Reading: In the first week, students will ask and answer questions about the salient details of a text. For example, students may be read to from the Corduroy series, a series of children's books about the adventures of a stuffed bear, and be asked questions based on the text. They may interact with a stuffed bear to personalize their experience of the story.
Writing: Students will learn the basics of simple sentence construction using objects, subject, articles, and verbs (for example: The boy kicked the ball). They will use word banks to guide their sentence writing.
Speaking and Listening: Students will participate in collaborative sessions with their peers in which they will be asked to answer questions about the books they have read throughout the week. The first week will introduce the opportunity to practice following the rules for discussions, such as speaking one at a time and being a good listener. Week 2:
Reading: In the second week, students will retell stories, including key details, and they will demonstrate their understanding of the story's morals. For example, after the teacher reads to the class from a book of classic fairy tales, the students may be asked to put on a puppet show to retell the story visually.
Writing: Students will continue the previous week's writing activity of simple sentence construction, using words that contain one to two more syllables than used the words used in the previous week.
Speaking and Listening: Students will ask each other questions to clarify any confusing ideas they may have encountered while listening to the teacher's reading or the students' retelling of the classic fairy tales.
Reading: In the third week, students will be asked to describe, using specific details and imagery, the characters, major events, and settings in a story. For example, after reading a book from Jan and Stan Berenstain's series “The Berenstain Bears,” students may be asked to illustrate a scene from the story.
Writing: Students will focus on subject-verb agreement, extending the use of pronouns to include proper, possessive, personal, and indefinite pronouns (e.g., my, I; their, they, them; everything; anyone).
Speaking and Listening: Students will build on conversations by responding to comments in back-and-forth dialogue with a peer.
Reading: In the fourth week, students will learn to identify words and phrases in poems, stories, and reading samples that suggest different emotions, feelings, and sensations. For example, students my read a shape poem, which is a poem that is written in the shape of an object (such as a bell or a cat). They may then be asked to make a poem in the shape of a star, heart, or other shape. A teacher or teacher's aide will assist with the student's spelling.
Writing: Students learn the four types of end punctuation as well as capitalization rules for dates, names, and the beginnings of sentences.
Speaking and Listening: Students will answer aloud questions about the key details of that week's reading assignments, such as “what shape is this poem?” and “who is the main character in this story?”
Reading: In the fifth week, students will read a range of text types, including first person narratives, poems, a history lesson, and a short story. They will learn to identify and explain the major differences between types of writing that tell a story and types of writing that give information. Also in the fifth week, students will become familiar with fables, perhaps by reading aloud from Aesop's book of fables, as well as folklore from different cultural traditions. They will learn the concept of metaphor by looking at how animals are used in different ways to represent human characteristics, such as anger, jealousy, hatred, kindness, and greed. They will learn how wisdom is passed down by oral tradition and look at how folk stories and fables convey the values and ways of thinking of a culture.
Writing: Students will be tested on concepts learned in weeks 3 and 4.
Speaking and Listening: Building on the previous week's activities, students will ask and answer questions about the stories read in class in order to clarify ideas that are not fully understood.
Reading: In the sixth week, students will contrast and compare the lives and experiences of characters within a story or between different stories. For example, they may listen to books by the author Leo Lionni over the course of the week. After each reading, the teacher will lead a discussion that will focus on comparing and contrasting the story's character's. After the discussion, the students will organize to create a large matrix (using the whiteboard or butcher paper) which shows the elements of that day's story. (Where is the setting? Who is the main character? What does the main character do? Etc.) Over the course of the week, the matrix will help students review the concepts of each story and will help them compare the details of two or more stories at a time. On the final day, students may gather individually and use a Venn diagram to compare any two of the stories.
Writing: Students will review the concepts covered in all five previous weeks of instruction.
Speaking and Listening: Students will learn to describe people, places, and things to each other using adjectives. Discussions may be guided by the story matrix worked on during the day's reading activity.
Reading: In the seventh week, students will read prose and poetry at a level that is grade-level appropriate. For example, the teacher may choose a poem and have students discuss the meaning of the poem and the rhyming words, sight words, vocabulary, and sentence structure that it employs. After the students have studied the poem in a group setting, they will be asked to illustrate the poem in order to share their understanding. In addition (and building on this example), for a prose reading, the students may read a text about the ocean and ocean life, and then be asked to create a mural together of the ocean and the creatures that live there.
Writing:
Speaking and Listening: Students will create their own art work to go along with the reading after each reading activity. They will each be asked to show their art to the class and explain the ideas or feelings represented in each activity.
Reading: In the eighth week, students will ask each other questions and answer questions about the key plot points in a text. For example, students may read a short biography about the life of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and come up with a list of three questions to ask in class.
Writing: Each day, students will practice writing short, 4-to-5-sentence paragraphs in which they name the book they are writing about and state an opinion about the book. They will defend their reason in 1 to 2 sentences and provide a concluding statement.
Speaking and Listening: At the end of each day's reading activity, students will gather into groups of two and take turns asking and answering each other's questions.
Reading: In the ninth week, students will answer and ask questions to help identify the meaning of new vocabulary words in a text. For example, students may develop their understanding of what a symbol is while learning about how one symbol, the American flag, plays a role in the daily lives of millions of Americans.
Writing: Students will continue the previous week's writing activity of simple sentence construction, using words that contain one to two more syllables than used the words used in the previous week.
Speaking and Listening: Students will learn to communicate in complete sentences by participating in collaborative discussions. For example, when learning to show how colors can represent emotions, students may be asked to complete sentences, and then speak the sentence aloud (i.e., His face was [blank] with anger: His face was red with anger).
Goals of the curriculum
In the first grade, students expand their knowledge of language arts in ways that are fun, engaging, and foster collaboration and cooperation. By the end of first grade, students should have learned the skills that allow them to write and read independently of a teacher or parent. For example, by the end of first grade, a student should be able to read Dr. Seuss' “One Fish, Two Fish,” or “Hop on Pop” on their own, without assistance. Throughout the school year, students should be able to decode words of increasing length and complexity, and should be able to write multisyllabic words such as “before” and “kitten” by the end of the school year. They increase their vocabulary knowledge and strengthen pattern recognition skills by reading a variety of informative and creative texts, including articles, poems, and short stories. As they learn to write, they apply their knowledge of language conventions to the construction of complete sentences. By the end of the curriculum, students should be able to write a short story composed of five or more sentences.
