• Our Curriculum

       

      ELA: In ELA we use HMH curriculum as a way to guide our teaching practices.  We start the year by making sure we read for 30 minutes at home daily (60 minutes on the weekend) is mandatory. It is very important that we do this to help our students become fluent readers. We will also be given a spelling list of words and a list of Words to Know every week, along with the important vocabulary from the story we are reading. It is very important that you review and work with your child to read and spell the spelling words as well as the Words to Know, as these are words we will be using and reading all year.  We will be reading and writing daily in class. In addition, we will be practicing phonics (letters and letter sounds) using the Heggerty text. Practicing writing at home is essential to building better writers and excelling in first grade. We will be reading, writing and thinking about texts in a number of different ways. Please ask your child about the readings that we do in class. It’s important to do this to discuss with you what they are doing in class as well as what they are learning.

      Math: We will also be exploring math concepts and strategies for addition and subtraction this month using the curriculum Illustrative Math. Students will be using counters and math tools to learn how to write addition and subtraction sentences to represent their parts and whole. Students will also be expected to count-on from a number and count back from a number from 0-20, count up from any given number and back from any given number within 50. Please practice this at home, so your child does well with fluency in adding and subtracting numbers later in the year.

      Science: We will explore air and weather in science.  Students will go through investigations about what air can do and about different weather-related topics.  We use the FOSSweb guides to guide our discussions, investigations, and writing.  Each lesson, students will engage in an investigation, which is some type of experiment.  Sometimes we will take mini-field trips outdoors to observe the weather and the sky.  Students can only participate in mini-trips if an adult is present. We will then discuss our observations as a class and finally write about what we have observed and learned. 

      Social Studies: We will explore topics related to being good citizens, how the government works at different levels, and why we have rules and procedures.  We will use the Savaas Realize My World Interactive workbook.  As a class, we will read through the lessons, have discussions, act things out, and write about how we connect to the topic we are learning.