Unit Plan 1 (Grade 5 Math): Building Our Math Community & Problem-Solving Norms
5th graders build a collaborative math community while mastering place value, estimation, and self-checking routines. Students explore digit shifts by powers of ten, justify reasonableness, and engage in rich discourse that strengthens accuracy, confidence, and mathematical communication.
Focus: Establish routines for discourse, math notebooks, self-checking, and error analysis using rich place-value and estimation tasks.
Grade Level: 5
Subject Area: Mathematics (Community Norms, Place Value, Estimation)
Total Unit Duration: 5 sessions (one week), 45–60 minutes per session
I. Introduction
This launch week builds a collaborative math culture while refreshing core ideas we’ll use all year. Students co-create math-talk norms, practice estimation and reasonableness checks, and explore place-value patterns (how digits shift by factors of 10). We emphasize productive struggle, respectful discourse, and consistent self-check routines.
Essential Questions
- What does productive math talk look and sound like?
- How can place value and powers of ten help me reason mentally?
- What makes a solution reasonable, and how do I self-check it?
- How do we give useful feedback that helps a classmate improve?
II. Objectives and Standards
Learning Objectives — Students will be able to:
- Co-create and apply discussion norms and feedback protocols during problem solving.
- Explain that a digit in one place is 10 times what it is to the right and one tenth of what it is to the left; use this to reason mentally about size and shifts.
- Use estimation strategies (rounding, front-end estimation, compatible numbers) to predict results and check reasonableness.
- Use a self-check checklist (Estimate → Compute → Compare → Explain) and perform error analysis on sample work.
- Communicate thinking with precise vocabulary, units, and clear notebook organization.
Standards Alignment — CCSS Grade 5
- 5.NBT.1: Recognize that in a multi-digit number, a digit in one place represents 10 times as much as it represents in the place to its right and 1/10 of what it represents in the place to its left (light introductory emphasis).
- Mathematical Practices (MP.1–MP.8): Make sense of problems; reason abstractly and quantitatively; construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others; model with mathematics; use tools strategically; attend to precision; look for structure; look for repeated reasoning (threaded throughout the unit).
Success Criteria — Student Language
- I can state and follow our class math-talk norms.
- I can explain the 10-times / one-tenth idea and use digit shifts to reason about number size.
- I can choose an estimation strategy and justify why it fits a problem.
- I can use a self-check checklist and spot errors in sample work.
- I can show my thinking clearly in my notebook with labels and units.