Grade 5 Units

Explore Grade 5 unit plans in Science, Social Studies, Math, and Language Arts with standards-aligned lessons that build inquiry, literacy, and problem-solving skills.

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Grade 5 Science Units

Unit Plan 11 (Grade 5 Science): Plants: Inputs & Growth

Grade 5 unit where students use evidence, models, and CER writing to argue that plants get the materials for growth mainly from air and water—not soil.

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Grade 5 Science Units

Unit Plan 10 (Grade 5 Science): Energy from the Sun

Grade 5 unit where students model how sunlight becomes energy in food, flowing from sun to plants to animals to power growth, repair, movement, and warmth.

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Grade 5 Science Units

Unit Plan 9 (Grade 5 Science): Matter & Reactions — Quarter Synthesis

Grade 5 capstone science unit where students synthesize matter, mass conservation, properties, and reactions, then engineer and test a solution using fair tests and data.

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Grade 5 Science Units

Unit Plan 8 (Grade 5 Science): Engineering with Matter

Grade 5 science engineering unit where students design, test, and improve prototypes using mixtures, dissolving, or reactions to solve real problems with fair tests and data.

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Grade 5 Science Units

Unit Plan 7 (Grade 5 Science): Evidence of Chemical Change

Grade 5 science unit where students identify gas, color, temperature, and new solid evidence when substances mix to determine if chemical reactions formed new substances.

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Grade 5 Science Units

Unit Plan 6 (Grade 5 Science): Chemical Reactions Basics

Grade 5 science unit where students mix substances, observe properties before and after, and use evidence like gas, temperature, and new solids to identify chemical reactions.

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Grade 5 Science Units

Unit Plan 5 (Grade 5 Science): Heating & Cooling Matter

Grade 5 science unit where students measure and graph before-and-after weights during heating, cooling, and mixing to show the total weight of matter is conserved.

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Grade 5 Science Units

Unit Plan 4 (Grade 5 Science): Mixtures & Solutions

Grade 5 science unit where students investigate how materials mix and separate—observing dissolving, floating, settling, and filtration—to identify substances by their properties.

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Grade 5 Science Units

Unit Plan 3 (Grade 5 Science): States & Properties of Matter

Grade 5 science unit where students test and compare material properties—hardness, flexibility, luster, magnetism, conductivity, solubility—to identify unknown substances.

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Grade 5 Science Units

Unit Plan 2 (Grade 5 Science): Particles Too Small to See

Matter is made of tiny invisible particles—students model solids, liquids, gases, dissolving, and smells spreading to explain real-world phenomena in Grade 5 science.

Grade 5 Science Units

Unit Plan 1 (Grade 5 Science): Science Skills & Investigation Routines

Grade 5 unit where students learn lab safety, measurement, variables, and fair testing—building science skills to collect, graph, and explain reliable investigation data.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 36 (Grade 5 Social Studies): Cumulative Synthesis & Exhibition

Culminating 5th grade History Fair where students synthesize timelines, maps, documents, and civic/economic ideas into an interactive exhibit showing U.S. development and citizenship.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 35 (Grade 5 Social Studies): The United States in the World

Students map how the U.S. connects to other nations through trade, movement, and ideas, explain global interdependence, model how taxes or boycotts affect demand, and identify which levels of government support these worldwide connections.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 34 (Grade 5 Social Studies): Civic Action and Service

Students design a local civic action or service project that reflects democratic ideals, citizen responsibilities, and rights with limits, using civil discourse to choose an issue and create clear products that communicate their plan to an authentic audience.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 33 (Grade 5 Social Studies): Human-Environment Interaction in the New Nation

Students explore how canals, railroads, and land use reshaped the environment and economy of the new nation, analyzing resource use and weighing the benefits and costs of human-environment interaction.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 32 (Grade 5 Social Studies): Expanding America’s Borders

Students trace U.S. exploration, migration, and westward expansion using maps and primary/secondary sources, examining how geography shaped routes and how expansion brought opportunity for some and loss and harm—especially for Indigenous peoples.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 31 (Grade 5 Social Studies): Civic Debate—Rights Then and Now

Students explore liberty, equality, and rights through founding documents, analyze past and present debates, and practice civil discourse in a structured class debate using evidence from the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 30 (Grade 5 Social Studies): Work, Money, and Markets

Students investigate how early Americans earned, saved, spent, and invested by analyzing budgets, ledgers, maps, and artifacts—connecting household money choices to markets, mercantilism, and the wider economic systems that shaped everyday life.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 29 (Grade 5 Social Studies): Trade and Interdependence

Students map Atlantic and domestic trade routes, explore interdependence among regions, and analyze how resources, taxes, and boycotts shaped early American trade—showing how goods, people, and ideas moved across the Atlantic world and the growing United States.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 28 (Grade 5 Social Studies): Scarcity and Choice in a Growing Nation

Students investigate how scarcity, landforms, waterways, and climate shaped early American settlement and expansion—analyzing choices like docks vs. roads or coast vs. frontier and explaining each decision’s opportunity cost using maps, scenarios, and case studies.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 27 (Grade 5 Social Studies): Midyear Synthesis — “Building a Nation” Exhibit

Students create a “Building a Nation” exhibit by developing inquiry questions, analyzing sources, and crafting evidence-based claims that connect founding ideals, early leaders, government structures, and the new nation’s economy in an engaging, civics-focused display.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 26 (Grade 5 Social Studies): The Economy of a New Nation

Students discover how the early United States built its economy by examining scarcity, opportunity cost, regional specializations, trade, and money choices—connecting early American producers and consumers to real-world earning, saving, spending, and investing.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 25 (Grade 5 Social Studies): Early Presidents and Leadership

Students investigate how George Washington and John Adams shaped the early republic—setting precedents, managing crises, and facing disagreement—to understand how leadership and civic responsibility worked in America’s first presidencies.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 24 (Grade 5 Social Studies): Levels of Government

Teach students how local, state, and federal governments share powers and services by comparing real-world examples—like roads, parks, schools, and national programs—and guiding them to decide which level should address community issues using clear evidence and reasoning.

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Grade 5 Social Studies Units

Unit Plan 23 (Grade 5 Social Studies): Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens

Students learn how rights and responsibilities work together in a democracy, exploring how everyday actions—like following rules, showing respect, helping others, and participating in school decisions—support the common good.