A Sample of What Your Child Will Be Working on in ELA in First Grade:
Using phonics (matching letters and sounds) and word analysis skills to figure out unfamiliar words when reading and writing
■ Describing characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details
■ Getting facts and information from different writings
■ Writing about a topic, supplying some facts, and providing some sense of opening and closing
■ Participating in shared research and writing projects (e.g., exploring a number of “how-to” books and using them to write a sequence of instructions)
■ Taking part in conversations about topics and texts being studied by responding to the comments of others and asking questions to clear up any confusion
■ Describing people, places, things, and events with relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings clearly and with complete sentences
■ Producing and expanding complete simple and compound statements, questions, commands, and exclamations
■ Identifying the correct meaning for a word with multiple meanings, based on the sentence or paragraph in which the word is used (e.g., deciding whether the word bat means a flying mammal or a club used in baseball)
■ Learning to think about finer distinctions in the meanings of near-synonyms (e.g., marching, prancing, strutting, strolling, walking)
A Sample of What Your Child Will Be Working on in Math in First Grade:
■ Solving addition and subtraction word problems in situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing (e.g., a taking from situation would be: “Five apples were on the table. I ate some apples. Then there were three apples. How many apples did I eat?”)
■ Adding with a sum of 20 or less, and subtracting from a number 20 or less, for example by using strategies based around the number 10 (e.g., to solve 13 – 4, one can start with 13, subtract 3 to reach 10, and then subtract 1 more to reach 9)
■ Quickly and accurately adding with a sum of 10 or less, and quickly and accurately subtracting from a number 10 or less (e.g., 2 + 5, 7 – 5)
■ Understanding what the digits mean in two-digit numbers (place value)
■ Using understanding of place value to add and subtract (e.g., 38 + 5, 29 + 20, 64 + 27, 80 – 50)
■ Measuring lengths of objects by using a shorter object as a unit of length
■ Making composite shapes by joining shapes together, and dividing circles and rectangles into halves or fourths