions.
• Using basic understanding of the knowledge of strategies in activity settings such as moving to open space to receive a pass or intercepting an object.
• Analyzing and correcting errors in throwing, catching, dribbling with hands and feet, striking a ball, and volleying while demonstrating control and accuracy.
• Creating a plan using the six skill-related components to improve performance in a chosen activity.
• Identifying activities that will help to improve cardio-respiratory, muscular endurance, muscular strength, flexibility, and body composition.
• Accepting responsibility for one’s own performance without blaming others.
• Demonstrating the ability to resolve conflicts with peers.
• Reviewing components of safe participation and what constitutes a safe environment.

Reading, Writing, and Communicating for K-5 (adopted 2018)

The reading, writing, and communicating standards move from developing skills in reading, writing, and communicating to applying these literacy skills to more complex texts through the elementary years. Standards at each grade emphasize skills related to speaking and collaborating with others as students work with literature and informational readings and participate in individual and group research projects.

Expectations for 5th Grade Students:

• Oral Expression and Listening: Speak to an audience to express an opinion, to persuade, or to explain an idea/process; actively listen during a presentation using listening strategies (asking questions, paraphrasing, and displaying positive body posture).
• Reading for All Purposes: Read literary (stories and poems), informational, and persuasive texts in order to understand, interpret, and compare ideas from a variety of authors.
• Writing and Composition: Use a writing process – planning, drafting, revising, editing, sharing – to produce effective, unique, well-researched, and grammatically correct writing for different audiences and purposes (telling a story, explaining a topic, building an argument).
• Research Inquiry and Design: Gather and organize information from different sources and produce a well-organized, well-thought-out written or verbal presentation that answers a specific question.

Throughout 5th Grade You May Find Students:

• Reading stories and informational texts to gain new understandings of the world and its people; using different strategies to understand complex texts (generating questions, summarizing, marking the text); working individually and with others to deepen understanding on a topic or text; making connections within and between different texts.
• Writing about texts as they “think through” ideas; directly quoting from the sources to support explanations; sharing writing ideas with others; generating questions based on reading to do research; reflecting on reading.
• Exploring the decisions a writer makes; critiquing a writer’s reasoning; comparing different authors’ writings about the same topic; evaluating graphics in texts.
• Writing narratives (stories) to convey experiences in the world; conducting short research projects; using evidence from sources to produce logical and well-informed presentations; using a variety of sentence structures and effective organization; using grammar and punctuation with accuracy; using technology to produce writing.

Science (adopted 2018)

Three-dimensional science standards in the elementary grades lay the foundation for students to work and think like scientists and engineers. We also see strong connections to skills students will use to be successful with reading, literacy and mathematics. In elementary grades we will explore disciplinary core ideas in Physical, Life, and Earth and Space sciences by  phenomena in the world around us. Learners in elementary grades develop and ask testable questions, collect and analyze different types of evidence, and write and communicate our understanding. Mastery of these standards will result in young learners who have a deep understanding of how scientific knowledge can provide solutions to practical problems we see in our world. Fifth grade students in Colorado will participate in the CMAS Science Assessment.

Expectations for 5th Grade Students:

• Physical Science: Recognize that matter is made of particles that are too small to be seen; describe how new substances can be formed when chemical reactions occur, explain how Earth’s gravitational force exerts force on objects. 
• Life Science: Understand that plants acquire their material from growth chiefly from air and water, and that matter flows in cycles between air, soil, plants, animals, and microbes as these organisms live and die. 
• Earth and Space Science: Understand that the Earth and sun provide many renewable and nonrenewable resources; recognize that Earth’s surface changes constantly; understand how the uneven heating of Earth’s surface (by the sun) affects weather.

Throughout 5th Grade You May Find Students:

• Conducting an investigation to determine whether the mixing of two or more substances results in new substances. 
• Developing a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment. 
• Developing models to describe the ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and/or atmosphere interact. 
• Using data and graphs to describe the amounts and percentages of saltwater and freshwater in various reservoirs to provide evidence about the distribution of water on Earth. 
• Obtaining information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment. 

Social Studies (adopted 2022)

The social studies standards in the elementary years begin with individuals and families and move from there to explorations of neighborhoods, communities, the state of Colorado, and the United States. In each grade, students investigate historical events, examine geographic features and resources, consider economic decision-making processes, and define civic roles and responsibilities.

Visual Arts (adopted 2022)

The Colorado Academic Standards in visual arts are organized by elements of the creative process taught in a cyclical, interconnected manner the way artists learn, connect, think, come up with ideas, experiment, plan, work, refine, share, and reflect in repetitive ways. 

World Languages (adopted 2018)

Instead of being organized by grade level, the world languages standards are organized into ranges that describe the progression of learning a student should experience as they grow from novice language learners to an advanced user.

Read the world languages family and community guide for elementary school here.