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 learn about how the nervous system is the body's control center.

From EngageNY.org of the New York State Education Department. Grade 1 ELA Domain 2: The Human Body. Available from engageny.org/resource/grade-1-ela-domain-2-the-human-body; accessed 2015-05-29.

Day 1: In this lesson, students will…. Understand how information is transferred over physical or wireless paths and are broken down into smaller pieces called packets, then reassembled at their destination. They will learn this by creating a LEGO/Magnatile/block house, or building, as a team. The teacher, or facilitator, will take a photo of their creation. The students will disassemble their structure and transfer it to the next group, representing how information is broken down and passed on. The next group who receives the pieces will have to look at the photo and rebuild based on the photo. If the group completes this, they will successfully complete how information is transferred showing that in order for information to be the same when it’s transferred and to show up, it needs to be the same.

Day 2: Students will learn to protect their personal information by creating passwords/passphrases. This will be equated to students using your house key, or house code. This is private to the adults in your life. They do not share those with others, just like you would not share a password to your account with others. Teacher will create an easily guessable password to model, students will ask the teacher questions from a predetermined list of questions with picture tiles, like favorite animal, favorite color, etc. Using the answers to the questions the students will try to guess the password. Then, students will create a password, and play the guessing game with a small group.

Day 3:Students will review previous concepts about passwords and protecting personal information. They will be introduced to anti-virus software. Teacher will equate malware to getting sick and anti-virus software to antibiotics. When you’re sick your body is ‘infected’ like a computer with malware on it. The anti-biotic or anti-virus software protects you. Students illustrate a computer transmitting information (use paper and markers to solve a maze). They will be given anti-virus software (saran wrap) to place over their maze. Teacher walks around and sprays water on each “computer” with anti-virus software. Remove anti-virus software and spray again to illustrate malware.

ABCya! presents its fifth children's storybook for the classroom. It's called Marvin Makes Music, an original work by Michelle Tocci. The story is about a frog that is sad because he cannot sing like his friends, until one day when he gets a new musical instrument. This is a great storybook to share with kids using an interactive whiteboard.

*This storybook has narration! Students can click the speaker button to have the story read to them.

In this lesson, students will read 'The Moon Book' by Gail Gibbons. Each page, the teacher will stop and talk with the students about what they are learning about the moon. After the students read the book, additional actvities are provided in the lesson including arts and crafts, oreo moons, and much more.

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

Using the DPI online graphic organizer for synthesizing information found at http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/acre/standards/common-core-tools/organizers/ela/synthesizing.pdf, students will identify the reasons the author of the article “Garden Helpers” provides to support his point that not all garden creatures are pests.  The students will fill out a graphic organizer to show evidence that some creatures are helpful, and then they will fill out another organizer to show that some are harmful. After identifying the reasons in the text, the students will write a summary opinion on the organizer, drawing upon other resources for further information and investigation.  After completing both organizers, AIG students will synthesize the information about helpful and harmful garden creatures in order to write an explanatory/informative report on living creatures in the garden. This lesson was developed by NCDPI as part of the Academically and/or Intellectually Gifted Instructional Resources Project. This lesson plan has been vetted at the state level for standards alignment, AIG focus, and content accuracy.

Students research information about animals and communicate in written form and use multimedia tools to create pages for a class book and presentation.