Morning Meeting - Each day will begin with a special meeting to help us build relationships and a classroom community that will be like a family.

Second Step - This is a social-emotional curriculum that we will use weekly. Students will learn a variety of skills such as how to effectively manage emotions, listen, focus, make friends, and solve problems.

Phonics - Our team strongly believes in the Science of Reading and our main focus will be on explicit phonemic awareness and phonics instruction. Students will use hands-on activities to learn their sounds and phonics rules, along with decodable readers. Our class phonics mascot is a lion named Rasheed.

Reading: Our reading instruction is adapted from the Lucy Calkins Reader's Workshop model. We will be building good reading habits such as previewing stories before we read, making predictions, and retelling what we read. We will be learning how to use a variety of strategies to tackle tricky words we come across. Non-fiction texts will be explored. We will also be comparing characters and examining character feelings, relationships, and actions.

Writing: Our writing instruction is also adapted from the Lucy Calkins Writer's Workshop model. We will be writing personal narratives, informative pieces, opinion pieces, and realistic fiction. We will also be working on revising and editing our writing.

Math: We use Bridges Curriculum for math instruction. In 1st grade, we will be adding and subtracting numbers. We begin adding and subtracting within 10 and work up to adding and subtracting within 100. A variety of addition and subtraction strategies are explored. We count by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s up to 120 with a variety of starting points. Some models and tools we will be using are 5-frames, 10-frames, number racks, and number lines. We work on solving story problems and writing equations. We also study place value, shapes and their attributes, time, and using non-standard units to measure items.

Science: We use the Amplify curriculum for science. The units we will be covering this year include animal and plant defenses, light and sound, and spinning earth.

Social Studies: In unit 1, we will be learning about our community, country, and government. We will learn about what our role is in the community and how to be good citizens who follow rules and laws. In unit 2, we will explore the difference between needs and wants. We will discuss goods and services and how and why people buy and sell items. In unit 3, we will learn how to use maps and globes. We will learn about our environment and different types of land and water. We will also explore how transportation and communication help in our daily lives. At the end of the year we will learn about American heroes from the past and explore how life and technology has changed from the past to now. 

Seesaw - Each student will have their own Chromebook which we will utilize to access our learning platform called Seesaw. Students will create a portfolio of their work which will be saved in their Journal so families can see growth. Parents will use the Seesaw Family App to communicate with their child’s teacher. 

Lexia - Our school is fortunate to have an excellent literacy program called Lexia Core5 available to us. Students will have an assigned number of learning units to complete each week on this software which they will access via their Chromebooks. You will be amazed at their growth!

Specials - Students will participate in library, music, art, and physical education specials.