All About First Grade
Writer's Workshop: Students learn all about the different genres of writing through the Lucy Calkin's Writer's Workshop curriculum. Students practice their writing skills and work on the mini lessons that are taught each day using special paper from the unit. For example, in our Non Fiction unit, the students have over 5 different types of paper to choose from. All of our writing accumulates in our special writing folders! Students learn about the writing process and will produce published and unpublished work.
Reader's Workshop: Reader's Workshop always begins with a focus lesson about a strategy that "good readers use." After this, each student will meet with the teacher in 1:1 reading conferences or in small strategy groups. While students are meeting with myself, the rest of the students will be participating in Reader's Workshop Centers with parent volunteers. Some examples of centers are: partner reading, Read to Self, Word Work, Listening to Reading, Technology Reading and Work on Writing. Books that are read during Reader's Workshop time are kept in personalized "book boxes". Books in student book boxes are individualized according to reading level, interest, and unit topic (for example, non fiction or fairytale if we are working within those units). At the end of each Reader's Workshop the classroom community comes together to do a "group share." Students share strategies that they worked on with a teacher, a peer or independently during the workshop that day! We review strategies we've learned and preview strategies that some children might be ready to use before others!
Poetry Notebooks: Students have peach poetry notebooks. We read poems often to learn about word families, punctuation, themes and rhymes. Students cut and paste these poems into their notebooks for reading practice during center time. We practice being word detectives with our poems while using our very special highlighters!
Author Study: We will be reading and exploring the work of Leo Lionni, Jan Brett, and Ezra Jack Keats through read alouds, listening center and writing activities.
Read Alouds: During snack time I will read aloud to the children books and chapter books based on our current theme, holiday or learning objective.
The units we cover in First Grade are:
Open Circle is a social competency program that allows students to move their chairs into a circle and participate in non judgmental discussions. Our meetings are only 15 minutes long and are usually twice a week. They include discussions, role play and writing activities. Students have visual reminders of our topics on the front board. After each short segment of our program a parent letter will go home with a brief overview of the lessons, vocabulary used and literature connections.
Our topics in Science are:
Weather: 
Students will create their own thermometers, rain gauges and wind flags. They will investigate weather and learn to record it in many different ways.
Students will create their own thermometers, rain gauges and wind flags. They will investigate weather and learn to record it in many different ways.
Solids & Liquids: Students will mix, race, sort and identify different liquids. They will mix liquids with water and discover some of their properties. Students will also learn about magnets and properties of solids. (stacks, rolls, floats, sinks)
Organisms: Students will learn about life cycles and growths and changes of different organisms. They will observe and build different habitats. Students will learn about the characteristics of living things and what plants need to live.
Ourtopics for Social Studies are:
Map skills: Students learn about what maps are, compass roses, cardinal directions through our map skills unit.
U.S.A symbols: First graders explore the Statue of Liberty, White House, Mount Rushmore, Bald Eagle, American Flag through our unit on U.S
symbols.
Globeskills: We discover what globes are, determine the equator, and learn to recognize the north and south poles.
Continents & Oceans: Students will be asked to identify and locate a few of continents and oceans.
American Holidays: First grade students will be asked to identify and describe at least two holidays in detail.
Important Individuals: Students will learn about important individuals throughout history through primary and secondary documents throughout the year. We will read biographies and folk tales about important people, look at photographs, listen to speeches, and watch videos about important American figures.
Westwood uses the TERC Investigations Math program.
The units we cover in First Grade are:
How Many of Each? : This unit is about addition (combining), subtraction( breaking down, decomposing) and knowledge of the number system. Students will be solving story problems, how many of each problems, counting and writing the numbers up to 100, learning calendar concepts and graphing weather patterns.
Making Shapes and Designing Quilts: In this unit, the students will learn about 2D Geometry. Students will learn about different shapes and explore their characteristics. Students will also be studying quilt patterns and eventually creating their own quilts!
Solving Story Problems: This unit contains addition (combining), subtraction ( breaking down, decomposing) and number system problems. It will take what students learned in How Many of Each? and extend their knowledge.
What Would You Rather Be?: This is a data analysis unit. Students will be learning about surveys, representing data in different ways, taking their own surveys and turning their results into bar graphs and pie graphs. Students will also be using The Graph Club software during this unit.
Fish Lengths and Animal Jumps: In this unit the students will be learning all about measurement! We will be using traditional measurement units as well as hands, feet, cubes and fish!
Number Games and Crayon Puzzles: This will be a very important unit in which students will be working their way through addition and subtraction story problems. Students will be learning to solve problems using different strategies as well as showing their answers using pictures, numbers and words.
Color, Shape, and Number Patterns: Students will be exploring patterns of all kinds in this unit! Students will be making patterns with cubes, colors, clapping and more! Students will also be practicing their skip counting!
Twos, Fives and Tens: This unit revists addition and subtraction problems as well as diving into skip counting. Students will be counting by 2's, 5's and 10's. We will also be exploring even and odd numbers.
Blocks and Boxes: Students will be exploring 3D Geometry in this unit! We will be learning how to draw and build with 3D shapes. Our class will even design and build an entire block town!
Open Circle is a social competency program that allows students to move their chairs into a circle and participate in non judgmental discussions. Our meetings are only 15 minutes long and are usually twice a week. They include discussions, role play and writing activities. Students have visual reminders of our topics on the front board. After each short segment of our program a parent letter will go home with a brief overview of the lessons, vocabulary used and literature connections.
Some topics that we cover in Open Circle include:
- Getting to know one another
- Classroom rules
- Being a good listener
- Non verbal signals
- Cooperating
- Including one another
- Teasing
- Speaking up
- Interview skills
- Calming down
- Dealing with "annoying" behavior
- Double D behaviors
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