1st Grade

First Grade

Patterns & Resources

Six IB units, a Frontiers enrichment class, and a love of reading.

Frontiers in first grade.

Every K-4 student takes Frontiers, our math-and-science enrichment. First graders explore motion and force through hands-on investigations and build reasoning through engaging Math Talks.

IB Units of Inquiry

List of 6 items.

How We Express Ourselves

An inquiry into how we communicate our thoughts and feelings in a variety of ways.
Sharing Our Planet

An inquiry into how organisms use the resources around them to meet their needs.
Who We Are

An inquiry into how our personal choices affect our balance in life.
How The World Works

An inquiry into how patterns shape our world.
How We Organize Ourselves

An inquiry into how we can use our resources to take ownership of our learning.
Where We Are In Place & Time

An inquiry into how time brings change.

Explore Lower School

Lower School Curriculum

From sentences to stories.

List of 3 items.

Reading

First grade is the year students move from learning to read to reading with confidence. Personalized small-group instruction meets each child at their level, strengthening fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, and critical thinking through rich discussion and literature.
Writing

First graders discover writing as a way to communicate ideas and tell stories. They organize thoughts with a clear beginning, middle, and end while expanding vocabulary and voice, strengthening spacing, capitalization, punctuation, and sentence structure.
Math

First graders build number sense as they read, write, and model numbers, investigate place value, and gain fluency in addition and subtraction through multiple strategies. They explore measurement, data, geometry, and money in daily math conversations.

Specials

List of 6 items.

Frontiers

First graders explore motion and force through hands-on investigations and build mathematical thinking through Math Talks that encourage reasoning and multiple strategies.
Art

A collaborative cityscape inspired by Paul Klee opens the year, with paint, recycled materials, clay, and paper throughout. Students study Piet Mondrian, Maud Lewis, and Henri Matisse.
Music

Pitch through vocal warmups, echo and unison songs, percussion and orchestral instruments, rhythmic and melodic patterns on Orff instruments, folk dances, and multicultural music.
PE

Locomotor and fine-motor skills through chasing, fleeing, dodging, and controlled movement, plus overhand throwing. Relay races build teamwork, with sportsmanship in every lesson.
Spanish

Greetings, numbers to twenty, colors, body parts, clothing, animals, family, and weather, building pronunciation, basic grammar patterns, simple syllabic reading, and personal questions.
Library

Books as windows into new worlds. Students begin in the “little” library and move to the “big” library, choosing across genres and developing positive reading habits.