US homeschool curriculum · 5th grade
5th Grade Language Arts
A self-paced online Language Arts course for 5th grade: 29 lessons across 7 units. A short placement quiz finds the right starting point, practice adapts as your child answers, and every lesson is marked automatically with progress reported to you.
- Every lesson has at least two different question styles, with hints and step-by-step worked solutions.
- Struggling triggers a gentler re-teach and a warm-up on the missing building block — never a visible drop in score.
- Work this course at its own level: a child can take 5th Grade Language Arts alongside a different grade in Math.
What your child learns
The scope and sequence below is generated from the live curriculum, so it is always what the app actually teaches.
Phonics and word reading
- -cious, -tious, -cial and -tial: Can spell words like delicious, cautious, official and essential.
- Silent letters and ough: Can spell words like doubt, solemn, thorough and drought.
- Read 4th and 5th grade words: Can read words such as conscience, environment, necessary and rhythm in a sentence.
Spelling
- -ant/-ance and -ent/-ence: Can choose between -ant/-ance and -ent/-ence: observant, confidence, patience.
- -able and -ible: Can choose between -able and -ible: reliable, possible, noticeable.
- i before e except after c: Can spell receive, ceiling, believe and achieve correctly.
- Words ending in -fer: Can spell referring, preferred and reference, doubling the r only when the stress stays on -fer.
- Hyphens: Can use hyphens in compound words and to avoid confusion (co-operate, man-eating).
- 4th and 5th grade homophones: Can choose between advice/advise, principal/principle, draft/draught and similar pairs.
- Spell 4th and 5th grade words: Can spell words such as necessary, environment, definite and separate.
Grammar
- Active and passive: Can tell whether a sentence is active or passive and change one to the other.
- Formal and informal: Can choose the more formal (or informal) word or phrase.
- The subjunctive: Can use 'If I were…' and 'insisted that he be…' in very formal writing.
- Relative clauses: Can choose who, which, whose, where or when to add a relative clause.
- Modal verbs and adverbs of possibility: Can pick the modal verb or adverb that shows how certain something is.
- Cohesive devices: Can choose the linking adverbial (however, therefore, meanwhile) that fits the meaning.
Punctuation
- Semicolons between clauses: Can use a semicolon to join two closely related independent clauses.
- Colons for lists and explanations: Can use a colon to introduce a list or an explanation.
- Parentheses, dashes and commas for extra information: Can punctuate extra information with parentheses, dashes or a pair of commas.
- Commas and hyphens for clarity: Can say how a comma or hyphen changes the meaning of a sentence.
Vocabulary
- Precise synonyms and antonyms: Can choose the closest synonym or the exact antonym of a word.
- Greek and Latin roots: Can use roots like aqua, tele, photo, bio and port to work out a word's meaning.
- Simile, metaphor and personification: Can say whether a phrase is a simile, a metaphor or personification.
Reading comprehension
- Inference with justification: Can infer a character's motive and pick the evidence that justifies it.
- Fact or opinion: Can tell a statement of fact from a statement of opinion.
- Summarize the key points: Can pick the summary that captures the key points of a longer text.
- The effect of the author's language: Can explain what a phrase suggests and why the author chose it.
Writing
- Proofread 5th grade writing: Can spot the sentence with no errors in semicolons, apostrophes, agreement or spelling.
- Write for the audience: Can choose the sentence that suits the purpose and reader, formal or informal.
Language Arts uses American spelling, punctuation and conventions throughout. It is not mapped to the Common Core ELA standards — the lesson list above is the honest description of what it teaches.