Curriculum Highlights: First Grade

• Alphabet mastery
• Consonant sounds (digraphs and blends)
• Vowel sounds (short and long)
• Word analysis skills
• Nouns, verbs, pronouns
• Scrambled sentences
• Listening skills
• Dictation
• Pre-decodable and decodable books
• Comprehension
• Sight words
• Oral expression
• Handwriting
• Creative writing
• Junior Great Books
• Summer workbook

• Numeration, 0 – 1,000
• Counting by 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, 5’s, and 10’s
• Estimating, comparing, measuring
• Place value
• Addition, subtraction of 2-, 3-digit numbers
• Simple fractions
• Patterns
• Functions
• Congruence, symmetry
• Money:  coins and bills
• Telling time to quarter-hour
• Calendars
• Graphs
• Logical problem solving
• Summer workbook

• Appreciating self and others
• Composition and needs of families
• Community helpers
• Differences among people, cultures
• Native American culture
• Holidays in our country and other lands
• Outstanding individuals, contributions
• Basic principles and procedures of a democracy
• Economy:  jobs & money exchange
• Finding facts, recognizing non-facts

• Animal kingdom: dinosaurs and fossils
• Animal growth
• Human body and nutrition
• Plants
• Sound
• Heat energy
• Light energy
• States of matter
• Air and weather
• Changes on Earth
• Our solar system
• Frequent hands-on activities/labs

• The globe as a model of Earth
• Earth’s bodies of land and water
• Conceptual introduction to maps
• Map symbols and keys
• Directions
• North Pole/South Pole
• Compass rose
• Map grid and scale
• Political map
• Introduction to the United States
• Landform map

• Daily P.E. class
• Fitness and conditioning
• Body control:  agility, flexibility, endurance, balance,  gross motor coordination, hand-eye coordination, spatial skills
• Movement skills, including dance
• Manipulative activities
• Game skills
• Good health habits:  hygiene, diet, safety
• Respect, cooperation, confidence

• Dedicated art studio
• Art class twice weekly
• Develop color sense, basic mixing
• Lines, symmetry, texture
• Drawing and coloring:  pencil, eraser, markers, oil pastels, crayons
• Painting:  tempera paint, watercolors
• Printmaking:  plexiglass, water-soluble printing inks, various printing tools
• Sculpture:  plasticene, air-drying clay
• Collage:  paper, glue, scissors, fabric, tissue paper
• Introduction to bookmaking
• Self expression, respect, confidence
• Annual, school-wide art contest

• Listening to music
• Differentiating musical sounds
• Foundations of musical literacy
• Rhythmic speech in counterpoint
• Introduce musical notation
• Group singing
• Develop sense of interpretation
• Instruments:  tambourines, triangles, drums, etc.
• Performance: two music programs each year

• Attendance at dramatic productions
• Speaking role in class play
• Develop acting skills
• Use of costumes and props
• Ensemble/solo singing, choreography
• Public speaking, confidence

• Listening comprehension
• Pronunciation skills
• Daily greetings and instructions
• Vocabulary building
• Gender in nouns, articles, and adjectives
• Simple plurals
• Dialogue, mini-conversations
• Songs, poems
• Writing simple sentences
• French culture

• Story time/read-alouds
• Book selection/check-out
• Fiction, alphabetical location
• Non-fiction, topic location
• Reference books
• Folk tales, fairy tales
• Curriculum-related books
• Seasonal books
• Highlight authors
• Oral book reporting
• Book fair

• StarBoards in each classroom
• Rolling laptop cart for classroom computer use
• Basic familiarity with computers

Several field trips per year; recent examples include:

• American Indian Museum
• National Museum of African Art
• Kennedy Center
• Discovery Theater
• GMU, Center for the Arts
• Whole Foods Market
• Curiosity Zone
• Rachel Schlesinger Concert Hall