FIRST GRADE
FIRST TRIMESTER OVERVIEW
Students have a “mini-unit” as a kindergarten review that covers previously taught skills and serves as a refresher. Students explore data using tally charts and picture graphs; working with numbers to 10 and what zero means when added to a number; compare and order numbers to 31 using the terms greater and less than; ways to make addition and subtraction facts to 10; and adding and subtracting up and down. We also read for math and practice problem solving.
Students write in journals and continue to write narrative stories. They begin with simple sentences and brainstorm, edit and revise their work from a web to best copy in four-page books. They use FCA’s (focus correction areas) derived from the John Collin’s Writing Program that helps students focus on mechanics, style, content and organization. Students also learn to write elaborative detail in whole group stories using the Empowering Writing Program.
Students complete the first unit in the Reading Street Series. The theme is “Animals, Tame and Wild. The six stories in the unit are fiction and non-fictional pieces that help the children learn about characters; setting; summarizing; main idea; and cause and effect. Through these six stories, short vowel words and blends are introduced from the vocabulary and for our spelling practice.
Students participate in discussions and explorations of concepts related to citizenship. Concepts include: how people get along; leadership; good citizens then and now; our country’s symbols and pledge.
First grade students experience the life cycle of a monarch butterfly from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. This experience helps them in observing and describing an organism that undergoes metamorphosis. The butterflies are then released outside.