The Summit Preparatory School

First Grade Overview 2008-2009

First Trimester: Our Community and Environment 

Exploring what makes a community (community officials, goods, services)

Determining what makes good citizens at school and in the community

Learning responsibilities at school and in the community

Locating community, state and country on maps

Using map key, symbols and legends

Identifying physical and human features in terms of four spatial elements (points, lines, area, volume)

Defining and naming examples of natural resources

Exploring the role resources play in our daily lives

Naming sources and causes of pollution (air, ground, noise, water, food) in the community

Using content decoding strategies independently (picture clues, patterns in words, connections to known words, rereading, context clues)

Using basic elements of phonetic analysis to decode unknown words (letter/sound relationship, beginning and ending consonants, vowel sounds, blends, word patterns)

Using comprehension strategies independently (making predictions, visualizing, asking questions, answering questions, retelling, summarizing, making connections)

Reading aloud with fluency and expression

Recognizing a growing number of sight words

Making connections between self and text

Using the writing process (brainstorm, draft, edit)

Practicing components of writing traits (ideas, conventions)

Applying conventions of print (forms letters, upper-case, lower-case, spaces, writes left-to-right and top-to-bottom, includes margins)

Writing complete sentences

Using conventions of capitalization (names and first word in sentences)

Using convention of punctuation (periods, question marks)

Creating a pattern of at least three parts and naming them

Identifying patterns in the environment

Recognizing basic properties (sides, corners, faces, edges and vertices) and similarities and differences between geometric shapes

Identifying circle, square, triangle, rectangle, oval, rhombus, trapezoid, hexagon

Recognizing quadrilaterals:  square, parallelogram, trapezoid, rectangle, and rhombus

Classifying and identifying polygons

Drawing line segments with a straight edge

Second Trimester: Economics and Inventions 

Identifying goods, needs, wants and services

Naming a definition of a consumer and a producer

Recognizing how some inventions have changed or progressed over time

Naming facts about famous inventors through research and presentation

Exploring magnetic force

Experimenting with force and motion

Identifying six simple machines – plane wedge, screw, wheel, axel, lever, pulley

Recognizing different objects are made up of many different types of materials (cloth, paper, metal, wood) and have many different observable properties (color, size, shape, weight)

Using meaning clues (picture captions, title, cover, story structure, story topic) to aid in comprehension and make predictions about content

Using self-correction strategies (looks for cues, identifies miscues, rereads, asks for help)

Understanding main idea and supporting details of simple expository information

Developing vocabulary through text

Making connections between texts

Exploring various literary genres – fiction, non-fiction, poetry

Writing in a variety of forms/genres (picture book, friendly letter, stories narratives, messages and response to literature)

Writing for different purposes (entertain, communicate)

Using conventions of spelling (high-frequency, grade level list words, phonetically regular, short vowel and long vowel, r-controlled, consonant blends, word patterns)

Counting by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s, 25’s and 100’s

Understanding zero as a place holder

Counting backwards by 1’s from 30

Identifying place value to four digits

Explaining how s/he went about solving a number problem

Solving real world problems involving addition and subtraction

Understanding the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction

Using a number line to solve addition and subtraction

Exploring patterns in doubling numbers

Adding three or more one digit numbers

Adding and subtracting two digit numbers

Third Trimester: Regions of the World

Exploring basic components of culture (language, social organization, beliefs and customs, forms of shelter, economics and education)

Recognizing the main ideas found in folktales, fables, legends, reflect the beliefs and ways of various cultures in times past

Locating a variety of regions on a map (arctic, rainforests, ocean, savanna, desert)

Exploring places defined and classified in terms of predominant characteristics (rural, urban, forest, desert, types of land forms, vegetation, water bodies or climate)

Recognizing that living things are found almost everywhere in the world and distinct environments support the life of different types of plants and animals

Using scientific terms appropriately (predict, observe, experiment, record)

Learning facts about one animal through research and presentation

Using basic elements of structural analysis (syllables, basic prefixes, suffixes, root words, compound words, spelling patterns, contractions) to decode unknown words

Making connections between text and world

Using reading skills and strategies to understand a variety of informational text (directions, signs, captions, informational books)

Using self-correction strategies (looks for cues, identifies miscues, rereads, asks for help)

Summarizing information found in text

Relating new information to prior knowledge and experiences

Creating questions about a topic of interest

Using a variety of sources to gather information

Using a dictionary

Evaluating own and others work (asks questions, positive comments, aids in conventions)

Using the writing process (brainstorm, draft, edit, revise, final draft)

Using components of writing traits (ideas, conventions, organization, sentence fluency, word choice, voice)

Measuring length, width, height, weight, and temperature using standard and non-standard units

Identifying fractional parts of a set

Identifying numerator and denominator

Counting change to a dollar

Telling time to the nearest five minutes

Collecting, displaying and interpreting data in bar graph, pictograph, line graph and Venn diagram

Conducting a survey

Comparing two sets of data