This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with the 5th grade Science content.

This resource accompanies our Rethink 5th Grade Science course. It includes ideas for use, ways to support exceptional children, ways to extend learning, digital resources and tools, tips for supporting English Language Learners and students with visual and hearing impairments. There are also ideas for offline learning. 

Dancing Dash!
Create a dance for Dash to do along with students to demonstrate mastery of Math (addition/subtraction) and Science (motion/force).

This short video and interactive assessment activity is designed to teach fifth graders about determining rate.

This is a 5th grade unit for Science.  This unit helps students develop their understanding of force, motion, and the relationship between them as well as how factors such as gravity, friction, and change in mass affect the motion of objects. 

Students work in groups of 2 to create an anchor out of a collection of materials provided by the teacher. Students will test their anchors in an aquarium periodically to determine if their anchor has too much surface area, thus making it buoyant, or if the materials are combined in a way that is denser than the water causing the anchor to sink. The ultimate goal is to balance the forces being applied to the boat.  The anchor is attached to a 3d printed boat, or a boat of the teacher's choosing. A fan is directed at the boat after the anchor has been attached and dropped in the water. In addition to the wind, the teacher will create waves by tapping the side of the tank. Students will observe if the anchor holds under these circumstances or not. Ultimately, they will try to prevent the boat from moving at all. Distance traveled for each test will be taken by a meter stick or tape measure fixed to the side of the tank. Students will strive to keep the boat frozen at 0 centimeters.

In this lesson, students will investigate motion and speed of toy cars. Observations and predictions of various variables (type, size of toy) will be made with other student groups. Critical thinking will be applied while discussing the reliability of the investigation. Speed, constant speed, average speed, and acceleration will be investigated and recorded using data graphs.

This assessment resource checks for student understanding of how graphs illustrate motion and show a change in position over time. This assessment is meant to be used after students complete the interactive module found at http://smartgraphs-activities.concord.org/activities/194-motion-toward-and-away/student_preview

Students explore how motion in two opposite directions appear on a position-time graph. Note: This activity requires use of a motion sensor.

In this interactive module, students explore how motion in two opposite directions appear on a position-time graph. Note: This activity requires use of a motion sensor.

The focus of this unit is to introduce the concepts of force and motion. Specifically this unit will address the forces of push, pull, gravity, and work. It also introduces students to the concepts of friction and slope. The unit begins with an introduction to the scientific method and addresses the differences between scientists and engineers. Students will be both scientists and engineers while completing this unit.

This is the educator's guide for a set of activities that teach students about humans' endeavors to return to the moon. The emphasis is for students to understand that engineers must "imagine and plan" before they begin to build and experiment. Each activity features objectives, a list of materials, educator information, procedures, and student worksheets. Students should work in teams to complete the activities. Note: Activities do not align to all objectives that are listed; specific activities align to specific objectives.

In this short video and accompanying experiment activity and readings, students learn about all kinds of forces in motion at Falls Lake State Recreation Area. Chopping wood, riding a bike, pitching a tent, canoeing — students can see each of these examples to discover out how objects (and people) move in their surroundings.

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 5th Grade Science. 

This course was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 5th Grade Science.

This interactive resource illustrates a change in position over time and how it can be graphed.

This applet simulates two runners moving along a track and creates a graph of the time-versus-distance relationship of their motion. Students then observe the simulated races as they happen and relate the changing positions of the two runners to dynamic representations that change as the events occur. Students can predict the effects on the graph of changing the starting position or the length of the stride of either runner. They can observe and analyze how a change in one variable, such as length of stride, relates to a change in speed. This computer simulation uses a familiar context that students understand from daily life, and the technology allows them to analyze the relationships in this context deeply because of the ease of manipulating the environment and observing the changes that occur.