What should we expect from a 5th grader?

Play is so important to learning in the lower grades, and it also continues to be a big part of a fifth grader’s social and emotional development; however, the emphasis for play as a part of academic learning decreases as children progress through the grades.  While school systems vary in how they structure their elementary schools (K-8, K-6, or K-4, etc.), fifth grade seems to be a transition, no matter which format your school system follows.

In fifth grade, or any grade, we expect that the students who are entering into our classrooms will typically come equipped with certain skills, behaviors, and abilities that come with that age range, but, as many a teacher has witnessed, this is often not the case, as much as we would hope otherwise. Most fifth graders start as 10-year-olds. There are some 9-year-olds and an 11-year-old or two. This year, I had an 8-year-old who, earlier in his elementary school years, had advanced directly from Kindergarten to 2nd grade. As the year progressed, it became very apparent that, while this student was up to the academic challenges, the student was not well-equipped emotionally, having missed first grade and the social and emotional growth that happens there. The lack of maturity turned up in many areas, especially the soft skills, such as learning to take time and not rush through school work, and the emotional aspects—including handling disappointment, taking turns, waiting in line, not calling out, and working through confrontations. This situation got me thinking about our specific expectations of students transitioning to an upper elementary classroom.

Speaking broadly about the typical regular education student, there are academic milestones, as well as behavioral and social/emotional targets, that we generally expect for children in fifth grade. Our students can read, albeit at varying levels. They should know their addition and multiplication facts. Ideally, there would be a basic knowledge of grammar and punctuation, but in many districts that employ the readers-writers workshop model, there seems to be much less time for direct instruction and practice for these skills—and it shows in their writing assignments. The same can be said for handwriting, although during the pandemic their typing skills have greatly improved. Before the pandemic forced the use of chrome books, much of our work was still done in pencil and paper. I would watch my fifth graders form letters in ways I’ve never seen, struggle with following a red margin line or even staying on the lines of the paper when writing. Basic skills have suffered over the last decade, and so it’s hard to have expectations in this area. Some children get help building these skills at home, or are naturally interested in practicing them on their own, and you can easily identify these students in your classroom.

Personal organization is a huge part of transitioning to fifth grade. In our district, the students move to a new building where the populations of three elementary schools merge. Now, students have multiple teachers; they switch classrooms and have lockers in place of personal desks or cubbies. This is an enormous shift for some students, especially those with poor organizational skills or attentional concerns. Most kids need to be taught how to open a lock. While the concept is nothing new, color-coding notebooks and folders to correspond with their classes is incredibly helpful for students to learn to keep things in order. We order our team according to the stop light: the first class is red; the second class is yellow, followed by green, and then blue, etc. Their notebooks and folders should match the color of that particular class, so when it’s time for Green Class (Social Studies), the kids will collect their green notebook and folder and are good to go with the right materials. On the teacher’s side, color coding is also very useful when sorting students’ work.

We expect our fifth graders to read a variety of genres for varied purposes. We move from realistic fiction to nonfiction to historic fiction to personal narrative, each serving a different purpose. They need to continue to build on the skills from third and fourth grade, including working in cooperative groups for math and science, and book clubs in language arts. They must learn to listen to each other and respond, waiting their turn and paying attention to the lesson or conversation as it progresses and changes. They’ll need to learn to be better multitaskers in small ways, such as continuing a conversation with a friend or listening to teacher directions while getting ready for recess or filing papers in the correct folder and gathering what’s needed for a trip to their locker. As they practice, they become more proficient at juggling more than one ball at a time. While these skills are certainly not in place at the start of the year, the students’ self confidence grows—academically, socially, and emotionally—as the year goes on.

I tell my students every year that the skill I want most for them to develop is problem solving—and I teach language arts so I don’t mean math problems, although that skill transitions nicely to academic work as well. Teaching our students to think is the most important work we can do. Life problems need to be solved multiple times a day and often students don’t know where to begin. I can’t count how many times a student has walked up to a table and said, “There’s no chair.” or “I don’t have a pencil.” or “I can’t find my sweatshirt.”  Learning to develop solutions on their own is vital to building their independent thinking and action. Many times, all it takes is simply asking the student, “Well, what should you do?” This puts the onus back on the student, and most often students will get the point pretty quickly that at least some of the problem solving will end up back on their own lap, and they begin to think more logically about a problem before asking or announcing their dilemmas or problems. By putting this type of training into practice with the smaller things, it can (and should) transfer into their academic thinking processes as well. 

Transitioning to fifth grade can be an arduous process. As teachers, helping our students through the transition is a slow repetition of routines and expectations. Working methodically in the beginning can seem like we’re “going nowhere fast,” but the deliberate instruction of the actual evolution from a fourth grader to a fifth grader will pay off throughout the rest of the year. Routines will be set. Frustration will be avoided. Instructional time will be gained. Problem solving will be practiced in many venues. And before you know it, you’ll be conducting a well-orchestrated class of fifth graders.