5th Grade reading skills

By 5th Grade, classroom reading lessons focus upon evaluating a reading assignment: is it fact or  opinion,   or is it fact or fiction. 

The difference between non-fiction and fiction: 

Non-fiction is facts, true statements that are not made up. A science text about the life of a buffalo is non-fiction about what they eat, where they roam, their enemies, their diseases. 

Fiction is a made up story. Your child could make up a story about a buffalo named Sam that rescued a lost rabbit - that story would be an example of fiction.

Test-taking: 5th graders are required to answer questions about exactly what a text is telling them. Children make errors by assuming they already know the answer, or what makes sense, or what seems possible. But, the questions are looking for specific, exact phrases.

(Example: Why didn't the girl finish the project? A child might guess the girl ran out of time but the text says Grandmother asked the girl to babysit her brother.) 

Help your child by reading a short story together, then ask your child questions that require exact answers. Or, as you wash dishes, have your child read to you a short story - asking questions about specifics as the child reads, or at the end of the story. (Ten minutes at a time is long enough to make progress. Try to have fun. This is hard for kids.)

Word-changing functions 5th graders need: 1) names of vowels (a, e, i, o, u, y), plus short vowel, long vowel, 

2) adding a prefix, adding a suffix, 3) when and how to change letter y to letter i, 4) complex vowel blocks: tion, cion, sion, tian, sian, xion, ous, eous, ious, uous, tious, cious, tient, cient, tience, cience, tiency, ciency, ciate, tiate. 

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or Instant Reading Help change y to i    or Instant Reading Help add ed, ing  

or Instant Reading Help tion, tious, tient, ciate  (this book covers all vowel teams)

All books are brand new, laminated with spiral binding. All tricky phonics teams like ge, gi, gy and tion, cious are in bold print. This is a huge help for learning them.  All books include my contact info, email or call for help. Thank you,  Mary Maisner