5th Grade Quiz: Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

This 5th grade quiz brings back the lessons from elementary school, with questions on multiplication, fractions, verbs, Lewis and Clark, Alaska and the water cycle. Ten questions, 90 seconds: are you smarter than a fifth grader?

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🎯 Daily Trivia Challenge • 🧠 10 Questions • ⏱️ 90 Seconds

Question 1 / 10 Time: 90s

Math
What is 7 × 8?
Grammar
Which word is the verb in the sentence The dog runs fast?
Science
Which part of a plant takes in water from the soil?
U.S. Geography
Which is the largest U.S. state by area?
Math
What is 3/4 written as a decimal?
U.S. History
Who led the Corps of Discovery to the Pacific Ocean between 1804 and 1806?
Science
What do we call animals that eat only plants?
Grammar
In science, what is the usual plural of cactus?
Math
What is the area of a rectangle that is 6 cm long and 4 cm wide?
Science
What is it called when water vapor cools and turns back into liquid?

Explanations: answer key for all 10 questions

Q1: What is 7 × 8?
Answer: 56
Seven times eight is 56. A handy memory trick is the sequence 5, 6, 7, 8, which reads as 56 = 7 × 8.
Q2: Which word is the verb in the sentence The dog runs fast?
Answer: runs
A verb is an action or being word, and runs tells us what the dog does. Dog is a noun, and fast is an adverb that tells us how the dog runs.
Q3: Which part of a plant takes in water from the soil?
Answer: Roots
Roots pull water and minerals from the soil and hold the plant in place. The water then travels up the stem to the leaves, where it is used to make food.
Q4: Which is the largest U.S. state by area?
Answer: Alaska
Alaska covers about 665,000 square miles, more than twice the size of Texas, the second-largest state. California comes third.
Q5: What is 3/4 written as a decimal?
Answer: 0.75
Three quarters means three out of four equal parts, and 3 divided by 4 equals 0.75. As a percentage, that is 75 percent.
Q6: Who led the Corps of Discovery to the Pacific Ocean between 1804 and 1806?
Answer: Lewis and Clark
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the expedition from near St. Louis to the Pacific coast and back. President Thomas Jefferson sent them to explore the lands of the Louisiana Purchase.
Q7: What do we call animals that eat only plants?
Answer: Herbivores
Herbivores, such as cows, deer and rabbits, eat only plants. Carnivores eat meat, and omnivores, including humans and bears, eat both.
Q8: In science, what is the usual plural of cactus?
Answer: Cacti
Scientists usually say cacti, which follows the Latin plural form. Cactuses is also accepted in everyday English, but cactis is never correct.
Q9: What is the area of a rectangle that is 6 cm long and 4 cm wide?
Answer: 24 cm²
The area of a rectangle is its length times its width, so 6 cm × 4 cm = 24 square centimeters. The distance around the outside, the perimeter, would be 20 cm.
Q10: What is it called when water vapor cools and turns back into liquid?
Answer: Condensation
Condensation is when water vapor cools into liquid, like the droplets on a cold glass or the clouds in the sky. Evaporation is the opposite, and precipitation is rain, snow or hail falling from clouds.

5th Grade Quiz – Back to Elementary School

Fifth grade is the year when many American students tie together everything they have learned so far. They multiply and divide with confidence, work with fractions and decimals, learn the parts of speech, study the early history of the United States and begin to understand cycles in nature, such as the water cycle and food chains. For many adults, those lessons are a long way back.

This quiz takes ten typical fifth-grade topics and turns them into quick questions. They look simple, but the wrong answers are the kind of mistakes people really make: mixing up area and perimeter, picking the wrong plural, or confusing evaporation with condensation. The explanations walk through each answer the way a good teacher would.

If you have children in elementary school, try playing together and compare scores. It is a fun way to see what they are learning, and they will enjoy catching a grown-up out.

Teachers often say the best way to learn something is to teach it. If you get a question wrong, try explaining the right answer to someone else in your own words. You may be surprised how quickly the fact sticks, and how much easier the quiz feels the second time around.

What This Quiz Teaches

This quiz is made for parents, grandparents, teachers and students in grades 4 to 6, and for any adult who wants to see how much school knowledge has stuck.

A quick memory trick for the multiplication fact 7 × 8
How to spot the verb in a sentence
How to turn a fraction into a decimal
The difference between area and perimeter
Who Lewis and Clark were and why their journey mattered
How condensation, evaporation and precipitation fit together in the water cycle

Quick Facts From the Classroom

Zero is an even number, because it can be divided by two with nothing left over.
The equator is about 40,075 kilometers (24,901 miles) long.
The Mississippi River and its tributaries drain all or part of 31 U.S. states.
A noun names a person, place, thing or idea, so happiness is a noun too.
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 roughly doubled the size of the United States.
Plants give off water vapor through their leaves, a process called transpiration.