Teaching Ideas and Resources for 5th Grade

Welcome to fifth grade. For most schools and districts, this is upper elementary, the second to last or last year in elementary school. Adding text complexity in social studies, science, and language arts as well as additional math skills is so important at this level to help with the transition to middle and high school. Check out these teaching resources for 5th grade to bring your 5th graders to the next level and save you some time!

Sub Binders & Plans

Save yourself time and help your fifth graders when you are away from school. The fifth grade emergency sub plan bundle includes 450 pages with at the very least a week’s worth of plans and a free sub tub organization bonus. Add the sub binder bundle for extras, like forms and notes to help your sub days go smoothly.

ELA sub plans are perfect for content-specific teachers or English-Language art supplements. Try Math plans for your sub or additional lessons. Science and Social Studies plans are also available for more fifth grade content and lessons.

Want to get a kick start to your sub plans? Check out our FREE simple sub planning starter kit!

Math

Enjoy the holidays with these seasonal math activity bundle to use all year.

Fifth graders are still pumped for Halloween and these Halloween math activities that focus on sorting, graphing, fractions, and probability.

The Christmas gumdrop math bundle is a blast and will help your fifth graders with more sorting, graphing, fractions, and probability.

Love is in the air with these fifth grade Valentine’s Day math activities, complete with conversation heart activities. Don’t forget about March with St. Patrick’s Day math games and Easter math for more seasonal fun. In addition, your students can enjoy some writing activities with this awesome math bundle!

Fractions are a major part of fifth grade and your students with love these seasons fraction activities. During Thanksgiving, enjoy the fraction pie worksheets, while March will bring St. Patrick’s Day fractions and math operations with more St. Patrick’s Day games. Don’t forget, Pi Day is March 14, and your students will enjoy these Pi Day fraction activities to introduce numerators and denominators with “pie” inspired fun!

Review division and multiplication with superhero-themed multiplication and division flashcards. The multiplication and division superhero bundle will save you even more time and money.

Reading and Writing

Try out Secret student writing, a cool writing activity you can scaffold for all elementary grades. Each student has their own “secret student” to write kind notes to. Special prompts and activities for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas or winter, Valentine’s, St. Patrick’s, Easter, or the end of the year are so much fun to provide writing engagement and build community.

Another fun ELA activity to try is Earth Day comic books. Keep up with the superhero theme as the comic book characters save the earth!

Reading logs are one way to keep track of what students read. This is a great thing to use at home and school for reading accountability. These logs work for both fiction and nonfiction texts. Also, you can check out these text features activities to help your fifth graders understand informational texts. Your students can also explore nonfiction biographies and autobiographies with an author study unit.

Help your fifth graders explore the world around them with these incredible research topics for kids. Topics include social studies and science related content. Check out these units on winter holidays, black history, U.S. presidents, inventors and inventions, ancient civilizations, penguins, women’s history, and famous authors. Use these as unit studies or independent research units in English, social studies, or science.

Science & Social Studies

Your fifth graders will love learning about animals, weather, and the world around them. Start with the study of extreme weather, natural disasters, and the water cycle. Your students will explode with excitement with research over volcanoes fifth graders will enjoy researching all the planets in the solar system. Of course, they’ll love learning about all things dinosaur related, including making salt dough fossils. Study landforms and bodies of water for another geography and science related unit.

Social studies brings the study of the 45 U.S. presidents. Study the USA States, whether it’s your students’ home state or somewhere they would like to travel. Kindness is so important at any grade level, and so is building community through acts of kindness in your classroom. Don’t forget, you can get all the fifth grade science and social studies research units in a bundle that will keep your students engaged and learning all year long.

Fifth grade is a time for learning and growing. While we couldn’t put all of our 5th grade resources in one post, you can see ALL of our 5th grade resources in the shop below. Share these amazing resources with your students to help them research, write, and up their math and science skills this year!