Grade 1 Team
Grade Leader – Ashley Mariano – marianoa@weston.org
Tel: 781-786-5400
Teachers – Brittany Toy, Ashley Mariano, Emily Lattin, Brenda Charles
Grade 1 Curriculum
Reading: In first grade, students are immersed in literacy concepts during the reader’s workshop which includes shared reading, small group instruction and independent reading. The year begins by reinforcing children’s learning from kindergarten as they work to become more strategic as readers. Students will be exposed to both fiction and nonfiction texts, while learning comprehension strategies, word solving, vocabulary, fluency, and author’s craft. As the year progresses, students will read increasingly complex texts and learn about story elements and the skills that are foundational to literal and inferential comprehension, including empathy, character study, and interpretation.
Writing: Students in first grade will write a variety of texts throughout the year. During the narrative unit students take the everyday events of their young lives and make them into focused, well-structured stories. They then move to write procedural and informational texts. They finish the year with persuasive reviews of all sorts—pizza restaurant reviews, TV show reviews, ice cream flavor reviews, and finally book reviews that hook the reader, clearly express the writer’s opinion, and bolster their argument in convincing ways. Through an interdisciplinary approach to writer’s workshop, students will learn to draft, revise, edit and publish pieces of writing.
Phonics: First grade phonics reinforces the basic skills that were learned in Kindergarten and progresses further into the study of word structure. First graders work to spell untaught words phonetically, drawing on phonemic awareness and spelling conventions. In addition they read and spell the first 100 high frequency words, including irregular words (trick words) and identify word structures such as blends, digraphs, base words, suffixes, syllable types (closed and vowel-consonant-e syllables). These skills are closely connected to the learning in both reading and writing workshops.
Handwriting: Letter formation is taught and reinforced throughout the year. Children learn to use lower case letters and spacing in their writing and use the lines on the page as a guide.
Math: First-grade students explore big ideas that include: developing understanding of addition, subtraction, and strategies for addition and subtraction within 20; developing understanding of whole-number relationships and place value, including grouping in tens and ones; developing understanding of linear measurement and measuring lengths as iterating length units; and reasoning about attributes of, and composing and decomposing geometric shapes.
Science: Students learn to become scientists through exploration, observation, data collection & analysis, and recording of information in their science journals. They make predictions as they collect seasonal data. Each class adopts a tree to study throughout the school year and compares how trees are similar and different from one another. Through hands-on exploration, students learn about sound and light. They also continue to learn about similarities and differences by investigating animals and constructing explanations about their findings.
Social Studies: Students explore unity and diversity by studying families and Ghana and determine similarities and differences. They also further study citizenship and are introduced to the concept of leadership by examining leaders in history and everyday life and start to construct the attributes of effective leadership.
Grade 1 Homework:
Homework begins the first week of November. Homework in first grade is designed to foster responsibility and encourage children to share what is going on in the classroom. Homework activities include math games to reinforce concepts taught in the classroom. Children may also work on Word Wall activities or share a book read during Guided Reading instruction. Homework is distributed on Monday and is due back to school by Wednesday.
