Class 1

Curriculum Overview

Reading

Class one students are immersed in literature with language arts at the center of the curriculum. Reading classes are offered 5 times a week, though reading instruction is integrated into all subjects throughout the day. The curriculum focuses on building fluency and strengthening decoding skills. Since the range of reading levels at this age is still quite broad, the girls work in smaller ability based groups for some, but not all, reading instruction. They are taught a variety of reading strategies for decoding with heavy emphasis placed on the making of meaning as they read.

The girls become very familiar with our classroom library through read alouds, book basket browsing and daily book check-out. Many genres are introduced including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The girls learn how to pick "just right" books, which best support the development of their own reading skills. Just right books are books, which have a few sticky words, (less than 5 per page) and allow the reader to practice her reading strategies and try out new decoding strategies.

Small group work with a teacher provides opportunities to learn and apply reading strategies and work on word attack skills. Phonics is taught through group lessons and daily review and practice.

Writing

Class One girls have writing workshop four days a week. Here they experience both teacher directed and student directed writing assignments. Narrative form is the focus in the fall, poetry in the winter and non-fiction informational texts in the spring. Writing conventions are taught in context. Staying on one topic, writing complete simple sentences, learning to use end punctuation, and spacing words are goals in the first half of the year. Students share their writing with their peers through writing partnerships and during our writers sharing circle. Spelling words are learned on a weekly basis and dictation exercises allow the girls to demonstrate mastery of the spelling words.

Social Studies

The social studies curriculum centers on the broad concept of community. We begin by working to understand, "What is a community?" and focuses on the development of our own classroom communities. During the winter semester, we study the school community and learn about the history, building and people of the Chapin School. The spring curriculum expands to a study of the neighborhood and city. Life skills are integrated into our social studies curriculum. We teach effective communication using I messages and good listening skills.

Math

The building of number sense and basic addition and subtraction skills are the focus for the first half of the first grade year. The girls are also taught to think logically and problem-solve, they learn to find and identify patterns, and use spatial reasoning to solve puzzles. Games and the use of manipulative materials help concrete thinkers to understand new math concepts. As the students internalize concepts, they begin to work on the symbolic level. 2-D and 3-D geometry, measurement and time telling (to the half hour) are taught in the second half of the year.