HIGH-FREQUENCY WORDS
The High-Frequency Words are words that your child will learn to read in a snap. The goal is for your child to be able to read all 100 words accurately and quickly by December (the first 100-green list). Click here to see all of the sight words lists. Once your child has mastered the first 100 words feel free to move on to the other lists.
READING UNITS
The first
unit of study in Reading is Readers
Build Good Habits. One main purpose of this unit is to reinforce and build
on all the essential reading skills children learned last year, as well as the
habits they developed as members of a classroom community. To that end,
children will learn old and new procedures for participating in a new classroom
community, for organizing their own reading lives within this new community,
and for working with partners. Meanwhile, they will need to use everything they
know as they read—from book orientation strategies and knowledge of
letter-sound correspondence to comprehension strategies and how to read with fluency.
They will be assessed early on, and those with urgent needs will receive extra
support. This unit introduces children to the idea that becoming more grown up
readers means taking charge of their own reading lives. The goal is that with
support, children will adopt the practices to move toward increased
independence. They’ll set goals for themselves, establish good habits, and push
themselves to be the strongest readers they can be.
Parent Letter (with more
information & suggestions for supporting your child at home)
Our second unit of study in Reading is Word Detectives. In this unit, students
will learn more strategies to figure out words. We will rally students to be
the best word detectives they can be so that they can tackle any “bumps in the
road.” Students will begin to apply
learned strategies across a variety of texts with more independence. We will
lift students’ level of independence with word‐solving even more by expecting them
to be monitoring and fixing up their own reading. One of the most important aspects
of the reading process is the ability to know when something isn’t quite right,
and for first graders this is a big responsibility. While readers will continue
to read independently using all that they’ve learned, we will also begin to
work more on partner reading. Students will show what they know about word
solving to coach their partners when they come to tricky words. Partners will also learn ways to prepare for
reading with a partner. Finally,
partners will begin to retell together in a way that allows them to clarify
what they are reading, as well as begin to extend ideas.
Parent
Letter (with more
information & suggestions for supporting your child at home)
Our third
unit of study in Reading is Readers Have
Big Jobs to Do. This unit is designed to provide an opportunity to visit
reading strategy work that students already know, and build upon that
foundation to equip students to tackle more sophisticated texts and books.
Teachers will need to rely on assessment information to help differentiate
instruction throughout this unit, especially looking at miscues students made
on running records. Teachers should be on the lookout for students who do and
do not monitor for sense, self-correct as they read, stop and think, or use various
decoding systems to break down words. Guided reading, shared reading, and small
group strategy lessons will be vital components of this particular unit of
study as one tries to move students along the continuum. Word study must also
be vigorous throughout this unit as well. Mini-lessons should teach specific
strategies for tackling hard words and hard parts of books.
Parent Letter (with more
information & suggestions for supporting your child at home)
Our fourth
unit of study in Reading is Readers Learn
About the World. This unit is the first one of the year designed to support
children in reading nonfiction. In it, teachers will offer children strategies
readers use that are particular to this genre as they gradually learn to tackle
increasingly complex books. In the first bend, teachers support children in
applying all they already know about reading to reading informational books. We
teach them basic ways that readers approach informational books, guide through
this format, and suggest ways to navigate its various features. In the second
bend, after this re‐introduction to navigating the genre, we’ll teach students ways to take
on the new words they’ll encounter in nonfiction content areas. In other words,
we’ll help children decode new words and build their vocabulary. In the third
bend, young readers will learn to study both the words and book
features—primarily pictures, at these benchmark levels—to understand more about
the topic. Teachers will coach them to catch their thinking in jotted notes or
conversations as they do so. In the final bend of this unit, students will
teach a partner or small group about a topic they have studied.
Parent Letter (with more
information & suggestions for supporting your child at home)
The last
unit of study in Reading is Meeting
Characters & Learning Lessons. This is the beginning of a new focus on
characters. As children “meet” the characters in their books, paying attention
to the things they do, to what kinds of people they are, and to how their
feelings change across the story, they will be asking and answering questions
about key details in the text, retelling stories, and describing characters,
settings and major events. As you invite your children into the unit show off
reorganized bins, brimming with books that feature lively, quirky characters.
Although you will want to drum roll the new focus, you’ll also tuck in
reminders that children need to continue to draw on all the strategies they’ve
learned earlier. They will continue to check that their books make sense, to
think about how all the pages in a story go together, and to figure out hard
words. Above all, they will continue to devour book after book—bringing a
wealth of new characters into their lives.
Parent Letter (with more
information & suggestions for supporting your child at home)
WRITING UNITS
The first
unit of study in Writing is Launching
Small Moments. This unit builds on the essential writing skills that
children learned in kindergarten, as well as the routines and habits they have
begun as writers. The end of the year expectation for first graders is that
they can produce narrative writing that demonstrates a sequence of events
including detail, temporal words to show order, and some sense of closure. This
unit, in which students write and revise their own stories across multiple
pages, provides the perfect opportunity for them to begin to work toward this
goal. Another goal of this unit is to teach kids to be resourceful
word-solvers.
Parent
Letter (with more
information & suggestions for supporting your child at home)
The second unit of study in Writing is Opinion
Writing. In grade students will learn
about opinion writing. They will learn to sort, rank, categorize, argue and
convince their readers about their own personal collections. Next, students
will be introduced to writing reviews. Students will practice supporting their
opinion by making and defending their judgements with reasons and explanations.
Moreover, through strong, well-thought out opinions, students will learn their
words have the power to convince others of their opinions. Throughout this
unit, students will write reviews on topics that matter most to students,
everything from toys, restaurants, movies, and books.
Parent Letter (with more
information & suggestions for supporting your child at home)
The third unit of study in Writing is Nonfiction
Books. The purpose of this unit is to support first graders in writing lots
of informational books about different topics, building on all they learned
about informational writing in kindergarten and drawing on their personal
knowledge. During this unit, students will have the opportunity to write
multiple informational books to teach readers about topics they know a lot
about. This unit is designed to help students become analytic readers of
grade-level complex informational texts, noticing what authors of those books
do and emulating what they notice to revise and strengthen their writing.
Students will be given the direct instruction and repeated opportunities they
need in order to become proficient at writing informational texts in which they
name a topic, supply some facts about the topic, and provide some sense of
closure.
Parent
Letter (with more
information & suggestions for supporting your child at home)
In this
final unit, Scene to Series, first
graders will write their own series of books. Students will continue to draw on
their knowledge that they learned in Small Moments as they deepen their
narrative writing skills through fictional narratives. Students will be guided
through creating characters and giving that character adventures in more than
one booklet. Specifically, they will learn how to bring a character to life
through dialogue, actions, feeling, and thoughts. In addition, students will
also focus on revising through word choice and elaboration.
Parent Letter (with more
information & suggestions for supporting your child at home)