Long Range Plan Explanation

Math: The way the math standards are set up is in an order that students need to know each thing. They need to be able to count to 60, which they work on in the first semester, before they can learn to count to 120. They need to know their numbers before they can start learning about place value in January. A lot of standards are repeated throughout the year such as addition and subtraction, which is appropriate for this age. As the year moves on, they will learn to add and subtract with larger numbers, but it is something that you never stop learning how to do. Once they grasp this knowledge they will learn the properties that will help them later on in their education. Time is another thing that the students learn, not just throughout the year, but also throughout their lives.

Science (3 and 4 are included, but not mentioned): We started the year out by focusing on earth materials. We pretended to be scientists and explored the outdoors for things we thought the earth is made of. We then used our findings to classify and sort items to learn more about them. This week we discussed location and motion. We will continue this unit by learning about sound and about ways in which objects move. The earth materials lessons were done right at the beginning of the year and it still felt warm enough to go outside and collect items to be observed. Now that we are doing motion and force, it is safe to stay inside with some hands on activities for students to become engaged in the learning.

Social Studies (3 and 4 are included but not mentioned): The first nine weeks list standards together that kind of give the idea of community helpers. We started off discussing people in the community who have authority and how they help the community. We then talked about how the government works and how they help the community and what it would be like with out a government, or someone who protects the country. We decided that if there were no government, then there would be no rules and our country would be living in chaos. We then moved to discuss the type of government we have in America, a democracy and we discussed what a democracy was and how citizens have a choice to vote for their rights. We ended the semester by discussing the different elements in a community. We read a book during shared reading that gave us more information about a community, and we made pictures of a community to show that it takes lots of people to make a community, not just one person. Next nine weeks, we will learn about enforcing the laws in a government and discuss how citizens can serve the common good. We will end the nine weeks by comparing the lives of families from all over the world.

Language Arts: Literature: In literature, students work on the same standards the whole semester. They work on a variety of tasks including: answering teacher guided questions, comparing different stories and characters, and using pictures to describe characters and events. While they repeatedly work on these strategies during the year, they are able to add new ideas to their learning such as:

identifying the person telling a story and being able to use headings, table of contents, and glossaries. My students have been introduced to some of the later standards and have done a great job with it. During independent reading, my students get excited when they see things in their books that we have done in mini lessons, such as glossaries and table of contents. I think its important that they repeat these strategies year-round because in first grade, some students are just beginning to read, and even those who are more advanced can use the things that we are learning each day while reading.

Writing- In first grade students write on topics given by the teacher. They write narratives and work on capitalizing dates and names, punctuation, and on printing upper and lower case letters. They focus on grouping words by category (color, clothing) and by defining words by category and by key attributes (a duck is a bird that swims). As the semester moves on, students begin studying the different types of words, such as the different types of nouns (common, proper, possessive, personal and indefinite). In November/December, students will learn the use of conjunctions, prepositions, and will begin to participate in research projects. They need to start with the basic and keep practicing with what they know to grasp the concepts taught at the end of the semester and at the end of the year. In class, my students have been writing during morning work and during writers workshop. They are focusing on capitalization and punctuation at the end of sentences. Students have been writing informational stories about people they know, things they enjoy, and other topics given by the teacher. They are working on writing complete sentences and making sure they

what they write makes sense. Within the next few weeks, students will begin writing how to books about various topics. We will still focus on punctuation and will start using sequencing to tell the steps in our books.