Group 1 Curriculum - Kindergarten and First Grade

Calendar: Students look forward to Calendar to start each day. During this time we discuss days of the week, months, important days of each month and components of a calendar. We work on place value, counting and money as we keep track of each day we’ve been in school. We discuss the news and determine if a news article is local, state, national or world news. There is a tooth graph to show how many teeth we have lost as a class — this is always exciting for the students. Calendar time is also an important time of the day to discuss what is going on in the students’ lives, as many of them like to share stories with the class. We work on time with a “Judy” clock and get the day started with some type of math question.

Math: A variety of center-based activities take place during math time. Each day, the students rotate so they all get the opportunity to work at each center. The centers may include games, computers, manipulatives, white boards, workbooks, worksheets or direct instruction. Direct instruction focuses on a skill that is new, unfamiliar or challenging and involves manipulatives, games and various worksheets. Each center is focused on a particular, appropriate math skill. Each student has a math workbook: McGraw-Hill Mathematics, New Ways in Numbers or Math Advantage. Each student works at his or her pace in the appropriate-level workbook. Students receive assistance in workbooks from their peers and teachers. The math centers and workbooks focus on the following skills: one-to-one matching; identifying numbers and understanding the value of each number; addition and subtraction; place value; base 10; number order; counting by twos, fives and 10s; comparing numbers; size discrimination; graphing; money; shapes; time; and introductory fractions, multiplication and division.

Reading: Our room is alive with print. You can find fiction, nonfiction, board messages, morning messages, a word wall, posters and other types of reading material to excite and help familiarize students with reading. We use a variety of books for guided reading that may include Reading A-Z, poems, and other books based on certain phonemic or comprehension skills that the students may be working on. The students work in small, guided reading groups with the teacher, two to four times a week. Within each reading group, the students work on reading fluency, comprehension and decoding strategies. The students record the books they are reading and keep a log throughout the year. In addition to the guided reading books, each student has the text Right into Reading, a literacy-based workbook that is appropriate for their level. Students receive assistance in their workbooks from peers and teachers. Literacy centers occur daily and focus on letter recognition, sound-to-symbol connections, word-decoding strategies, short and long vowels, blends, syllables, word families, high-frequency words, spelling, comprehension, vowel patterns, poetry and rhyming. Centers may include games, reading/writing, worksheets or workbooks.

Writing: Writing occurs daily through a variety of activities. Students either work in journals in which they can choose what to write; journals that have a prompt; handwriting books; writing letters, words, sentences or stories; and many other forms of writing techniques. Students also have the opportunity to write during center time. In writing centers, students choose a topic and write freely about that chosen topic. Writing centers include an assortment of writing activities based on the level of each student.

Science: Science takes place once a week. The units include, but are not limited to, weather, sinking/floating objects, matter, changing of the seasons, sea life, spiders and insects, bones, eggs (in April), planets, arctic life, migration, hibernation, light/shadows and scientific method. The students are engaged through reading, experiments and hands-on lessons. Technology is also used.

Geography and Social Studies: Geography and/or social studies is held once a week. We use a text and a workbook. Units include: getting along at school, learning from each other, rules at school, helpful people at school, how we are good helpers, mapping, school life long ago, groups we belong to, families/traditions and neighbors. We also learn about the holidays, notable people and symbols.

Art, Gym and Music: Each class is held once a week.

Spelling and Dictation: Each Monday, students receive a spelling list. We have a pretest before taking the list home to study throughout the week. (Students who get all the words correct during the pretest are given a few additional challenge words to study as well.) During the week, we make spelling sentences from the list and vary activities to practice in class. On Friday, we have a spelling test and spelling dictation: the teacher dictates sentences with as many spelling words as possible. The class writes down the sentences in this great exercise for working on sentence structure. The teacher looks for capital letters, punctuation, spacing between words and spelling. The words progress from easy to hard. Each week focuses on a particular skill.