Conceptual Understandings:
• Reading and thinking work together to enable us to make meaning.
• Checking, rereading and correcting our own reading as we go enable us to  read new and more complex texts.
• Identifying the main ideas in the text helps us to understand what is  important.
Knowing what we aim to achieve helps us to select useful reference material to  conduct research.
Learning Outcomes:
Learners:
• Read a variety of books for pleasure, instruction and information; reflect  regularly on reading and set future goals
• Distinguish between fiction and non‐fiction and select books appropriate for  specific purposes
• Understand and respond to the ideas, feelings and attitudes expressed in  various texts, showing empathy for characters
• Recognize the author’s purpose, for example, to inform, entertain, persuade,  instruct
• Understand that stories have a plot, identify the main idea; discuss and outline  the sequence of events leading to the final outcome
• Appreciate that writers plan and structure their stories to achieve particular  effects; identify features that can be replicated when planning their own  stories
• Use reference books, dictionaries, and computer and web‐based applications  with increasing independence and responsibility
• Know how to skim and scan texts to decide whether they will be useful, before  attempting to read in detail
• As part of the inquiry process, work cooperatively with others to access, read,  interpret and evaluate a range of source materials
• Identify relevant, reliable and useful information and decide on appropriate  ways to use it
• Access information from a variety of texts both in print and online, for  example, newspapers, magazines, journals, comics, graphic books, e‐books,  blogs and wikis
• Know when and how to use the Internet and multimedia resources for  research
• Understand that the Internet must be used with the approval and supervision  of a parent or a teacher; read understand and sign the school’s cyber‐safety  policy.
Conceptual Understandings:
• Writing and thinking work together to enable us to express ideas and  convey meaning.
• Asking questions of ourselves and others helps to make our writing more  focused and purposeful.
• The way we structure and organize our writing helps others to  understand and appreciate it.
• Rereading and editing our own writing enables us to express what we  want to say more clearly.
Learning Outcomes:
Learners:
• Write independently and with confidence, demonstrating a personal voice  as a writer
• Write for a range of purposes, both creative and informative, using  different types of structures and styles according to the purpose of the  writing
• Show awareness of different audiences and adapt writing appropriately
• Select vocabulary and supporting details to achieve desired effects
• Organize ideas in a logical sequence
• Reread, edit and revise to improve their own writing, for example,  content, language, organization
• Respond to the writing of others sensitively
• Use appropriate punctuation to support meaning
• Use knowledge of written code patterns to accurately spell high‐frequency  and familiar words
• Use a range of strategies to record words/ideas of increasing complexity
• Realize that writers ask questions of themselves and identify ways to  improve their writing, for example,  “Is this what I meant so say?”, “Is it  interesting/relevant?”
• Check punctuation, variety of sentence starters, spelling, presentation
• Use a dictionary and thesaurus to check accuracy, broaden vocabulary and  enrich their writing
• Work cooperatively with a partner to discuss and improve each other’s  work, taking the roles of authors and editors
• Work independently to produce written work that is legible and well‐ presented, written either by hand or in digital format.

Who we are
Central idea:
Family histories provide an insight into culture, family and the individual.
An inquiry into:
• Events celebrating identity within the family
• Similarities and differences between generations in the family
• Family ancestry and the circumstances that stimulated changes over time
Concepts:
Change, Causation, Connection
Related concepts:
Genealogy, genetics, chronology, history, tradition, relationships, pattern, growth, transformation, beliefs, migration
How we organize ourselves
Central idea:
Organizations consist of interdependent parts which perform specific functions
An inquiry into:
• Roles and responsibilities of people in organizations
• The interdependence of organizations
• Skills and knowledge people need to function in an organization
Concepts:
Responsibility, Function, Connection
Related concepts:
Cooperation, employment, networks, interdependence, organization, systems, initiative, role, communication
Sharing the planet
Central idea:
A biome is a major ecological system that has a distinctive climate, plants, animals, and other living organisms.
An inquiry into:
• The components of a biome
• Where the different kinds of biome are found
• How and why living things adapt to survive in their environment
• The issues that affect the survival of these biomes and the role we play in those issues
Concepts:
Form, Perspective, and Responsibility
Related concepts:
Lifestyle, resources, homeostasis, systems, opinion, truth, rights, values, regions, interdependence, pollution, geography, landscape, adaptations
*Subject to modifications
How the world works
Central idea:
There are powerful forces that are constantly changing the Earth’s physical features and the life
•
•
• it supports.
An inquiry into:
Composition of the Earth (function)
Forces that change the Earth (causation)
Impact of these changes on living things
(change)
Concepts:
Form, Function, Change
Related concepts:
Erosion, geology, tectonic plates, movement, climate, theory of origin, chemical and physical changes, convection, density, heat
*Subject to modifications
Where we are in place and time
Central idea:
Circumstances lead to inventions, discoveries or ideas that contribute to changes in societies.
An inquiry into:
•
•
•
Inventions, discoveries and technologies
How inventors think, work, and get their ideas
Social circumstances in history that led to specific inventions
Concepts:
Form, Causation, Reflection
Related concepts:
Pattern, consequences, sequences, impact, chronology, discovery, history, production
(industrial revolution), revolution
How we express ourselves
Central idea:
Humor is a universal form of expression.
An inquiry into:
• How humor is communicated through the arts
• The elements and styles of comic design
• How there are humorous situations in everyday life
Concepts:
Form, Function, Perspective
Related concepts: similarities, communication, subjectivity, opinion, organisms, health, differences, structure, beliefs, psychosomatics

Number and Numeration  Operations and Computation
• Read and write whole numbers up to 1,000,000,000 and decimals through thousandths; identify places in such numbers and the values of the digits in those places; translate between whole numbers and decimals represented in words, in bas-10 notation.
• Read, write, and model fractions; solve problems involving fractional parts of a region or a collection; describe and explain strategies used; given a fractional part of a region or a collection, identify the unit whole.
• Find multiples of whole numbers less than 10; find whole-number factors of numbers.
• Use numerical expressions involving one or more of the basic four arithmetic operations to give equivalent names for whole numbers.
• Use numerical expressions to find and represent equivalent names for fractions and decimals; use and explain a multiplication rule to find equivalent fractions; rename fourths, fifths, tenths, and hundredths as decimals and percents.
• Compare and order whole numbers up to 1,000,000,000 and decimals through thousandths; compare and order integers between -100 and 0; use area models, benchmark fractions, and analyses of numerators and denominators to compare and order fractions.
Last Updated: August 2011
• Demonstrate automaticity with basic addition and subtraction facts and fact extensions.
• Use manipulatives, mental arithmetic, paper-and-pencil algorithms, and calculators to solve problems involving the addition and subtraction of whole numbers and decimals through hundredths; describe the strategies used and explain how they work.
• Demonstrate automaticity with
10x10 and proficiency with related division facts; use basic facts to compute fact extensions such as 30 x 60.
• Use mental arithmetic, paperand-pencil algorithms, and calculators to solve problems involving the multiplication of multidigit whole numbers by 2digit whole numbers and the division of multidigit whole numbers by 1-digit whole numbers; describe the strategies used and explain how they work.
• Make reasonable estimates for whole number addition and subtraction problems and whole number multiplication and division problems; explain how the estimates were obtained.
• Use repeated addition, arrays, skip counting, area and scaling to model multiplication and division.
Data and Chance
• Collect and organize data or use given data to create charts, tables, bar graphs, line plots, and line graphs.
• Use the maximum, minimum, mode, median and graphs to ask and answer questions, draw conclusions, and make predictions.
• Describe events using certain, very likely, likely, unlikely, very unlikely, impossible and other basic probability terms, use more likely, equally likely, same chance,
50-50, less likely, and other basic probability terms to compare events; explain the choice of language.
• Predict the outcomes of experiments and test the predictions using manipulatives; summarize the results and use them to predict future events; express the probability of an event as a fraction.
Measurement and
Reference Frames
• Estimate length with and without tools; measure length to the nearest ¼ inch and
½ centimeter; estimate the size of angles without tools.
• Describe and use strategies to measure the perimeter and area of polygons, to estimate the area of irregular shapes, and to find the volume of rectangular prisms.
• Describe relationships among U.S. customary units of
length and among metric units of length.
• Use ordered pairs  of numbers to  name, locate, and  plot points in the  first quadrant of a  coordinate grid.
Geometry
• Identify, draw, and describe points, intersecting and parallel line segments and lines, rays, and right, acute, and obtuse angles.
• Describe, compare, and classify plane and solid figures including circles, polygons, spheres, triangles, squares, trapezoids, spheres, cylinders, rectangular prisms, pyramids, cones, and cubes using appropriate geometric terms including the terms face, edge, vertex, base, and congruent.
• Identify, describe, and sketch examples of reflections; identify and describe examples of translations and rotations.
Patterns, Functions, and
Algebra
• Extend, describe, and create numeric patterns; describe rules for patterns and use them to solve problems; use words and symbols to describe and write rules for functions that involve the four basic arithmetic operations and use those rules to solve problems.
• Use conventional notation to write expressions and number sentences using the four basic arithmetic operations; determine whether number sentences are true or false; solve open sentences and explain the solutions; write expressions and number sentences to model number stories.
• Evaluate numeric expressions containing grouping symbols; insert grouping symbols to make number sentences true.
• Apply the Distributive
Property of Multiplication over Addition to the partialproducts multiplication algorithm.