Excerpt 13: Operations & Algebraic Thinking in Grade 5 (Page 32)

Description: One of a series of documents describing the progression of a topic across several grade levels, informed both by research on children's development and by the structure of mathematics. As preparation for the Expressions and Equations Progression in the middle grades, students in Grade 5 begin working more formally with expressions. Use parentheses, brackets, or braces in numerical expressions, and evaluate expressions with these symbols. Thus, students in Grade 5 begin to think about numerical expressions in ways that prefigure their later work with variable expressions.