5th Grade Reading Activities for Students
- Set up a scavenger hunt for your fifth-grade class. Write out detailed instructions that the students have to use along the way. Add nonessentials to the instructions to help them discern what information they need for the hunt and what they need to ignore. The clues can come from books that they have to read, or just be those that you provide. Setting up a scavenger hunt helps you judge where the students are in their reading comprehension.
- Just because your child is in fifth grade and can read well on his own, does not mean that he will not enjoy your reading to him. Of course, picture books are below his level, so consider reading some of the classics to him. While some of these may be a little bit difficult for him to read right now, he is not too young to understand when read to. This will give him an enjoyment for the classics and reading without discouragement by the harder to read words, the longer sentence structure and longer paragraphs in many of the classics. Your child will also come to love the time you spend together.
- Provide worksheets with questions about stories your students have read. Try to ask questions that are not so obvious. Specific questions will test the child's knowledge and let you know how much he picks up from the story. For longer books, use worksheets for every chapter or every few chapters, depending on their length and how much time you have. Plan to use the worksheets for fun with the kids by not grading them, but using the results to encourage students to learn more.
- Sometimes magazines can be more fun to read than a book. For fifth-graders, choose magazines that they find interesting. "Highlights" and "Ranger Rick" are just a couple of the magazines available for children. The writing in these magazines is for kids, while including a few new vocabulary words. Students can choose an article from a magazine to write a report or a summary about. Finding topics that students are interested in is one way to get them reading.
