Grade 1 English Language Arts
10 units matched to the New Brunswick Curriculum. Kids see this subject as “Letters & Words”.
Learning focus
- Interactions: Expression. Express feelings and opinions and give simple descriptions of experiences.
- Interactions: Exchanges. Begin to ask and respond to questions.
- Interactions: Reception. Receive the ideas and opinions of others.
- Reading: Concepts of Print. Identify concepts of print.
- Reading: Phonological Awareness. Demonstrate an awareness of sounds in spoken language.
- Reading: Phonics. Apply letter-sound knowledge to decode words and connected text.
- Reading: Fluency. Read familiar words in developmentally appropriate text passages with accuracy and expression.
- Reading: Vocabulary. Use a range of vocabulary when communicating.
- Reading: Reading Comprehension. Construct meaning from oral stories, read-alouds, and text.
- Reading: Text Analysis. Select and engage with a variety of text forms for specific uses.
- Representations: Print Mechanics. Print or represent letters, words, and sentences using a writing utensil or assistive technology.
- Representations: Spelling. Apply basic spelling conventions when creating written works.
- Representations: Sentence Structure. Compose complete thoughts and sentences.
- Representations: Composition. Organize ideas and create written or media texts.
- Representations: Text Analysis. Begin to seek information to support ideas and construct meaning.
Units
Unit 1
Word Families
Words that share an ending, like cat, hat and bat. Once children know one word in a family, they can read and spell many more by changing the first sound.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Phonological Awareness · rhyme and word families
Unit 2
Blend It
Blending sounds into words (s-u-n makes sun), counting the sounds in a word and hearing the last sound. These listening skills are the base of reading and spelling.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Phonics · blending and segmenting sounds to read words
Unit 3
Short Vowels
Hearing the short vowel in the middle of words like cat, bed, pig, dog and sun, and filling in the missing vowel to spell the word.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Phonics · short vowel sounds and simple words
Unit 4
Sh, Ch, Th
Letter pairs that make one sound (sh, ch, th) at the start and end of words like ship, cheese and tooth.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Phonics · the digraphs sh, ch and th
Unit 5
Sight Words
Common words like said, was, they and where that are tricky to sound out. Children practise finding, using and spelling them so they can read them at a glance.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Fluency · reading familiar words
Unit 6
Describing Words
Opposites (hot and cold) and describing words that tell how something looks, feels, tastes or sounds, including finding the describing word in a sentence.
Skill descriptor: Reading: Vocabulary · describing words and opposites
Unit 7
More Than One
Plurals: adding -s to a naming word means more than one (one cat, two cats). Stretch questions add -es to words like box and fox.
Skill descriptor: Representations: Spelling · plurals and spelling simple words
Unit 8
Sentences
Starting sentences and names with a capital letter, ending with a period or question mark, telling whole sentences from parts, counting words and finding naming words.
Skill descriptor: Representations: Sentence Structure · capital letters, periods and complete sentences
Unit 9
Kinds of Sentences
Knowing a telling sentence from a question, a command and an exclamation, choosing the end mark, and seeing sentences with two ideas joined.
Skill descriptor: Representations: Sentence Structure · telling, asking, command and exclamation sentences
Unit 10
Story Time
Reading short stories, then naming who is in them and where they happen, and putting the events in order. Reading the story aloud together and talking about it helps a lot!
Skill descriptor: Reading: Reading Comprehension · characters, setting and events
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