Informational Writing

Fifth grade is the year informational writing starts to look like real informational writing. Up through fourth grade, the focus is mostly on writing well-organized paragraphs about familiar topics. In fifth grade, the expectation shifts. Kids are supposed to be doing actual research, working with multiple sources, integrating quotes, citing where their information came from, and producing pieces that read more like the articles and chapter books they’re reading themselves. It’s a real leap, and W.5.2 lays out the pieces of it pretty clearly.

This nine-week program walks through those pieces one at a time. Week 1 is the foundation: what informational writing actually is, how to narrow a too-broad topic into something manageable, how to turn that topic into research questions, and how to take notes that won’t be useless three days later. A lot of fifth graders skip this step entirely — they pick “dolphins” or “World War II” and start writing without ever narrowing the angle, and the piece falls apart because there’s no actual focus. Week 1 fixes that.

Structure, content, and the parts that go around it

Week 2 introduces the four text structures every fifth grader is expected to recognize and use: cause and effect, compare and contrast, chronological order, and problem and solution. These aren’t just labels for tests. They’re the actual shapes informational writing takes, and choosing the right one for a topic is half the work of writing it well. Week 3 moves to introductions — hooks that aren’t “I am going to tell you about” and thesis statements that preview the piece without giving everything away. Week 4 is body paragraphs: topic sentences, supporting details, and the kind of elaboration that actually deepens a reader’s understanding rather than padding word count.

Week 5 is where fifth grade gets serious — evidence integration. Quoting versus paraphrasing, citing sources, attributing ideas, avoiding plagiarism. This is the week most kids first run into the difference between copying a sentence and using it as evidence, and it tends to be a turning point. Week 6 covers text features — headings, subheadings, bold terms, lists, formatting — the visual scaffolding that makes a piece scannable and useful to a reader. Honestly, this is the part of informational writing that most resembles what kids encounter in real life, in textbooks and articles and online, and giving it explicit attention pays off.

The closing weeks

Week 7 returns to conclusions, this time at the fifth-grade level — synthesizing key points, connecting to the bigger picture, leaving the reader with a final insight rather than just restating the thesis. Week 8 is revision and editing: clarity, accuracy, organization, style, conventions, all of it. Week 9 is the capstone — kids plan, research, draft, and revise a complete informational piece on a topic they choose.

The whole arc is designed so that by the end of the program, a fifth grader can produce a researched, organized, properly cited, well-revised informational piece on their own. Each week includes 5 practice worksheets and full answer keys, all aligned to Common Core W.5.2.