First Grade Overview

1) Distinguishing between long and short vowel sounds, learning the common vowel teams for long vowel sounds (e.g. play, tie, tail), and understanding the silent e.

2) Recognizing the print features of a sentence: always capitalize the first letter of the first word and always end with punctuation — a period for statements, a question mark for questions.

3) Hunting for “evidence” to answer questions, which means finding — and literally pointing to — answers to questions. To answer , “What was Grandpa making for breakfast at the beginning of the book?” Your child may remember Grandpa was flipping pancakes, but showing evidence means your child should flip through the pages and find the words — or the picture — to point out the answer.

1) Practicing and learning three kinds of writing: opinion, informative, and narrative.

2) Understanding that writing is a multistep process that begins with prewriting (reading and gathering ideas), writing a first draft, revising their work, and making final edits.

​3) Responding to questions using information they’ve learned – by looking up answers and using facts and observations to back up what they write.

1) Adding and subtracting easily up to 20, including solving word problems and addition and subtraction problems up to 100.

2) Understanding ones and 10s and being able to mentally add or subtract by 10.

3) Partitioning circles and rectangles into two and four equal shares and describing the parts as halves, fourths, and quarters.

By the end of the year, you can expect your first grade child to:

* Work independently at their desk

* Listen to longer sets of directions

* Read directions off the board, although some children may still have difficulty with this

* Complete homework and bring it back the next day

* Sit in a chair for a longer period of time

* Be able to see things from another person’s point of view so you can reason with your child and teach her empathy

* Relate to and repeat experiences in greater detail and in a logical way after listening

* Problem-solve disagreements

* Crave affection from parents and teachers

* Have some minor difficulties with friendships and working out problems with peers

* Distinguish left from right

* Be able to plan ahead

* Write and spell untaught words phonetically

* Read and write high-frequency words such as where and every

* Write complete sentences with correct capitalization and punctuation

* Understand and use correctly conjunctions and prepositions, such as but and beyond

* Read aloud first-grade books with accuracy and understanding

* Tell time to the hour and half-hour using analog and digital clocks

* Quickly answer addition problems with sums up to 20

* Quickly answer subtraction problems with numbers 0 to 20

* Complete two-digit addition and subtraction problems without regrouping.

Reading is the key to building knowledge — and building your first grader’s knowledge is the key to raising a strong reader.

Whether your first grader is still stumbling over beginning texts or sailing through books independently, there are key reading skills your child should learn this year under Common Core Standards.

​Those Tricky Vowels

Your first grader certainly doesn’t need to know this, but there are 18 vowel phonemes — or distinct sounds — in the English language. Why is this important? Because phonemic awareness is an important indicator of how well a child will read within the first two years of school.

This year, your child will be learning how to distinguish between what’s known as long and short vowel sounds in one-syllable words — an essential concept. (Here’s a way to explain the difference between long and short vowels: when a vowel sounds like its name, it’s a long sound: ape, feet. Short vowels don’t sound like their letter: cat, dot.) Kids will become intimately familiar with that trickiest of vowels, the silent e — and how adding an e to the end of a word can transform a short vowel into a long one. Tip: play the silent e game with your child: What happens if you put an e on hop? It turns into hope!

Breaking the Code

First graders learn to recognize the most basic sounds and sound blends (phonemes) they find in one-syllable words. In class, they will be asked to separate — or segment — letters (e.g. h/a/t) or common consonant blends (e.g. st in stop, pl in plate, tr in tree), so they really hear how individual sounds come together to make a word.

They also need to learn some common combinations of two consonants that make one sound (e.g. sh in shape, th in this, wh in what).

First graders will also leap into the world of decoding two-syllable words (e.g. ap/ple, mon/key) and learn that each syllable contains at least one vowel.

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Finally, first graders are learning how to read familiars words with new endings, such as run becoming running, bird becoming birds, and play becoming played.

Building Vocabulary and Word Sense

“May I have a pomegranate, Mom?” First grade is often when parents start noticing that, wonder of wonders, their child’s vocabulary starts to flourish. Suddenly, multisyllabic words may be bursting forth from your young reader. It’s also the year of reading challenges: children are expected to become familiar with one of the common bugaboos of the English language: irregularly spelled words (e.g. school, people, thought). Some kids learn these words readily, but many struggle with sounding out common but unfamiliar spellings.

First graders will also be expected to correct their own reading mistakes based on the context of the story. For example, your child might mispronounce porridge when reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears, then look at the bowl, remember the familiar fairy tale, and correct himself.

First graders practice language categorization, such as sorting words that are types of food, colors, or clothing, and learn to define words by one or more key attributes (e.g. a duck is a bird that swims, a tiger is a large cat with stripes). They’ll learn to use their own experience to understand shades of meaning among similar verbs (e.g. look, peek, glance, glare, scowl) and between adjectives that differ in intensity (e.g. large, huge, gigantic). Tip: ask your child to act out the difference between mean, fierce, and terrifying.

I will also expect your child to use new words learned from conversations or reading, including employing frequently occurring conjunctions (e.g. and, or, so, because) in context. For example: “Let’s go to the park because I need to play!”

What Makes a Sentence?

First graders need to learn how to recognize the print features of a sentence.

• One: always capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence.

• Two: sentences always end with punctuation — a period for statements, a question mark for questions, and an exclamation point to convey excitement or urgency. (Bonus points for first graders who know the meaning of the exclamation point. It’s ahead of the curve!)

Exploring Fiction and Nonfiction

By the end of first grade, your child should have a clear understanding that there are different kinds of books: ones that tell stories and ones that give information about things that are (or were) true. And, since reading stories, poems, and segments on George Washington’s early years are each challenging in their own way, your child should practice reading each type of text. Keep in mind this is still first grade, so subjects should remain grade-appropriate — and reading together and getting help along the way is expected.

Building Your Child’s Knowledge Bank

Kids learn by connecting new ideas and information from every book they read to what they already know. Think of it like using reading comprehension skills to build a knowledge bank: with every poem, story, or passage read, there’s a main point, a message, or a key fact (or two) that your child learns. The emphasis here is on thoughtfully relating these new bits of knowledge to your child’s life, experiences, and prior knowledge. Being able to remember storylines, recalling key details, and finding information — are positive signs that your child’s “banking” knowledge.

All About Evidence

“Read like a detective, write like an investigative reporter” is how some experts say children should learn to read and write. For first graders, hunting for evidence means finding — and literally pointing to — answers to questions. To answer “What was Grandpa making for breakfast at the beginning of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs?” your child should flip through the pages and find the words — or the picture — to point out the answer.

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I will emphasize evidence in different ways this year, but the main skills your child should have include:

◦ Asking and answering questions about both the main point and key details in books and showing exactly where those answers show up in the text or illustrations.

◦ Figuring out a book’s one or two biggest ideas and using the text or images to show how the author conveys these ideas.

◦ Naming the reasons an author gives to support her points — and pointing those reasons out in the text or pictures.

First graders learn how to organize and present their thoughts in writing — resulting in full paragraphs with introductions, details, and conclusions by the end of the year.

If you were amazed at how your child’s scribbles transformed into words last year, get ready for pure delight as your first grader learns to write full, meaningful paragraphs this year! First graders learn everything from expressing their thoughts to the rules of grammar.

While the bar may seem high for first graders, remember that this year’s work is a progression, starting with mastery of the alphabet.

​A to Z — and all the sounds in between

I often kick off the year with an ABCs review, just like in kindergarten. But this year’s review is also likely to include a couple dozen high-frequency words (e.g. he, and, good, play).

If your child didn’t master the alphabet last year, it’s okay. First grade is the year to read the ABCs, know their letter sounds, and to print all upper and lowercase letters.

Cn u rd this?

A first grader may start the year writing “cac” for cake or “becs” for because. Dropping a word’s silent e at the end or middle vowel sound to spell it the way it sounds is known as phonetic or “invented” spelling. Children are often more comfortable using consonants and the sounds at the beginning of words because they’re more distinct than vowels or sounds at the ends of words. By using invented spelling, children are demonstrating what they know about letter sounds. Research shows that letting children use invented spelling (and not immediately correcting them) allows them to focus on the purpose of writing: communication.

With time, your first grader should transition to conventional spelling for words with common spelling patterns (e.g. bike, like, hike, and sing, ring, king and high-frequency words).

Note: Keep an eye on your first grader’s spelling near the end of the year: if a child’s spelling does not improve or their invented spelling is arbitrary rather than phonetic, it can be a sign of a learning issue.

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But don’t expect to banish invented spelling completely this year. First graders should be encouraged to keep using what they know about letter sounds and newly learned spelling patterns to spell irregular, unfamiliar, and new vocabulary words, for example “inportint” for important.

3 Types of Writing in First Grade

First graders should practice and learn three kinds of writing: opinion, informative, and narrative.

Opinion and informative writing will likely start with kids reading a book and responding to what they’ve learned. In an opinion piece, your child introduces the book or topic he’s writing about, states his opinion about it, gives a reason or two to support his opinion, and then offers some sort of conclusion to complete his writing.

In an informative piece, your child names what he’s writing about and gives some information, facts, or details about it (e.g. Dinosaurs lived on Earth a long time ago. Some dinosaurs were bigger than people are today…), and, as in an opinion piece, offers some sense of conclusion.

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Writing a narrative is like writing a story. A first grader’s story should describe two or more events, include details about what happened, and give some sense of the story coming to an end — not only by writing “The End,” although that’s a good start.

What does 1st grade writing look like?

Teaching your child to write well means helping them understand that writing is a multistep process. Before your child picks up a pencil, prewriting begins with reading, thinking, rereading, taking notes, and discussing. When your child’s first draft is done, the teacher and other students might ask your child questions about the work to elicit details or facts that could be added, or to help organize the order of events in a story.

Then your child may be asked to do a revision. After one or more revisions of the draft, the teacher might help your child with the final edit — focusing on spelling, capitalizing proper nouns and the first word of a sentence, and adding punctuation at the end. These steps — prewriting, doing a first draft, revising their work, and editing the final piece — help first graders learn all the important parts of writing: gathering and recalling information, organizing their thoughts, strengthening and clarifying their ideas, and improving grammar.

Research in first grade, oh my!

In first grade writing there’s an emphasis on kids learning to respond to questions by looking up answers to their questions.

In their writing, this means that kids will pull information from books, websites, class presentations, and other experiences to form their opinions, arguments, and even stories. When they use this information, they should be able to recall where they learned the facts they’re including and organize them into their own writing. An example you may see your child working on: reading a “how to” book and mimicking the writing structure to write their own instructions for something — in order!

“I go’ed there,” no more!

Get ready for your first grader’s grammar — in the form of noun-verb agreement, adjectives, sentence complexity, and punctuation — to leap forward. First graders learn to use singular and plural nouns with matching verbs in simple past, present, and future tenses. They also learn to use commas.

Kids also learn about proper and possessive nouns (e.g. Shawn and Shawn’s), articles (e.g. a, the), pronouns (e.g. I, me, my, they, them, their, anyone), adjectives (e.g. good, happy), and increasingly difficult prepositions (e.g. during, toward).

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In fact, think of first grade as the year of “because” — because your child’s sentences should move beyond simple statements to compound statements, questions, and exclamations using conjunctions (e.g. but, so, and, or, because) to connect thoughts.

Finally, building on the capitalization rules your child learned last year (I and the first letter of the first word in a sentence), your first grader will learn to capitalize proper nouns.

What about handwriting?

Handwriting matters. First graders are expected to be able to print all upper and lowercase letters.

By the end of first grade, here are the 11 math skills your child should learn:

• Counting to 120 — starting anywhere, like from 3 or 72.

• Adding and subtracting numbers up to 20.

• Knowing that this sign “=” means equal.

• Solving word problems with three one-digit numbers (e.g. 2 + 3 + 9) that add up to 20 or fewer.

• Understanding why addition and subtraction are the reverse of each other.

• Adding up to 100, including adding a two-digit number and a one-digit number (e.g. 82 + 7).

• Knowing how to add two-digit numbers based on place value.

• Adding or subtracting 10 using mental math (e.g. 31 plus 10 is 41).

• Starting to measure things, such as figuring out how many of his footprints can fit into his dad’s footprint.

• Telling and writing time to the hour and half-hour (e.g. 1:00 pm and 1:30 pm).

• Putting two shapes together to create a new shape, and dividing shapes into two and four parts.

I’ll take math for 120, please

Counting to 100 — that’s for kindergartners. First graders count to 120, but the catch is that they can start from any number, like 72, and count up to 73, 74, 75, and so on.

Kids also learn to subtract numbers up to 20, like 19 – 7 = 12. Students learn to solve word problems using objects, drawings, and, yes, even equations. For example, if Ted has 4 pencils, Danielle has 6 pencils, and Vicki has 9 pencils, how many pencils do they have all together?

Your first grader may first draw this problem and count the pencils, but by the end of the year she’ll know the equation — and how to solve it.

First graders also learn the relationship between counting, addition, and subtraction. For example, counting from 1 to 2 is the same as adding 1 + 1. Adding one more means counting up one, and adding two more means counting up two, and so on. Likewise, subtraction can be thought of as counting down or backward. Taking that a step further, kids learn to think of subtracting as the reverse or “undoing” of adding. So, for example, if 15 + 4 = 19, then 19 – 4 = 15.

Everything in its Place

In kindergarten, your child started to learn about place value using tens and ones. In a two-digit number like 19, the 1 represents the tens and the 9 represents the ones. Now, your first grader will build on that by learning to add a two-digit number, like 54, and a one-digit number, like 5, or two-digit number that’s a multiple of 10, like 10, 20, 30, 40, etc.

One strategy your child will learn is to add the tens and ones separately.

For example: 54 + 5 = 50 + 0 = 50 and 4 + 5 = 9 for a total of 59.

And sometimes, it’s necessary to create a ten from the ones.

For example: 54 + 7 = 50 + 0 = 50 and 4 + 7 = 10 + 1. Move the 10 to the tens, so it’s 50 + 10 = 60 and 1 for a total of 61.

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Your child will also be expected to figure out in their head — without counting — how to find 10 more or less than another number. If Jemma has 68 lollipops and gives away 10, she should know that’s the same as subtracting one group of tens, leaving her with 58 lollipops.

How does this measure up?

First graders should be able to explain how long two objects are by comparing them to a third object. For example, the first piece of paper is shorter than the second piece, but longer than the third.

Kids start applying the concept of addition to measuring things. Let’s say your child uses the dog’s tail to measure the length of a blanket; he/she might find that the blanket is 5-and-a-half tails long. This is great practice for when the kids start using rulers.

First graders also learn to tell time (and write it down correctly, like 1:30 pm) to the nearest hour and half-hour by reading both digital clocks and the old-fashioned round clocks with minute and hour hands.

Getting into Shapes

First graders delve into the properties of shapes by combining two shapes to form a new one, such as putting two triangles together to make a square or rectangle. They’ll do this on paper (2 dimensional) and with objects (3 dimensional).

Kids also learn to divide shapes into two or four equal parts and learn the words for those parts: halves and quarters (or fourths).

https://www.greatschools.org/gk/category/academics/reading-2/?grade=1st-grade

https://www.greatschools.org/gk/category/academics/writing-2/?grade=1st-grade

​https://www.greatschools.org/gk/category/academics/math-2/?grade=1st-grade