Students learn the science behind natural disasters, such as volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires, with an emphasis on how natural disasters happen.
Students have their first encounter with probability, as they develop their understanding of probability through calculating theoretical probabilities and designing and running their own simulations.
Students formalize their understanding of compound probability, develop an understanding of conditional probability, and understand and calculate permutations and combinations.
Students use probability to make better decisions based on knowledge than on intuition alone, and use the normal distribution to understand outcomes of random processes repeated over time.
Students deepen their understanding of ratios to investigate proportional relationships, in order to solve multi-step, real-world ratio problems using new strategies that rely on proportional reasoning.
Students explore how plastic pollution is choking the world’s oceans, and explore a variety of solutions for reducing plastic waste and reducing the amount of plastic that ends up in the ocean.
Students explore the American experience through the story of an African-American family struggling to achieve their dreams.
Students learn about irrational numbers, approximating square roots of non-perfect square numbers, and investigate the well-known Pythagorean Theorem to solve for missing measures in right triangles.
Students continue their study of quadratic equations, learning new strategies to determine the vertex and roots of quadratic equations and applying these in various real-world contexts.
Students investigate and understand the features that are unique to quadratic functions, and they learn to factor quadratic equations in order to reveal the roots of the equation.
Students build on their knowledge of the features, forms, and representations of quadratic functions, and extend their understanding from solutions in the real number system to the complex number system.
Students are introduced to integers and rational numbers, extending the number line to include negative values, understanding the order of rational numbers, and interpreting them in context.
Students will extend their understanding of inverse functions to functions with a degree higher than 1, and factor and simplify rational expressions to reveal domain restrictions and asymptotes.
Students learn about the Pilgrims and the first Massachusetts colonies, including why the Pilgrims came to the New World, their relationship with the Native peoples, and the truth behind the first Thanksgiving.
Students learn about how to save the earth by reducing, reusing, and recycling. Students learn why waste is a problem, about the options for limiting waste, and read stories about different people from around the world who have found ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle waste.
Students develop an understanding of right triangles through an introduction to trigonometry, building an appreciation for the similarity of triangles as the basis for developing the Pythagorean theorem.
Students read the renowned novel The Scarlet Letter, exploring and analyzing the themes of sin, compassion, and hypocrisy as they played out in seventeenth-century Puritan New England.
In this final 5th grade unit, students read about the nuances of good versus evil and how unconditional love can overpower darkness in A Wrinkle in Time, the first science fiction novel in our curriculum.
Students read informational texts about the seven continents, and what makes each of them unique, while working to understand text features and develop skills in writing about informational texts.
Students are introduced to the more abstract concepts of points, lines, line segments, rays, and angles, as they learn to measure angles and then analyze shapes by their angles and lines of symmetry.