Upon its launch in 1991, E. D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge Series instantly became popular among hundreds of thousands of parents who were concerned about the state of their children's education. Hirsch realized that the solutions to America's much-debated declining educational standards might very well lie in the primary grades, where many current curricula emphasize skills at the expense of knowledge. Since knowledge builds upon knowledge, these early years provide the foundation for further learning.The Core Knowledge Series helps children gain the fundamentals they will need to make progress in school and be effective in society - specific knowledge in the subject areas of language arts, fine arts, history, geography, mathematics, science, and technology. Editor E. D. Hirsch, Jr., author of Cultural Literacy, has worked with many teachers, parents, historians, scientists, and experts on America's multicultural tradition to compile this model of a coherent core of content for elementary school children. By devoting a modest amount of time each day, you and your child can work through every page of What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know as a supplement to classroom education.Building on themes and topics from earlier volumes in the Core Knowledge Series, some of the things you will find in this volume include stories and speeches: selections from Homer's epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Don Quixote, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; American Civilization: progress and problems with industrialization, reformers who worked for rights of women, African-Americans, and the urban poor, and the complexities and compromises of becoming an international power; life sciences: classifying living organisms and life cycles and reproduction of plants and animals; geography: climate zones and time zones and how lakes are formed; physical sciences: combining concepts of science and math such as mass, speed, force, and energy; and world civilizations: European and Native American cultures meet, the European Renaissance, feudal Japan and Russia, the tremendous religious upheavals of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, and the massive political and social shake-up of the French Revolution.For parents and teachers alike, What Your Fifth Grader Needs to know is an essential volume. You can make the difference! Read Less