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A Day in the Life of a First Grader
 | Attendance |
| Announcements |
| Pledge |
| Collect notes from home |
| Journal
The children write a journal entry almost everyday. Entries may be
about anything that the children want to write about. Often a topic
or sentence starter will be given. It's very exciting to see their
progress over the year. Journals will be sent home for you to
treasure as wonderful mementos of your child's first grade year!
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| Calendar
We discuss the days of the week and months of the year. We cover
many math concepts as well, such as the number of days in school,
money, place value, counting, and weather. |
| Morning Message
A message is written on the board, which may tell news of the day or
other interesting information. This is a fun way to model correct
written conventions. We become detectives and discover anything from
a lowercase letter to the parts of speech. |
| Snack
Please remember to send a nutritious snack each day with your child
that is easy to open. We ask that you also send along a napkin with
the snack to help your child keep his/her desk clean. You may send a
small water bottle as well, although we prefer you do not send in
juice as to avoid messy spills. |
| Language Arts/Reading
Each week we read and discuss a story, either from a collection of
stories from our reading series or from a novel study. We cover
various reading and writing skills, which focus on comprehension, decoding skills, vocabulary recognition, and other phonics skills.
 | Guided Reading
During this block of time, we focus on reading comprehension skills.
This is defined as strategies that help readers make sense out of the
print on the page. We also work on reading fluency. This is defined as
the smoothness that we read particular text. This is accomplished
through a variety of whole class, small groups, and partner formats
guided by the teacher. |
| Working with Words
This block allows students to explore words, word families (patterns),
spelling, phonics, and to see how they can use what they learn about
words in their readings and writings. |
| Writing
This block includes a mini-lesson that provides children with a model
of what writers do. Children engage in various writing activities from
starting a new piece, finishing a piece, revising, editing, and
illustrating. Another component includes conferences that lead to a
final published piece that they share with the class.
We also teach the six traits of writing. These include ideas,
organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. |
| Language Arts Assessments:
Your child's progress will be assessed throughout the year.
 | Dolch words (sight word vocabulary):
| October Pre-Primer |
| January Primer |
| March First Grade |
| May Any missed words from all three lists |
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| Darrell Morris Spelling Inventory:
September, January, and May |
| Listening and speaking skills:
Assessed daily |
| District Writing Assessments:
September and April |
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| Language Arts Skills:
| Consonant sounds |
| Short and long vowel sounds (such as: silent e, ai, ay, ee) |
| Spelling patterns (such as: _at, _an, _og, _ight) |
| Reading comprehension (story parts: characters, setting, problem, solution) |
| Reading fluency |
| Writing sentences, paragraphs, and stories |
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| Math
In 2002, Indian Prairie adopted Everyday Mathematics, a K-5
mathematics series. Everyday Mathematics was developed through the
University of Chicago in order to enable children in elementary grades
to learn more mathematical content and become lifelong mathematical
thinkers. This series begins with the premise that young children can,
and must learn more mathematics than has been expected from them in
the past. The everyday mathematical instructional design was carefully
written to capitalize on student interest and maximize student
learning. This is done through developing concepts and skills over
time, applications, multiple methods of problem solving, collaborative
learning, and balance among the six math strands. These include:
operations & computation, numeration, patterns, functions & algebra,
data & chance, measurement, and geometry. Every strand is addressed
throughout all grade levels of the program. |
| Lunch
First grade has recess/lunch from 12:40-1:15. You may want to send
"Wet Ones" or "Handy Wipes" along with your child's lunch, as recess
is first and there is no time to wash hands in between. |
| D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything And Read) and Read Aloud
After lunch the children participate in D.E.A.R. and hear a story read
by the teacher. At the beginning of the year D.E.A.R. is a "shared
reading" opportunity. But, as the year goes on the students should be
able to read to themselves. |
| Handwriting
We teach and practice "D'Nealian" handwriting in every subject. We
encourage practice at home and have included a letter formation page
to help you guide handwriting at home. |
| Science/Social Studies
The activities that we plan for science or social studies often
incorporate math and language arts skills and concepts, as well.
Here are several of the themes we will learn about this year:
| Colors |
| Our Solar System |
| Apples |
| Holidays Around the World |
| Famous Americans |
| Weather |
| Our Body and Nutrition |
| Insects |
| The First Americans |
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| Technology/Library Media Center (LMC)
We have computers in our classroom available for the children to use
on a daily basis for both practice and enrichment opportunities. We
also go to the computer lab in the LMC approximately once a week. We
will work on beginning word processing and key boarding skills as well
as using the internet as a resource to find information. We also
practice language arts and math skills that we are working on in
class.
Students may check out two books per week from the LMC. Books are due
back one week from the check out date. |
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Homework
First grade homework will consist of math "Home Links" and a monthly
calendar. "Home Links" will come home 3-5 times per week and will be
due the following school day. A monthly homework calendar will come
home at the beginning of each month. The calendar will have a short
activity for your child to do at home for each day of the month. You
may have your child complete each day as you choose. Please color each
square as it is completed and return the calendar with a parent's
signature at the end of the month. It is not necessary to return any
written work.
Homework will also come home on an "as needed" basis.
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