Welcome to our web page.  At this site you will find monthly overviews of the skills and concepts presented in the first grade’s three general academic areas.

What’s happening in September?

Language Arts

 Reading – As we begin this new school year our phonemic awareness and phonics activities will review and reinforce the identification of consonant sounds and promote the recognition of vowel sounds and the use of these consonants and vowels in sounding out words.  We will begin building a vocabulary list of sight words, words to be recognized immediately without sounding out.  We’ll be reading and rereading stories in our first anthology, Guess Who?, to develop reading fluency.   We’ll be focusing on the following comprehension skills: sequencing, predicting outcomes, and reading for details.

 Writing – In guided handwriting lessons we will be learning how to print all of the uppercase and lowercase letters using the Peterson Handwriting Method.  Also, we’ll be concentrating on narrative writing and learning about the mechanics of writing, including proper sentence formation, conventional capitalization, and punctuation.

Math

We will be developing number concepts through daily practice with patterns, graphing, counting coins, using the calendar, ordering numbers, skip counting, and numerical reasoning.  This month we will concentrate especially on developing an understanding of addition and subtraction, and we’ll be introducing strategies for learning addition facts to 12.

Social Living

Our emphasis in social studies at the beginning of this school year will be on the development of appropriate school behaviors and awareness of the purpose and importance of rules.  In science we’ll begin an investigation called “Air and Weather,” that will involve many interesting hands-on activities.

We hope to see you at Hoover School’s Curriculum Night on September 18^th, and at our fall Family Night on September 23^rd.