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Fifth grade is a year for students to apply all the lessons they've learned so far, before moving on to the more advanced lessons of middle school. By the end of this school year, teachers expect students to know all the basic facts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division at a level of automatic recall. The key new mathematical skill in grade five is long division. Students must understand that division is more than just a set of rules: It's an organized method for equal sharing. A fundamental understanding of place value (the 1's place, the 10's place, the 100's place, etc.) is crucial to the mastery of long division, as is understanding the concept of a "remainder," or what's left over after numbers have been divided evenly. Geometry is also a big topic this year: Students explore, in detail, the differences among shapes, and learn how to find the perimeter and area of shapes such as rectangles and trapezoids. In lessons on fractions, students learn how to simplify fractions (writing
1/2 instead of
2/4), how to find equivalent fractions (recognizing that
4/12 + 2/6 is the same as
1/3 + 1/3), and how to add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators (such as
12/20 + 4/5). Fractions are a challenge for many fifth-graders (and their parents and grandparents), but they are the building blocks of algebra and learning how to work with them is necessary for future success in math. Encourage your grandchildren to stick with it.
Why Can't Johnny Make Change? Why can’t many young people today do simple math? Some education critics blame technology, and insist that kids who use calculators from the earliest grades fail to learn how to calculate numbers in their heads. But used correctly, technology actually allows teachers to extend learning time for students. Complex math problems of the kind children face in fifth grade, however, can turn some kids away from math, which is why this is such a crucial year. There are many publishing and online programs designed to keep young people of all skill levels interested in math and to boost their confidence. One popular online program,
First in Math, offers a series of games that reinforce fundamental math skills. It has engaged kids in classrooms and homes nationwide.
• Visit
this website for a more in-depth look at the skills fifth-graders learn in math class, including fractions, decimals, perimeter, volume, and area.
• Your grandchildren have been doing multiplication now for at least two years. Are they ready to beat the master? Challenge the kids to top your time in a round of problems at multiplication.com.
Sums to 100. Your grandchildren may be moving on to geometry, but it's still important to reinforce their basic mental math skills. Give children a number, such as 60, and ask them how much more they would need to make 100 (It's
40.) Try again, using other multiples of 10, such as 80, 40, or 30. Then try multiples of 5, such as 35, 75, and 45. Gradually increase the challenge by giving them any number between 1 and 100, before finally moving to decimal numbers such as 73.5 or 62.36.
What's a Cat Worth? Assign a value to each letter of the alphabet (A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc.). Then ask grandchildren to find the value of certain words by adding the values of their letters (CAT = 3 + 1 + 20, or 24, for example). Have your grandchildren find the value of words such as their own name, or try to think of a word with a value of exactly 100, or find the word on their weekly spelling list with the highest value. To increase the challenge for more ambitious kids, ask them to multiply the values of letters instead of adding them.
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