| Our first grade curriculum is
primarily the 3 R's: reading, writing and arithmetic (mathematics). We
also teach social studies and science in the classroom. Art,
music, computers and P.E. are taught by the specials teachers.
Reading
The children move from learning
the alphabet and the sounds of each letter to reading fiction and
non-fiction with fluency and comprehension. This is a huge
accomplishment and it involves lots of work. The children
learn many strategies to help them decode words, expand their vocabulary
and improve fluency and comprehension. We use the Scott-Foresman reading
series as our basal reader. The children have take-home books
which are leveled at their reading ability.
Writing
Students begin
learning the writing process by drawing pictures and labeling elements in
them. They move on to writing a sentence and learning to include the
necessary parts of a sentence. From there students are introduced to
paragraph writing. They learn about the topic sentence, supporting sentences
and concluding sentences. At the end of first grade students
should be able to write a well organized five sentence paragraph.
They learn to write descriptions, narratives (stories), reports, and
letters.
The students will also
learn parts of speech (nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives). They will
learn these conventions of writing: the use end of
sentence punctuation and when to use capital letters . We use Scott-Foresman, Step Up to Writing and Six
Trait Writing.
Mathematics
Our school district
adopted the Everyday Mathematics curriculum in 2004. This is a spiraling
program which addresses each of the six math standards. Because of
the spiral built into the program, concepts are taught and revisited
throughout the year, It is a very hands-on program which keeps the student
interest high and the learning very effective.
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