Language

In this unit you will grow as a listener, speaker and word expert. First you will listen in discussions: showing interest at the right times, asking follow-up questions that help speakers elaborate, and responding with name, link, add. You will listen for a text's purpose, take key-word notes and ask clarifying questions. You will speak for a purpose and audience, using paraphrasing, summarizing and restating, explain how expression, gestures and body language help people understand, and elaborate with varied adjectives, adverbs, sentence types and transitions.

Then you will read complex words with word matrices and bound bases, learn Grade 5 prefixes (number, metric, position and chameleon prefixes) and suffixes, and use new Greek and Latin roots for science, math and social studies. You will explore word histories (eponyms, acronyms and Canadian place names from First Nations languages and Inuktitut), learn academic and subject words, choose words by connotation, and read fluently, with accuracy, a suitable pace and expression that fits the purpose.

Remember from Grade 4: you learned morphemes and word sums, many prefixes, suffixes and roots, context clues, and reading with expression. Grade 5 builds on all of these. Spelling, handwriting and keyboarding, grammar and punctuation are in the companion unit Foundations of Writing. Every lesson has a hands-on activity, lots of practice and a short quiz.

Curriculum expectations covered: A1.1, A1.2, A3.1, A3.2, A3.3, B1.1, B1.2, B1.3, B1.4, B1.5, B2.1, B2.2, B2.3 (The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Language, 2023, Grade 5). Strand A (A1.1 and A1.2 transferable skills; A3.1, A3.2 and A3.3 applications, connections and contributions) is woven in.

In this unit you will build the skills that make your writing smooth, correctly spelled and clear. You will make your cursive fluent, keyboard with automaticity, choose good fonts, and use spell- and grammar-checkers wisely.

You will spell big words with chameleon prefixes (collect, correct, attract), tricky suffixes (-able/-ible, -ant/-ent, -ance/-ence), and new Latin roots (ject, mit/miss, pend, fract, terr, manu) and Greek word parts (hydro, chron, poly, gon, peri) from math and science. You will spell science plurals (fungi, larvae) and words ending in o, use Canadian spelling (colour, centre, travelled, practise), and sort out commonly confused words (than/then, affect/effect).

Then you will build compound-complex sentences, fix fragments, run-ons and comma splices, find direct objects, use intensive and reflexive pronouns, proper adjectives and correlative conjunctions (either...or, not only...but also). Finally, you will use commas with appositives and participial phrases, colons before lists, and a Grade 5 editing checklist.

Remember from Grade 4: you made your cursive legible, began touch-typing, used position patterns, homophones, prefixes, suffixes and roots, and learned clauses, phrases, relative pronouns, the perfect tense, proper adjectives and commas for direct address. Grade 5 builds on all of it. This unit goes with Foundations of Reading. Every lesson has a hands-on activity, lots of practice and a short quiz.

Curriculum expectations covered: B2.1 (using morphemes to spell), B3.1, B3.2, B3.3, with B2.2 (vocabulary) and Strand A (A1.2, A3.1) woven in (The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Language, 2023, Grade 5). Fluent cursive, keyboarding and fonts (D2.2) and editing with spell- and grammar-checkers (D2.6) come from Strand D and are included here because they support writing.

In this unit you will become a sharper, more critical reader, listener and viewer. You will meet new genres like myths, legends, memoirs, editorials and free verse, and cultural text forms like Anansi stories and tanka. You will find cause and effect in persuasive texts, use prefaces, glossaries and indexes, and explain how infographics, web pages and video thumbnails use design to influence an audience.

You will practise reading strategies: using prior knowledge from other subjects, making and revising predictions, monitoring with fix-up strategies, making connections, and summarizing with a well-supported conclusion.

You will think like a critic: follow multiple plots and cause-and-effect chains, make local and global inferences, analyze style and connotation, explain imagery and humour, compare limited and omniscient narrators, and find evidence of bias. You will explore cultural elements, learn from texts by First Nations, Métis and Inuit creators about the past and present, and become a smart researcher and responsible digital citizen.

Every lesson has short texts written for this site, a hands-on activity, practice questions and a quiz.

Curriculum expectations covered: A1.1, A1.2, A2.1–A2.7, A3.1, A3.2, A3.3, C1.1–C1.7, C2.1–C2.7, C3.1–C3.8 (The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Language, 2023, Grade 5).

In this unit you will grow as a writer and creator of texts for real audiences. You will plan by naming your topic, purpose and audience, and explain how your chosen genre, form and medium will help carry your meaning. You will develop ideas and supporting details (including ideas about diversity, equity and inclusion), research multiple sources, check whether they're reliable, and give credit to creators. You will organize multi-paragraph texts using text structures.

You will draft narratives built on conflict, persuasive essays with evidence, compare-and-contrast texts and news articles, digital texts like slideshows, podcasts and blog posts, and poems rich in imagery. You will notice explicit and implicit perspectives in your own writing and think about readers with different viewpoints. You will revise with ARMS and selective feedback, edit with word-processing tools, build keyboarding skill, and publish, present and reflect with specific next steps.

Every lesson has model texts, worked examples, a hands-on activity, plenty of practice with answers and a short quiz. Grade 5 builds on Grade 4: writers now explain how choices carry meaning, judge source reliability, write longer multi-paragraph texts, consider implicit perspectives and different audiences, use feedback selectively and set future goals.

Curriculum expectations covered: D1.1, D1.2, D1.3, D1.4, D1.5, D2.1, D2.2, D2.3, D2.4, D2.5, D2.6, D3.1, D3.2, D3.3, with connections to Strand A (A1.1, A1.2, A2.1, A2.2, A2.3, A2.4, A2.5, A2.6, A3.1, A3.2) (The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Language, 2023, Grade 5). Keyboarding and word processing (part of D2.2) are taught here; cursive letter formation is practised in the Foundations of Writing unit.