What your child learns in first grade

Religion

Your child will learn to:

• Recognize God as a loving creator
• Identify God's gift to the world of His Son
• Follow Christ's example of respect and love
• Identify the Bible as God's special book
• Retell biblical stories such as Creation, Noah's Ark, and Christ's birth
• See our families as a celebration of God
• Identify the Holy Family
• Demonstrate Christian attitudes during prayer and Mass
• Recite the Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, the Sign of the Cross, and Guardian Angel prayers
• Distinguish between the liturgical seasons of Lent, Easter, Advent, and Christmas time
• Identify saints as holy people who help us live as Jesus did
• Recognize a need for prayer in daily life
• Attend weekly Mass, prayer services, and monthly rosaries

Math

Your child will learn to:

• Count by 1's to 130
• Count backwards from 10
• Count by 2's, 5's, and 10's
• Recognize and print numbers to 20
• Explore addition and subtraction concepts
• Use addition strategies to 20
• Use subtraction strategies to 20
• Understand place value: ones, tens, hundreds
• Understand and explore two-digit addition and subtraction
• Organize, understand, and use graphs
• Compare lengths of objects
• Understand time to the hour and half hour
• Identify and count coins
• Recognize 2D and 3D shapes
• Understand elements of the calendar

Reading

Your child will learn to:

• Segment sounds in words
• Identify the literary elements of a story
• Retell stories including key details
• Understand print contains meaning
• Interpret and use pictures and labels
• Identify and use letter sounds
• Recognize and use rhyming words
• Identify his or her own name in print
• Identify print conventions (capitals, periods)
• Memorize text and basic sight words
• Understand directionality, tracking left to right
• Distinguish letters, words, and sentences
• Match initial and final consonant sounds with letter names
• Read and decode basic three-letter words
• Ask and answer questions about key details in text
• Retell stories and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson
• Describe characters, settings, and major events using key details
• Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print
• Recognize the features of a sentence (first word, capitalization, ending punctuation)
• Apply grade-level phonics and word-analysis skills in decoding words
• Decode regularly spelled one-syllable words
• Decode two-syllable words by breaking them into syllables
• Read words with inflectional endings
• Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words
• Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension
• Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding
• Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression
• Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition, rereading as necessary

Phonics

Your child will learn, identify, and spell words with these phonics and spelling patterns:

• Short vowels
• Long vowel patterns
• Silent e
• Vowel teams
• R-controlled vowels: ar, er, ir, or, ur
• Consonant digraphs: sh, ch, wh, th, ph
• Vowel diphthongs and digraphs: oi, oy, au, aw, ou, ow, ew, oo
• Y as a vowel
• Hard and soft c
• Hard and soft g
• Trigraphs (three-letter blends)
• Ending blends
• Compound words
• Contractions

Your child will also build phonemic awareness: distinguishing long from short vowel sounds, blending sounds into single-syllable words, and isolating initial, medial, and final sounds in spoken words.

Writing

Your child will learn to:

• Demonstrate directionality (left to right)
• Legibly write the upper and lower case letters of the alphabet using D'Nealian handwriting
• Print his or her own first and last name
• Understand that letters in written language represent sounds in words
• Describe and label drawings
• Copy environmental print
• Share drawings with the class
• Respond with relevant comments, compliments, and questions
• Identify areas to improve and recognize those changes in drawings and writing
• Demonstrate basic writing conventions of spacing, punctuation, and capitalization
• Hold and use a pencil correctly
• Write basic three-letter words
• Write short sentences using sight words and inventive spelling
• Write numerals 1 to 20 in sequence

Social Studies

Your child will learn to:

• Identify basic American symbols
• Explore beginning map and geography skills
• Learn about the first Thanksgiving
• Understand holidays as a time to remember special people and events in our nation's history
• Distinguish between needs and wants
• Recognize a need for rules and authority
• Demonstrate respect for rights, responsibilities, and property
• Describe school and community helpers
• Identify the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance
• Measure time by day and night, months, and seasons

Computer Technology

Your child will learn to:

• Use basic educational programs
• View the computer as a learning tool

Science

Your child will learn to:

• Study solids and liquids (matter) in a LASER science unit
• Send a message using sound (STEM unit)
• Predict when the sky will be dark (STEM unit)
• Classify things as living and nonliving
• Practice basic safety precautions
• Explore comparing and measuring through inquiry-based science

Physical Education

Students receive 30 minutes of P.E. twice a week, focused on gross and fine motor skills, learning new games, participation, and respect for others.

Music

Students have music twice a week for 30 minutes, exploring folk, sacred, and secular pieces through rhythm (beat, no beat, long, short, fast, slow), melody (vocal exploration, high, low), form (musical patterns), and texture and expression (solo versus group, soft versus loud, four voices). They also experiment with unpitched percussion.