This parent guide supports parents in helping their child at home with 1st Grade ELA content. Within the folder you will access Parent Guide PDFs in FIVE Languages: Arabic, English, Hindi, Spanish, and Vietnamese to help on-going communication with caregivers. 

These resources accompany our Rethink 1st Grade ELA course. They include ideas for use, ways to support exceptional children, ways to extend learning, digital resources and tools, tips for supporting English Language Learners and students with visual and hearing impairments. There are also ideas for offline learning. 

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.

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.

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.

In this lesson, students explore the different purposes readers have and how to determine what their purpose for reading is. Students also learn how to evaluate whether a book is at the right reading level and length for their abilities.

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 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.

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.

This page contains six online fiction books, eight online nonfiction books and puzzles. Each book will read paragraphs, sentences or single words to students as they click on the ear icon or click on what they would like to have read. Nonfiction reading passages include information about nature. Fiction passages are fantasy. This resource supports English language development for English language learners.

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.

This resource supports English language development for English language learners. This page contains six online fiction books, eight online nonfiction books and puzzles. Each book will read paragraphs, sentences or single words to students as they click on the ear icon or click on what they would like to have read. Nonfiction reading passages include information about nature. Fiction passages are fantasy.

In this lesson, students engage in independent literacy centers to become proficient in completing activities about the stories they read. Although this lesson uses Seven Blind Mice as an example, the framework is adaptable to almost any text.

In this lesson, students will use a popular children's song that contains several high-frequency vocabulary words to assist in recognizing, reading, writing, and using the words in several contexts. Students sing the song repeatedly, while following along with a picture book that contains the lyrics and illustrations. They are then encouraged to participate in several hands-on activities to reinforce learning of the vocabulary words.

In this lesson, students will learn that building a snowman is one way to provide food for birds and animals during the winter. Students begin by listening to a book about snow. Students are then introduced to a K-W-L chart and discuss what they know about how animals find food in the winter. As students listen to Henrietta Bancroft's Animals in Winter, they listen for details about how some animals survive during the winter and record those details in the last column of the chart. To continue to build students' knowledge of the topic, they listen to additional fiction and nonfiction books and view a website about animals in winter. As a culminating activity, students use their charts to write and illustrate a story.