First Grade
What to Expect in First Grade
First grade is a year of big changes for your child. Teachers will be encouraging your child to focus on tasks for longer periods of time, complete more work independently and neatly. First grade students also show a lot of social growth and will begin to form strong friendships and show beginning leadership skills.
The major focus in first grade is to learn to read and comprehend text. Students will expand on the phonics, decoding and reading strategies they learned in Kindergarten to read increasingly harder literature while also increasing comprehension and fluency. Students will ask and answer questions about literature and find "evidence" in the text to support their thinking. They will also learn to retell stories and describe characters, setting and events in order and with details.
In addition to reading, science, social studies, and physical education, first graders will develop math skills. The curriculum has a strong focus on number sense including understanding the relationship between addition and subtraction to 20 (also known as fact families), accurately solving addition and subtraction problems, and understanding place value. First graders will also learn to tell and write time, and explore both solid and plane shapes and their attributes (surfaces, sides, corners).