This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with 1st Grade ELA content.

This unit was created by the Rethink Education Content Development Team. This course is aligned to the NC Standards for 1st Grade ELA in Language.

In this adaptation of the ReadWriteThink lesson, after a read aloud of Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish, students discuss text-dependent questions to promote an understanding of the story's character. 

This lesson uses music and art in a vocabulary study of unfamiliar words from the song "America the Beautiful," increasing students' vocabulary while also increasing their knowledge of U.S. geography. A discussion to activate students' prior knowledge about sights and scenery throughout the United States is followed by a read-aloud and introduction to the song "America the Beautiful," which is then sung in each session of the lesson.

Students are prompted to use comparisons to discuss what they see as they picture walk through books about the ocean. They identify what these comparisons have in common to arrive at an informal name and definition of simile. They then create illustrations showing these comparisons. Next, students picture walk through two additional picture books about the ocean and comment about what they see. They are introduced to metaphor by rewording some of their comments into metaphors. They continue to note metaphors as the books are read aloud, and then name and define this new type of comparison. They again draw pictures to illustrate some of these metaphors. Students discuss why writers use these types of comparisons, then work to revise existing writing to incorporate figurative language through guided practice or independent work. Finally, students use templates to create a book on the ocean that features similes and metaphors.

This lesson is for Grades 1 - 2 on literacy. At Home Learning Lessons are a partnership between the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, PBS North Carolina, and the William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation.  Each lesson contains a video instructional lesson, a PDF lesson plan with a transcript, and a PDF file of extension activities.

This lesson is for Grades 1 - 2 on literacy. At Home Learning Lessons are a partnership between the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, PBS North Carolina, and the William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation.  Each lesson contains a video instructional lesson, a PDF lesson plan with a transcript, and a PDF file of extension activities.

In this lesson, students will use mentor texts and will construct a definition of alliteration. Using these texts as models, students experiment with creating alliterative sentences.

Students will "play baseball" by choosing the correct affix for the root word given. Please note you will need to have flash enabled on your browser in order to use the resource.

Students discuss literature on shadows. Teachers use questioning techniques to probe prior knowledge. Students begin to explore scientific concepts and develop and test hypotheses. After studying shadows, recording observations of shadows, and hearing poetry about shadows, students create their own poetic response incorporating their knowledge.

In this lesson, students will read Shel Silverstein's "Sick" aloud, students summarize the poem and count the words in their summary. They then summarize the poem again, using only one word. Students explain their choices and discuss the various words offered as a summary. The class then chooses the one word that best represents what is happening in the poem. Finally, students read a second poem, individually or in small groups, and summarize it using only one word.

Students can practice their reading skills as they read stories with high-frequency words; interact with the computer to create new text; understand that changing one word in a sentence can change the meaning of the entire sentence; recognize consonant sound-spellings; distinguish easily confused letter pairs; and recognize common short and long vowel sounds as they participate in this interactive reading of Clifford's beloved stories.

Students can practice their reading skills as they read stories with high-frequency words; interact with the computer to create new text; understand that changing one word in a sentence can change the meaning of the entire sentence; recognize consonant sound-spellings; distinguish easily confused letter pairs; and recognize common short and long vowel sounds as they participate in this interactive reading of Clifford's beloved stories.

Students can practice their reading skills as they read stories with high-frequency words; interact with the computer to create new text; understand that changing one word in a sentence can change the meaning of the entire sentence; recognize consonant sound-spellings; distinguish easily confused letter pairs; and recognize common short and long vowel sounds as they participate in this interactive reading of Clifford's beloved stories.

Students and the teacher produce a class book through a group-writing activity, focusing on a basic before-during-after sequence of events. After discussing what they know about pumpkins, the class carves a jack-o-lantern, pausing at each step to chart their observations on before, during, and after charts. The class then uses their sentences from the chart to write the sequence of events for carving the pumpkin. Finally, the class publishes their work, using one of several publishing options.

In this lesson, students complete two prewriting activities, one on brainstorming ideas using story maps, and one on creating beginnings of stories. They then work on two collaborative-writing activities in which they draft an "oversized" story on chart paper. Each student works individually to read what has been written before, adds the "next sentence," and passes the developing story on to another student. The story is passed from student to student until the story is complete. In a later lesson Collaborative Stories 2: Revising, the story is revised by the groups.

In this lesson, students will use KWL charts and interactive writing as key components of organizing information. As a class, students list what they know about insects, prompted by examining pictures in an insect book. Students them pose questions they have about insects, again using picture books as a visual prompt. Students then search for answers to the questions they have posed, using Websites, read-alouds, and easy readers. Periodic reviews of gathered information become the backdrop to ongoing inquiry, discussion, reporting, and confirming information. The lesson culminates with the publishing of a collaborative question and answer book which reports on information about the chosen topic, with each student contributing one page to the book.

Getting children to use their imaginations when writing a story can sometimes be difficult. Drawing, however, can create a bridge between the ideas in a child's head and the blank piece of paper on the desk. In this lesson, students use factual information gathered from the Internet as the basis for creating a nonfiction story. Story elements, including setting, characters, problem, solution, and endings, are then used as a structure for assembling students' ideas into a fiction story.

In this lesson, shared reading, guided reading, and small, cooperative-group instruction are used in a first-grade classroom to informally assess students' ability to demonstrate awareness of rhyme or other visual similarities in words. Students practice matching rhyming words using picture cards and apply phonological awareness—hearing rhyme—to analogy-based phonics (i.e., an ability to decode unknown words by identifying words with similar visual structure). Students use online resources to increase phonological awareness through rhyme.

In this lesson, students will read Laura Joffe Numeroff's 'If You Give a Mouse a Cookie' to combine word-skill work with prediction and sequencing practice. Students learn about cause-effect relationships during a shared reading of the book and then complete a cloze exercise that uses context and initial consonant clues. Students then create story circles that display the events of the story and use these circles to retell the story to a peer. Finally, the students compose their own stories featuring themselves in the role of the mouse.