in which direction does replication occur (in reference to the 5' and 3' ends, be specific in
how you explain your point of reference, reading the template strand or adding new bases)

Replication occurs in 5'to 3' direction because upcoming nucleotides form a bond with 3'OH of the existing strand and not on 5' Phosphate group.

Explanation:

There are two strands in a double stranded-DNA which unwinds to replicate into two daughter strands. However, the first strand i.e. leading will be synthesized continuously as upcoming free nucleotide or base from the nucleoplasm will come and get added to the growing chain at the 3'OH group of the existing nucleotide in case of both primers and growing chain of nucleotide.

In the lagging strand, synthesis gets complicated but not reversed as it too follows universal law of DNA elongation. It gets replicated in fragments in 5'to 3' direction.

The DNA chain elongation is done by DNA Polymerase.

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