Grade 1 Curriculum

Overview Grade 1 Curriculum Overview

First grade is a time when children build strong friendships with their peers and their friendships become just as important as their family relationships. They thrive on encouragement and have a tremendous capacity for enjoyment. Students often work in small groups to encourage social development and relationship building. However, the classroom also supports students who crave independent work. The room is set up to encourage independence and growth. By the end of First grade, the class runs their milestone project, the Waffle Inn. This long standing tradition at All Saints allows social First graders to work together cooperatively and to understand that each person in a business or community matters to the success of the whole.

Language Arts

Building on the skills developed in Kindergarten, the Language Arts curriculum in First Grade classroom teachers are intentional about working in small groups to maximize the level of attention and personalized instruction each student receives. In Handwriting, students begin to focus more on letter formation. Specific phonemic awareness concepts covered in First Grade include: short and long vowels, double consonants, l, r and s clusters, contractions, final clusters, and the digraphs sh, th, wh, ch, and tch. While writing, students focus on a number of grammatical skills including: proper usage of capitalization and punctuation, naming and action words, parts of the sentence, proper nouns and pronouns, present tense and the verb endings –s, -ed, and –ing.

Mathematics

First Grade is an exciting time in the development of mathematical thinking. The curriculum covers a wide variety of concepts, which students are encouraged to explore in depth. The teacher focuses on problem-solving strategies throughout instructional time, and encourages students to articulate their methods and strategies to deepen their own learning as well as benefit from the learning of their classmates. Curriculum Units in First Grade include: numerical operations; basic addition and subtraction, number sense; counting to 100 and number lines, skip counting, time, reading and making graphs, calendars, money, geometry; 2-dimensional shapes, 3-dimensional shapes, transforming shapes and symmetry, standard and non-standard measurement, an introduction to double digit addition and subtraction, estimating, and place value.

Science

The First Grade science curriculum builds on this intuitive exploration of the natural world while introducing more formalized experimentation and opportunities for hands-on study. Students are challenged to “think like a scientist” as they embark on experiments to help them learn about the natural world. Science instruction in all topics involves the making and testing of hypotheses, and the drawing of logical and scientific conclusions. Students learn about the proper use of scientific tools and making and testing hypotheses. Units in First Grade include Animals, Plants, Environments, Earth’s Resources, Weather and Seasons, Objects in the Sky, All About Matter, and Forces and Energy.

Social Studies

In an effort to better understand their world, First Graders use what they know about their life in school as a jumping-off point to investigate their neighborhood and community. Students learn about the makeup of a community, including the people, businesses and municipal structures in place to ensure the safety and rights of its inhabitants. Through an in-depth study of Hoboken, students study the aspects that make up this community (i.e. parks and recreation, city services, retail, etc). Later in the year students use this knowledge and apply it to their study of colonial communities, which allows them to make comparisons between our community today and colonial communities of the past.

Co-Curriculars

Grade 1 Students partake in several co-curricular activities such as music, dance, art, physical education, and world language. Please see our Beyond Core Academics page.

Grade 1 Milestone Projects

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Grade 1 - Waffle Inn

The Waffle Inn, the First Grade milestone project, is a longstanding tradition at All Saints. Each year, the students transform an area of the school into a restaurant with the house specialty being – you guessed it – waffles!

Each year the class takes a trip to a restaurant in Hoboken to see how a real restaurant is run. The students see the kitchen and have an opportunity to talk to the staff about their responsibilities. The class returns to school with a lot of ideas for their own restaurant!

Prior to the restaurant opening, each student must fill out an application explaining what job he or she would like and why he or she would be successful. The “applicant” is also required to attend an interview with the restaurant managers (a.k.a. the teachers) during which they must answer challenging questions about how they would handle given situations. Finally, students create menus, advertisements, and invitations, and solicit parent volunteers to bring in necessary supplies.

On the day of the big event, hosts and hostesses greet each class as students enter the restaurant. Servers take orders and bus people help to clean and reset tables. Parent volunteers are always present to help make the waffles while the student chefs add the desired toppings. Cashiers collect Waffle Inn money and distribute a notepad and pencil to each customer as a souvenir. The First Graders enjoy serving the other classes, but their favorite part always comes at the end of the day when they are served waffles, with the works of course, by their own parents.

This project is a meaningful part of the curriculum as it reinforces lessons around money, which is introduced during First Grade. It also allows students to learn more about the jobs and businesses in the local community. Finally, the students learn the importance of working together when they realize that each job is important and that the restaurant cannot run smoothly without everyone doing their part.