Welcome to First Grade

In Grade 1 English Language Arts, students continue to develop their oral language and communication skills and move to becoming independent readers and writers. First grade students listen attentively and connect their experiences and ideas with information and ideas presented in print. Students listen and respond to a wide variety of children's literature, including selections from classic and contemporary works. The stories and informational books students hear introduce them to new vocabulary. Students recognize the distinguishing features of stories, poems, and informational texts. First grade students continue to develop their concepts of how print connects with spoken language. Students understand that spoken language is composed of sequences of sounds and that those sounds are represented by letters. Students can name the letters and know the order of the alphabet and associate sounds with the letter or letters that represent them. Students learn most of the common letter-sound correspondences and use this knowledge to help them decode written words. First grade students regularly read (both orally and silently) in texts of appropriate difficulty with fluency and understanding. Students demonstrate their comprehension by asking and answering questions, retelling stories, predicting outcomes, and making and explaining inferences. First grade students become adept writers. Students know the difference between words, sentences, and paragraphs. First grade students can organize their thoughts and ideas into complete stories or reports. Students use subjects and verbs and are able to write complete sentences using basic capitalization and punctuation. First grade students become more proficient spellers as they learn to spell a number of high-frequency words and words with regularly spelled patterns. The students' messages move from left-to-right and from top-to-bottom and are written with increasing control of penmanship.
 
1st Grade Math:
(1) Within a well-balanced mathematics curriculum, the primary focal points at Grade 1 are building number sense through number relationships, adding and subtracting whole numbers, organizing and analyzing data, and working with two- and three-dimensional geometric figures.
 
(2) Throughout mathematics in Kindergarten-Grade 2, students build a foundation of basic understandings in number, operation, and quantitative reasoning; patterns, relationships, and algebraic thinking; geometry and spatial reasoning; measurement; and probability and statistics. Students use numbers in ordering, labeling, and expressing quantities and relationships to solve problems and translate informal language into mathematical language and symbols. Students use objects to create and identify patterns and use those patterns to express relationships, make predictions, and solve problems as they build an understanding of number, operation, shape, and space. Students progress from informal to formal language to describe two- and three-dimensional geometric figures and likenesses in the physical world. Students begin to develop measurement concepts as they identify and compare attributes of objects and situations. Students collect, organize, and display data and use information from graphs to answer questions, make summary statements, and make informal predictions based on their experiences.
 
(3) Throughout mathematics in Kindergarten-Grade 2, students develop numerical fluency with conceptual understanding and computational accuracy. Students in Kindergarten-Grade 2 use basic number sense to compose and decompose numbers in order to solve problems requiring precision, estimation, and reasonableness. By the end of Grade 2, students know basic addition and subtraction facts and are using them to work flexibly, efficiently, and accurately with numbers during addition and subtraction computation.
 
(4) Problem solving, language and communication, connections within and outside mathematics, and formal and informal reasoning underlie all content areas in mathematics. Throughout mathematics in Kindergarten-Grade 2, students use these processes together with technology and other mathematical tools such as manipulative materials to develop conceptual understanding and solve meaningful problems as they do mathematics.
 
1st Grade Science:
1) In Grade 1, the study of science includes simple classroom and field investigations to help students develop the skills of asking questions, gathering information, making measurements using non-standard units, with tools such as a thermometer to extend their senses, constructing explanations, and drawing conclusions. Students also use computers and information technology tools to support their investigations.
 
(2) As students learn science skills, they identify components of the natural world including rocks, soil, and natural resources. Students observe that heat from the Sun or friction, is an example of something that causes change. In addition, students identify basic needs of living things, explore ways that living things depend on each other, and separate living organisms and nonliving things into groups. Students identify parts that can be put together with other parts to do new things.
 
(3) Science is a way of learning about the natural world. Students should know how science has built a vast body of changing and increasing knowledge described by physical, mathematical, and conceptual models, and also should know that science may not answer all questions.
 
(4) A system is a collection of cycles, structures, and processes that interact. Students should understand a whole in terms of its components and how these components relate to each other and to the whole. All systems have basic properties that can be described in terms of space, time, energy, and matter. Change and constancy occur in systems and can be observed and measured as patterns. These patterns help to predict what will happen next and can change over time.
 
(5) Investigations are used to learn about the natural world. Students should understand that certain types of questions can be answered by investigations, and that methods, models, and conclusions built from these investigations change as new observations are made. Models of objects and events are tools for understanding the natural world and can show how systems work. They have limitations and based on new discoveries are constantly being modified to more closely reflect the natural world.