What your child should know by the end of first grade.

National PTA Organization

 

Literacy and English Language Arts:

 

In 1st grade, your child will become a more independent reader and writer. Your child will continue to learn and practice rules for recognizing the sounds that make up words and will be able to sound out more complex words. Such foundational skills are necessary and important components of developing proficient readers with the capacity to comprehend a wide range of materials. Students will learn to think about what they read and talk about the main ideas of simple stories. As they write and speak, 1st graders will learn to use language appropriately; this includes using complete sentences and spelling words with increasing accuracy.

 

What your child will learn in first grade:

 

• Using phonics (matching letters and sounds) and

word analysis skills to figure out unfamiliar words
when reading and writing

• Describing characters, settings, and major events

in a story, using key details
Getting facts and information from different writings

• Writing about a topic, supplying some facts, and

providing some sense of opening and closing
Participating in shared research and writing projects
(e.g., exploring a number of “how-to” books and
using them to write a sequence of instructions)

• Taking part in conversations about topics and texts

being studied by responding to the comments of others
and asking questions to clear up any confusion

• Describing people, places, things, and events with

relevant details, expressing ideas and feelings
clearly and with complete sentences

• Producing and expanding complete simple and

compound statements, questions, commands, and
exclamations

• Identifying the correct meaning for a word

with multiple meanings, based on the sentence
or paragraph in which the word is used (e.g.,
deciding whether the word bat means a flying
mammal or a club used in baseball)

• Learning to think about finer distinctions in the

meanings of near-synonyms (e.g., marching,
prancing, strutting, strolling, walking)

 

Mathematics:

In 1st grade, your child will build on last year’s work and gain important new skills.
One of the most important outcomes for the year is to improve speed and accuracy
adding with a sum of 20 or less and subtracting from a number 20 or less (e.g., 17 – 8).
Another important goal in 1st grade is adding with a sum of 100 or less; this will rely on
understanding what the digits mean in a number such as 63 (namely, 63 is six tens and
three ones). Working with multi-digit addition this year will set the stage for 2nd grade,
when your child will be working with three-digit numbers and adding and subtracting
with larger numbers.

 

What your child will learn in first grade:

• Solving addition and subtraction word problems

in situations of adding to, taking from, putting
together, taking apart, and comparing (e.g., a
taking from situation would be: “Five apples were
on the table. I ate some apples. Then there were
three apples. How many apples did I eat?”)

• Adding with a sum of 20 or less, and subtracting

from a number 20 or less, for example by using
strategies based around the number 10 (e.g., to
solve 13 – 4, one can start with 13, subtract 3 to
reach 10, and then subtract 1 more to reach 9)

• Quickly and accurately adding with a sum of 10 or

less, and quickly and accurately subtracting from
a number 10 or less (e.g., 2 + 5, 7 – 5)

• Understanding what the digits mean in two-digit

numbers (place value)

• Using understanding of place value to add

and subtract (e.g., 38 + 5, 29 + 20, 64 + 27,
80 – 50)

• Measuring lengths of objects by using a shorter

object as a unit of length

• Making composite shapes by joining shapes

together, and dividing circles and rectangles into
halves or fourths