Grade 5 at Bertschi
In Grade 5, students step fully into their own as learners and leaders — reading complex literature, tackling pre-algebra, simulating geopolitical crises, and designing real solutions to real problems. They mentor younger students, own their learning, and leave ready for everything middle school will ask of them.
Grade 5 Math
Grade 5 math is ambitious and wide-ranging. Fifth graders work through statistics (mean, median, mode, range, and interquartile range), ratios and rates, percentages, geometry and volume, coordinate planes, equations, and inequalities. They use the sixth grade Reveal Math curriculum. Fifth graders continue to use the Hands on Algebra curriculum, a pre-algebra program that uses manipulatives to make algebraic thinking concrete and accessible so that they are well prepared for middle school.
Weekly math explorations step outside the standard curriculum entirely, presenting open-ended, collaborative problems with no single right answer. On any given day, fifth graders might be visualizing very large numbers, building rules for geometric ratios, or figuring out how to calculate with a broken calculator. The goal is to develop students who can wrestle with unfamiliar problems, prove their thinking to peers, and persist when the answer is not obvious.
Grade 5 Language Arts
Reading in Grade 5 is genuinely literary. Fifth graders study Beowulf as an epic poem, exploring heroism, symbolism, and the tension between good and evil through Socratic seminars and written response. In small literature circles, they read novels, analyzing character development, conflict, theme, and structure, and annotate and discuss poetry alongside prose. In word study, students use expand their vocabulary and deepen their understanding of how language works.
Writing in Grade 5 spans personal essays, informative essays, literary responses, biography, short story narratives, poetry, persuasive writing, and research-based travel guides. Students work with hooks, flow, clarity, strong vocabulary, and mechanics across every genre, revising with increasing sophistication. By the end of Grade 5, fifth graders are writers who can organize a complex argument, sustain a narrative voice, and produce polished work across multiple forms.
Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics (STEAM)
In Grade 5, STEAM learning reaches its most ambitious and integrated expression. In science, fifth graders investigate energy, sustainability, and environmental systems, connecting their findings to the larger social and civic questions. In robotics and technology, students tackle advanced coding and computational thinking challenges. The Go MAD project puts design thinking at the center of a real challenge: students identify a problem in the Bertschi community, prototype a solution, test it, gather feedback, and revise, moving through the full engineering design cycle with a real outcome at stake. In art, fifth graders work with increasing technical skill and creative confidence in self-directed and personally meaningful projects. In drama, the entire fifth grade performs together in a capstone production. Across all of these subjects, specialist teachers collaborate with classroom teachers to ensure that Grade 5 STEAM learning is connected, purposeful, and pointed toward the demands of middle school and beyond.
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)
Fifth graders begin the year with an outdoor trip to IslandWood on Bainbridge Island, a relationship-building experience that sets the tone for a year defined by collaboration, leadership, and community responsibility. Students craft a class constitution together, articulating their collective values and commitments for the year. Autobiography maps, Lopez Boards, and the Family Story Project invite students to explore their own identities and histories in depth, developing the self-knowledge that underlies empathy and perspective-taking. Independence and problem-solving are explicit SEL goals in Grade 5. Students manage long-term projects with multiple moving parts, practice study skills for sustained academic work, and develop the self-advocacy and time management habits. Fifth graders mentor their second grade buddies and participate in student government. They are also encouraged to contribute to the life of the school as role models for younger students by taking on leadership roles, such as helping with pre-K students in the library, delivering lunches to classrooms, and speaking at all-school events. By the end of Grade 5, students are not just academically ready for middle school. They are emotionally prepared, socially skilled, and equipped to lead.
Middle School Placement
At Bertschi School, we see the middle school placement process as a valuable learning experience for our students. By thoughtfully equipping them with the academic and social-emotional skills needed for a successful transition, we prepare them not only for their next school but for the many transitions they'll encounter throughout life. Each family is paired with a dedicated middle school coach, who serves as a guide and primary point of contact throughout the process. Bertschi fifth graders matriculate to many different area middle schools.
Learn more about how we support middle school placement
Where Do Bertschi Graduates Go?
Billings Middle School
The Bush School
Eastside Preparatory School
The Evergreen School
Lakeside School
Lake Washington Girls Middle School
The Northwest School
The Overlake School
Seattle Public Schools
Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences
Seattle Country Day School
Seattle Girls’ School
University Prep
Villa Academy
The Bush School
Eastside Preparatory School
The Evergreen School
Lakeside School
Lake Washington Girls Middle School
The Northwest School
The Overlake School
Seattle Public Schools
Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences
Seattle Country Day School
Seattle Girls’ School
University Prep
Villa Academy
...and more!
Learning in Action
At Bertschi, students connect learning to their families, communities, and the world around them. Scroll below to see a few Grade 5 learning experiences.
The World Peace Game
The World Peace Game is a student-driven geopolitical simulation in which fifth graders take on the roles of world leaders navigating a set of interconnected global crises. Every problem is connected to every other problem, and solving one without understanding the others makes things worse. Students must collaborate across competing interests, manage conflict, communicate precisely, and think several moves ahead. It is one of the most demanding intellectual experiences at Bertschi, and one of the most memorable.
Go Make a Difference (Go MAD)
For the Go MAD project, students identify a problem or issue they feel passionately about in the Bertschi community, then move it through the five steps of Design Thinking: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. They conduct interviews, build prototypes, gather feedback, revise their designs, and document their process in a final portfolio. The project integrates research, persuasive writing, data gathering, and presentation into a single sustained experience, and sends fifth graders to middle school with concrete experience of what it looks like to care about something and do something about it.
Hands on Algebra
Fifth graders at Bertschi continue to engage in algebraic thinking through Hands on Algebra, a program that uses physical manipulatives to make abstract mathematical concepts concrete and accessible. Students represent increasingly complex equations concretely, developing foundational understanding of algebraic concepts. They use their understanding to solve more sophisticated algebraic equations. Our alumni students regularly share that this approach significantly helped them excel in their middle school math classes.
Beowulf and the Socratic Seminar
Fifth graders read Beowulf, one of the oldest surviving works in the English literary tradition, and discuss it through Socratic seminar, a discussion format in which students drive the conversation, challenge each other's interpretations, and build arguments from the text. Teachers participate but do not lead. The experience develops close reading, evidence-based discussion, and the intellectual confidence to hold and defend a position in a group of peers, skills that are central to success in middle school humanities and that distinguish Bertschi graduates in their next academic environment.
The Family Story Project
Each fifth grader researches a family member or ancestor, conducting interviews, writing a biographical essay, and creating artistic elements that bring the person's story to life. The project integrates research skills, narrative and informational writing, oral history, and visual presentation into a single deeply personal experience. It also anchors the Grade 5 social studies arc, which traces American history through the perspectives of diverse peoples, asking students to understand larger historical forces through the specific, human stories of their own families.