teaching grade 1

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teaching grade 1
By Cathy-Dee

Congratulations - Grade 1 is wonderful!

You are right in the first few months are important ones. They will help to sent the tone for the year. I spend the first week on basic routines - bathrooms, sharpening pencils,
asking questions, etc., They will need a lot of reminders and repetition.
It's good to start some of the work routines you may be doing such as the calendar, weather, morning letter, singing the anthem, etc., I also like to do a lot of get to know you games and activities.
Each class and school is different. My students are more "at risk" so I tend to spend more time on the letter

names and sounds for the first few months. In another school where I also taught grade 1 we did a review of the sounds but it was short and the students moved into reading and learning words much earlier than my students in my present school usually do.

But generally

September to November - printing letters, reviewing sounds, learning sight words including colour and number words, journal writing, reading as a class, etc.,
In math, reviewing counting to 20, printing numbers to 20, reviewing patterns, looking at number patterns, and then usually by November moving into addition and subtraction.

I often find my kids help guide what we will be doing depending on where they are when they first come into grade 1.

So during the first month I do a lot of sample work - printing samples, writing samples and I do some one on one testing. I test each student on their letter names and sounds, I also test them on number words and numbers to 20. I do these tests when they are in centers. It's time consuming but it does give me a better handle on where they are academically to begin the year.