FIRST GRADE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
Building from their kindergarten experience, first graders continue their literacy journey with greater confidence; they start combining skills and strategies systematically. Students choose books that increase in complexity requiring the foundational skills from kindergarten to operate in concert. As a result, their reading stamina increases, they develop a fluid reading pace, and become increasingly more independent with their book selection. Students continue to read, write, and discuss fiction and nonfiction texts to learn how different sources help readers construct meaning about the world. Academic conversations help students apply foundational listening and speaking skills to learn how to understand, speak, and use words to communicate and actively engage within and beyond the classroom. Additionally, students’ writing stamina grows and their voices emerge when writing about what they are learning and their personal experiences. The ultimate goal of a balanced language arts curriculum is to build skills, independence, and passion to become lifelong readers, writers, and speakers.
Throughout the year, teachers use a variety of formal and informal assessments to examine students’ strengths and areas of focus to inform instruction to ensure all students progress toward grade-level expectations.
First graders learn and apply social and emotional skills in a variety of ways to become self-aware and to nurture positive and respectful relationships with their teachers and peers. Creating a safe and inclusive community is foundational to a great year of learning for all.
SOCIAL STUDIES
My School and Family
Through a study of families and school life, first graders learn the fundamentals of social studies. They begin to explore history and learn that people and places change over time. Discussing the needs of families, they learn the economic concepts of goods and services. They begin to examine their environment and surroundings, growing in their understanding of the interaction between people and places. Developing rules for their own classroom and learning to follow school rules, they learn the basic rules that govern people in a free society who live and work together.
Visit the Michigan Social Studies Academic Standards for a complete view of the grade standards your child will be working toward in social studies. This curriculum is also aligned with the College, Career & Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards.
SCIENCE
First graders are curious about the world and how it works. Throughout the year, students engage in science learning experiences to connect their thinking, make observations, formulate new ideas, and make sense of the natural world and how it works. Kindergartners learn to apply Science and Engineering Practices to think like scientists.
MATHEMATICS
Building from their kindergarten experience, first graders develop their mathematical skills while applying the practices mathematicians use. They…
- Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
- Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
- Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
- Model with mathematics.
- Use appropriate tools strategically.
- Attend to precision.
- Look for and make use of structure.
- Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.
First grade mathematicians are encouraged to be creative problem solvers and flexible thinkers. They work through challenging problems in small groups and on their own and develop independence and persistence. They develop their fluency skills by playing with numbers which allows them to think flexibly with methods and strategies to solve problems efficiently and accurately.
