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1st Grade

1st Grade is an exciting year as your child discovers new horizons afforded through growth in language, science, and mathematics. In a team effort, we are committed to your child’ academic skills, social emotional learning, and spiritual formation as Catholics. In 1 Kiwi, we emphasize data-driven and small group instruction through the use of Blended Learning, a style of teaching incorporating our classroom’s technology (1:1 student to iPad ratio) and the use of stations and centers. Students have abundant opportunities to do hands-on activities and develop their digital skills with an array of online learning resources.

Academics

Language Arts

Your child will learn skills that enable them to read and write more independently. In a supportive environment, we work on writing projects that help your child develop their own writing process, including brainstorming, drafting, and editing, independently and collaboratively. Your child will increase their academic and content-specific vocabulary by reading a variety of literature and informational text, including but not limited to Highlights’ Adventures of the Superkids. This comprehensive program is central to our ELA curriculum in the first grade. As first-grade students, your child will learn to write for different purposes and subjects. We will also keep practicing decoding skills, phonics, blending, and segmenting.

Math

In the first grade, as part of the story of math told in Eureka Math, your child will develop a strong foundation in mathematics. They will learn to add and subtract within 20, develop an understanding of whole numbers and place value within 120, measure and order objects by length, and work with shapes to compose new shapes and partition shapes to create basic fractions.

Religion

Through the Christ Our Life program, your child will continue to realize the love that God has for them and be inspired to follow the teachings of Jesus. We learn about the story of the Fall and the promise of a Savior. We read Bible stories and see the connections between the church’s teachings and our daily lives. First graders learn many common prayers and about the responses that are used in church and what they mean. We attend school masses monthly, and join the parish for our daily Mass several times a year. We pray together every morning as a school community.

Science

First grade science is exciting and fun! We learn about plants, animals, habitats, weather and seasons, as well as select topics like light and sound travel. First graders also get to learn about the process of Scientific Inquiry. In St. Elizabeth’s annual science fair, we proudly participate with a class project, most recently on the concept of static electricity.

Social Studies

We will learn about the concept of the community, beginning inside of our classroom with a sense of ourselves as a group and as individuals. Over the course of the year, we expand our reach to the school, which we study through maps and interviews, before reaching the neighborhood level. We are asking ourselves inquiring into our world through our new question words to understand ourselves, our communities, and the people in the world around us. In the process, we learn about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Physical Education

Physical education focuses on game skills and fitness through a variety of games and activities. Students in first grade improve their motor development by working with a variety of manipulative equipment (bouncy balls, bean bags, parachutes, hula hoops, soccer balls, etc.). Students learn how to throw, catch, run, jump, dribble, kick, skip and dance through interactive classes that get students up and moving. Students learn how to control their body and interact with the world around them in new ways.