First Grade

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First Grade Curriculum Overview

At Monticello Academy, we believe in academic excellence as well as the emotional and social development of a student.  The academic curriculum that we implement in our program is based on the California State Standards.  Being a developmental based program, our curriculum is gauged in accordance to the educational level of each individual class every year as they progress from one grade level to the next.  Our curriculum will vary year to year depending on the developmental ability and level of the upcoming grade.  This overview will allow you to have a general understanding of what your child will learn throughout the school year.

Language Arts

Reading

In first grade, students are learning to recognize and use knowledge of spelling patterns when they are reading.  They will grasp the understanding of syllabication rules, decoding of two-syllable nonsense words and regular multiple syllable words, and recognize common abbreviations.  They will be able to also identify and correctly use regular plurals and irregular plurals.  Most importantly, they learn to read aloud fluently and accurately with intonation and expression. 

Vocabulary Development

Once again, first grade vocabulary evolves from the previously learned materials.  At this level, students gain an understanding for commonly used antonyms and synonyms, increase their knowledge of individual words in predicting the meaning of unknown compound words, and know the meaning of different simple prefixes and suffixes such as over-, un-, -ing, or -ly.  Students can identify simple multiple-meaning words. 

Literary Response and Analysis

In this level, students are reading different texts and extensively analyzing and comparing similar texts.  The main focuses for first grade are emphasizing comprehension through developing their skills to be able to analyze narratives, generate alternative endings, retell stories, and compare and contrast different text materials. 

Reading Comprehension

At this level, students are reading and understanding at grade level appropriate materials.  They are able to use titles, tables of contents and chapter headings to locate information in expository text, state the purpose in reading, use knowledge of the author’s purpose to understand informational text, and ask relevant and clarifying questions.  Also, they can restate facts and details, interpret information from diagrams, charts, or graphs, and recognize cause and effect relationships.  As a result, students comprehend enough to follow a two-step written instruction.

Writing

As first grade students progress through the year, they learn to write paragraphs using coherent and clear sentences that integrates their understanding about the characters, setting, events, and objectives of a story, as well as being  introduced to writing friendly letters that are forms of written communications.  At this level, their main focuses are on organization, penmanship, revision, grammar, sentence structure, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. 

Listening and Speaking

In the first grade, students are responsible for comprehending large amounts of information presented orally and for communicating their ideas with increased attention to details and substances.  In speaking, they are able to recount experiences or stories and reporting on a topic with facts and details.  They will be introduced to simple strategies of organizing both narrative and expository texts chronologically.  They learn how to build on the who, what, when, where, and why strategies to further build their oral and written communication.

Mathematics

In our first grade math program, it is essential that we review and gain a firm grasp on previously learned materials prior to advancing to the next.  In the first grade, students will gain an understanding about place value and number relationships in addition and in subtraction.  They learn how to use simple concepts of multiplication.  They can measure quantities with appropriate units and can classify shapes and see relationships among them by paying attention to their geometric attributes.  Students will also be able to collect and analyze date and verify the answers.

Science

In first grade, students will learn about the general properties of solids, liquids, and gases.  They also learn about the needs of plants and animals and the functions of some of their external structures.  Students further learn how to use simple weather-recording instruments, such as thermometers and wind vanes, and discuss daily and seasonal changes in the weather.  At this level, students are starting to identify the characteristics of objects and recording their observations through pictures and numbers or written language.  They learn to make new observations when discrepancies exist between two descriptions of the same object or phenomenon.  Furthermore, students expand their vocabulary by learning scientific terminology, such as freezing, melting, heating, dissolving, and evaporating.  Through our curriculum, students are taught to respond to who, what, when, where, and how questions that will develop their curiosity for exploration. 

History-Social Science

The focus of the first grade history-social science program is about a child’s place in time and space.  In doing this, they begin to describe the rights and individual responsibilities of citizenship in the contemporary world, compare and contrast the locations of places and people, and describe the physical and human characteristics of different places.  Students will further explore about the symbols, icons, and traditions of the United States.  They will discover about the present and past in relation to what has changed and what has not.  Students adventure through history by learning about the backgrounds of the American citizens and residents in familiar places, and learn about the basic economic concepts and our role as individuals in the free-market economy. 

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