First Grade
Reading In first grade, students begin the year mastering consonants, short vowels, and digraphs to read words fluently. Lessons progress to glued sounds, base words with the suffix “s,” consonant blends, and “r” controlled vowels. Word instruction consists of sight words (trick words) and vocabulary. Students practice reading with the teacher, with partners, and independently with the goal of building their comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and stamina. Decodable books complement lesson progression. The classroom library provides choices of good fit books, a collection of books at a variety of reading levels, picture storybooks, informational books, and chapter books. Students also explore the different purposes of reading. Phonemic Awareness Students work on developing rhyming, fluency, blending, isolating phonemes, and segmenting. As skills develop further students are able to add, delete, and substitute syllables or phonemes. Word Work Students practice with a multisensory approach in reading and writing instruction that also involves encoding instruction.
Writing Students develop legible and fluent handwriting. Instruction begins with lowercase letter formation working to distinguish between lowercase and uppercase letters. Daily practice includes letter formation instruction including dictation. This work encourages students to develop good writing habits. They learn the beginning concepts of sentence structure to include beginning sentences with uppercase letters and proper ending punctuation. Skills develop through a variety of activities including journal writing, expository writing, letter writing, and descriptive writing. Mathematics In first grade, the Singapore Math approach is utilized through the Math in Focus curriculum. The concrete-pictorial-abstract methodology of introducing topics and skills through Math in Focus allows students to gain an understanding of numbers through manipulatives and pictorial representations before moving to more abstract concepts. Topics and skills through hands-on instruction include basic mathematical facts, place value, mental math and geometry concepts. Additional topics include understanding numbers to 120, addition and subtraction within 40, shapes and patterns, calendar and time, length and weight, graphs, and money.
2024-2025 ULS Curriculum Guide
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