GRADE 1 LANGUAGE ARTS CURRICULUM

READING

Word Recognition and Word Study

Students Will:

Demonstrate phonemic awareness.

Recognize that words are composed of sounds blended together and carry meaning.

Understand the alphabetic principle.

Use structural cues to recognize one-syllable words, blends, and consonant digraphs including: letter-sound, onset and rimes, whole word chunks, word families, and digraphs.

Recognize, automatically, frequently encountered words in and out of context.

Make progress in automatically recognizing basic sight words.

Use various strategies to identify unknown words and construct meaning.

Use syntactic and semantic cues including picture clues and word chunks to determine the meaning of words.

Know the meaning of words encountered frequently in grade-level reading and oral language contexts.

Determine the meaning of words and phrases using strategies and resources including
context clues, mental pictures, and questioning.

Fluency

Students Will:

Recognize, automatically, and fluently read identified grade-level high frequency words
encountered in or out of context.

Use punctuation cues when reading aloud with intonation, pauses, and emphasis.

Narrative Text

Students Will:

Identify and describe the basic form and purpose of a variety of narrative genre including realistic fiction, fantasy, and folktales.

Identify problem/solution, sequence of events, and sense of story (beginning, middle, and end).

Identify how authors and illustrators use literary devices including illustrations to support story elements and transitional words including before, after, now, and finally to indicate a sequence of events and sense of story.

Respond to individual and multiple texts by finding evidence, discussing, illustrating, and/or writing to reflect, make connections, take a position, and/or show understanding.

Informational Text

Students Will:

Understand the purpose of a variety of informational genre including simple “how-to” books, science and social studies magazines.

Discuss informational text patterns including descriptive, sequential, and enumerative.

Explain how authors use text features including headings, titles, labeled photographs, and illustrations to enhance the understanding of key and supporting ideas.

Respond to individual and multiple texts by finding evidence, discussing, illustrating, and/or writing to reflect, make connections, take a position, and/or show understanding.

Comprehension

Students Will:

Make text-to-self and text-to-text connections and comparisons by activating prior knowledge and connecting personal knowledge and experience to ideas in text through oral and written responses

Retell in sequence up to three important ideas and details of familiar simple oral and written text.

Compare and contrast relationships among characters, events, and key ideas within and across texts to create a deeper understanding by mapping story elements, graphically representing key ideas and details, and asking questions as they read.

Apply significant knowledge from grade-level science, social studies, and mathematics texts.

Metacognition

Students Will:

Self-monitor comprehension by recognizing when meaning is breaking down and use simple fix-up strategies including making credible predictions based on a preview of the book cover and pictures to increase comprehension when reading or listening to text.

Self-monitor comprehension by using strategies including asking questions before, during, and after reading and discussing the most important ideas and themes in a text.

Plan, monitor, regulate, and evaluate skills, strategies, and processes to construct and convey meaning and discuss which comprehension strategies worked and did not work.

Self-monitor comprehension by using a graphic organizer to sequence events, sort and order information, or identify author’s perspective generated criteria.

Critical Standards

Students Will:

Develop and discuss shared standards and begin to assess the quality and accuracy of their own writing and the writing of others.

Reading Attitude

Students Will:

Be enthusiastic about reading and learning how to read.

Do substantial reading and writing on their own during free time in school and at home.

PHONICS

Consonants

Students Will:

Understand the letter sounds.

Short Vowels

Students Will:

Identify the short vowels and produce their sounds.

Long Vowels

Students Will:

Identify the long vowels and produce their sounds.

Consonant Blends, Y as a Vowel

Students Will:

Produce beginning and final blends; such as r blends, l blends, and s blends.

Recognize when y is a vowel.

Endings, Digraphs, Contractions

Students Will:

Identify inflectional endings such as ed and ing.

Recognize and produce consonant digraphs; th, wh, sh, ch, kn.

Understand simple contractions and how they are formed.

WRITING

Writing Genre

Students Will:

Write a personal narrative using illustrations and transitional words such as before, after, now, or finally to indicate a sequence of events, sense of story (beginning, middle, and end), and physical descriptions.

Write an informational piece that addresses a focus question (e.g., What is a family?) using descriptive, enumerative, or sequence patterns that may include headings, titles, labels, photographs, or illustrations to enhance the understanding of central ideas.

Writing Process

Students Will:

Set a purpose, consider audience, and incorporate literary language when writing a narrative or informational piece; begin to use specific strategies including graphic organizers when planning with teacher support.

Draft focused ideas using multiple connected sentences with appropriate grammar, usage, mechanics, and temporary spellings when composing a narrative or informational piece.

Attempt to revise draft based on reading it aloud to clarify meaning for their intended audience.

Attempt to proofread and edit writing/pictures using appropriate resources including a word wall and a class-developed checklist.

Grammar and Usage

Students Will:

Use, correctly, complete simple sentences beginning with a capital letter and ending with a period or question mark, and capitalize first and last names, and the pronoun I.

Spelling

Students Will:

Spell, correctly, frequently encountered one-syllable words from common word
families in the context of writing

Spell, correctly, spell less frequently encountered words using structural cues (letter/sound,
rimes) and environmental sources (word walls, word lists)

Handwriting

Students Will:

Write legibly upper and lower case manuscript letters

Writing Attitude

Students Will:

Be be enthusiastic about writing and learning to write.

SPEAKING

Conventions

Students Will:

Use common grammatical structures correctly when speaking including singular and plural nouns, singular possessive pronouns, simple contractions, and conjunctions to express relationships (e.g., because, if, after, and inflected endings).

Explore and use language to communicate with a variety of audiences and for different purposes including making requests, solving problems, looking for solutions, constructing relationships, and expressing courtesies.

Speak effectively maintaining appropriate posture, eye contact, and position using props such as photographs or illustrations in narrative presentations.

Present in standard American English.

Discourse

Students Will:

Engage in substantive conversations, remaining focused on subject matter, with interchanges building on prior responses in literature discussions

LISTENING AND VIEWING

Conventions

Students Will:

Understand, restate and follow two-step directions.

Ask appropriate questions for clarification and understanding during a presentation or report.

Listen to or view knowledgeably while demonstrating appropriate social skills of audience behaviors (e.g., eye contact, attentive, supportive) in small and large group settings; listen to the comments of a peer and respond on topic adding a connected idea.

Response

Students Will:

Listen to or view knowledgeably and discuss a variety of genre.

Respond to multiple text types listened to or viewed knowledgeably, by discussing, illustrating, and/or writing in order to reflect, make meaning, and make connections.