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

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. 

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

Book Buddies is a program which pairs up a child from a primary class and a child from an intermediate class. In this lesson, students create a personalized biography for their reading buddy as a great way to break the ice when Book Buddies meet for the first time. Students brainstorm questions they can ask to get to know their Book Buddy. Then they use the questions to interview their Book Buddies. They write a biography of their new friend and publish it using an online tool.

After reading books about obeying the rules and discussing the positive results that occur when rules are obeyed and the negative consequences when rules are broken, all students will help produce a Cause and Effect chart like the one I have attached as an example for obeying rules at school. Then higher-level students will extend their learning by working in a small group to create a Cause and Effect chart of obeying rules in the neighborhood and one for adults obeying rules/laws in the community. Their charts that they create will actually provide an opportunity for all students to be challenged to think about rules further. 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.

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, using a story which has been written collaboratively, students engage in a whole-group revising process by having each student add a sentence at a time. The teacher leads this shared-revising activity to help students consider story content. Students begin by reading their collaborative story and then discuss ways of making changes. Then, after revisions have been made, they reread the story as a group. Finally, students come to a consensus on a title for their story.

Seesaw is a web-based and application platform where students can post pictures from the classroom, annotate, speak their mind, and create electronic portfolios that connect school and home. Parents are able to see student work as soon as it is posted.
In this activity, students will take a common problem and use the design process to come up with a solution.

As a way to support teachers with English Language Arts (ELA) instruction during the pandemic, the NCDPI ELA team created choice boards featuring standards-aligned ELA activities.The intended purpose of these choice boards is to provide a way for students to continue standards-based learning while schools are closed. Each activity can be adapted and modified to be completed with or without the use of digital tools. Many activities can also be repeated with different texts. These standards-based activities are meant to be a low-stress approach to reinforcing and enriching the skills learned during the 2019-2020 school year. The choice boards are to be used flexibly by teachers, parents, and students in order to meet the unique needs of each learner.Exploration activities are provided for a more self-directed or guided approach to independent learning for students. These activities and sites should be used as a way to explore concepts, topics, skills, and social and emotional competencies that interest the learner. 

Students will use technology to write and share information about their researched cultures. This lesson was developed by Julie Glaser as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.            

In this lesson, students will learn the importance of giving credit to authors/illustrators by walking through texts and creating a product.

This is a lesson plan about ocean animals that integrates writing informative texts and technology.

Use Draw and Tell with students who are new to using mobile apps, or those who want to color and draw digitally.It is a powerful introduction to young kids for creating digital stories with multimedia elements

In this lesson, students become familiar with the short /u/ sound as they listen to Taro Yashima’s Caldecott Honor-winning book, Umbrella. Prereading activities build vocabulary and comprehension skills, a read-aloud introduces students to the sounds of the story, and concluding exercises allow students to apply their understanding of phonic elements in other contexts.

Currently, poetry is something we teach "if there is time" at the end of the year. I would love to make poetry a more integral part of the 1st grade curriculum. Poetry is currently taught by the students reading a preprinted packet of poetry and the students knowing that they are poems.  It's a very archaic way of teaching it, and I would love to change that.

The students are introduced to poetry throughout our curriculum (Scott Foresman Reading Street) through songs and curriculum poems, but are never specifically taught what makes a poem. This blended unit will change that! This unit will fall at the end of the 1st grade school year.

Created By: Katharine Valz

This lesson should be part of a larger focus on creative thinking and creative writing. This larger context could be poetry, figurative language, creative writing prompts, analogies, similes, metaphors, alliteration, onomonopeia, or other literary elements. This lesson targets the use of humor in writing through riddles. Students will read riddles, learn ways to write riddles and practice creating their own riddles.  As a final product, AIG students will choose to either make a booklet of animal riddles using word processing or to produce a simple PowerPoint presentation with their animal riddles. Illustrations will be included using clip art, computer graphics or their scanned drawings. 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.

After reading books about different cultures (the differences/similarities in language, dress, homes, food, art), the teacher and class can create a Prezi or physical poster to show different cultures around the world. Students can compare and contrast their culture with different cultures around the world.  This could be done using a Venn Diagram as well. Then higher-level students will be expected to create their own slideshow of one culture around the world including language, dress, homes, food, art, holidays, and anything that makes the culture special and unique. 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.

The Stapleless Book is designed to allow users to create with ease an eight-page book simply by folding and cutting. No tape or staples are required. Students and teachers alike can use the Stapleless Book for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating vocabulary booklets. Students can choose from seven different layouts for the pages of their books

Children love to tell stories. They will make up something that happened to them just to be able to tell a story. In this lesson students will take a story they have written and publish it using Google Slides or PowerPoint. They will be able to insert pictures and speech bubbles to make their story come to life for their audience.