5th Grade Reading Activities to Do at Home

Supplemental 5th Grade Reading Activities

By the time your child is in 5th grade, he or she may be able to explain plot and character development, identify various literary genres, look up information at the library and read more challenging books. Encouraging your 5th grader to do reading activities at home may help improve his or her fluency, comprehension and vocabulary. You can try any of the following activities to help your son or daughter read more critically.

What 5th Grade Reading Activities Can We Do at Home?

Determining Facts, Opinions and Inferences

From a newspaper, magazine or news website, choose one article and one editorial to read together. Then give your son three sheets of paper and a pen. Have him write 'fact' at the top of one sheet, 'opinion' at the top of the second sheet and 'inference' at the top of the third. Ask him to take a closer look at the article and editorial and categorize sentences as facts, opinions or inferences. Then ask him to explain why he defined each sentence that way.

Tracking Books in a Journal

This activity allows your 5th grader to track how many books she has read. Ask her to number the pages of a blank journal in numerical order up to at least 100. For each numbered page, she should write the title and author of a book she has read, as well as thoughts about the book. Encourage creativity.

Finding Story Elements in Comic Strips

Cut comic strips from your newspaper and separate the panels of each one. Ask your son to reconstruct all the panels of each comic strip in the correct order and glue them into place on sheets of construction paper (one comic strip per sheet). Once he has correctly figured out the sequence of the story in each strip, ask him to describe the characters, plot and setting. Have him identify the main idea of each comic strip.

Crafting Reading Questions

Children often respond to prompts or questions about books they read, but thinking up their own questions about a book is another way to approach critical thinking. The next time your daughter reads a book, ask her to write down 5-10 questions that touch on story elements, such as plot, theme, characters, point of view and setting. Her questions should invite discussion and analysis of the book.