First Grade

First grade is when children discover themselves as readers, writers, mathematicians, and scientists. The year builds strong, explicit foundations in phonics and number sense while introducing students to the wider world through their community, their families, and the natural world around them.

Language Arts

First graders build the foundations of reading and writing through explicit, systematic instruction, using the science-of-reading-aligned Superkids Reading Program:

• Phonics and foundational skills move through 16 carefully sequenced units across the year from a review of kindergarten letter-sounds and CVC words, through consonant digraphs (sh, wh, ch, th), inflectional endings (-s, -ing, -ed), the "Super E" long-vowel pattern, vowel teams, r-controlled vowels, and diphthongs, building toward fluent, accurate reading of increasingly complex words and decodable texts.
• Reading is carried into the "holistic" block, where students read and listen to rich literature, discuss ideas, and respond to texts. They study characters across a series (differentiated by level, from Magic Tree House and Ivy & Bean for enrichment to Frog and Toad and Henry and Mudge on level), and read nonfiction to research how animals adapt to survive in different habitats.
• Writing moves through the full writing process for the first time. Across the year, students write a fiction narrative and a personal narrative (each as an illustrated 3–5 page book), take on a Reader's Theater performance of a fable tied to one of Chapin's virtues ( for example, the Tortoise and the Hare and Perseverance, or the Boy Who Cried Wolf and Honesty). We run the much-loved Valentine's Day Post Office where students write a letter of appreciation to every classmate.  
• Word study pairs grammar and vocabulary with structured practice to focus on language mechanics.

Mathematics

The year opens with Bridges in Mathematics, building number sense and fact fluency through hands-on models and games, then moves into Math in Focus in order to focus on adding and subtracting two-digit numbers with regrouping.

• Number sense to 120, tens and ones, and counting by 1s, 5s, and 10s.
• Addition and subtraction fact fluency through 20 using fact families, number bonds, and varied strategies; the number line as a tool; adding and subtracting two-digit numbers within 100 with and without regrouping (the year's major milestone), grounded with place-value and model drawings so students understand why the math works, not just how.
• Money, geometry, measurement, time to the hour and half hour, and data, including a culminating class survey and graphing project.

Science

Hands-on investigation in three FOSS (Full Option Science System) modules, each built on direct experimentation:

• Air and Weather: exploring that air takes up space (syringes, tubing, water displacement), designing parachutes and balloon rockets, building pinwheels, anemometers, and wind vanes, and tracking weather, temperature, and daylight over time.
• Sound and Light: investigating sound and vibration (tuning forks, one-string guitars), changing volume and pitch, exploring shadows and how light travels and is redirected with mirrors.
• Plants and Animals: studying what plants and animals need to live and grow, growing plants from seeds, bulbs, and stems, maintaining classroom terrariums, and making connections between young and parent organisms. We tie this directly to the spring Animal Adaptations writing unit.

Social Studies

The year is framed by one essential question: "How can I take care of myself, others, and my community?"  The question is answered through a progressively wider lens:

• Unit 1: Rules, Routines, and Virtues. The classroom as a community, shared rules, and the five Chapin virtues.
• Unit 2: Families and Traditions. Celebrating the diversity of family structures and traditions.
• Unit 3: Community Helpers and Map Skills. How a community works, the helpers who keep it running, and early mapping.
• Unit 4: US Government, Symbols, and Landmarks. National identity, symbols, and what it means to be a citizen with rights and responsibilities.
• Unit 5: Taking Care of Our World.  A student- and teacher-led civic action project bringing the year's learning together.

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Second Grade

Second grade is a time of great growth. Children gain independence and confidence, read longer books, write more detailed pieces, work with larger numbers, and begin to reason more deeply about the world.

Language Arts

• In our work on foundational skills, we decode and encode words at increasingly complex levels. We cover digraphs, vowel patterns, doubled letters, compound words, plurals, and more spelling patterns. 
• Reading focuses on comprehension with chapter books: thinking about characters, making predictions, connections, and inferences.
• Writing continues across genres and increases in volume: a personal narrative, an opinion paragraph with strong reasons, an informational paragraph with pictures, poetry with similes and onomatopoeia, an imaginative narrative, a book review with an illustrated cover, and more! The year ends with a class magazine where students write in various genres before assembling their work into a magazine with a cover and image gallery.

Mathematics

• Number sense extends to three-digit numbers (place value through 1,000, and its standard, word, and expanded forms) and fluent addition and subtraction within 1,000 using place value and bar models.
• Money: naming and counting coins and bills, and solving word problems with making change. This is timed to coincide with the Social Studies Economics unit and our Winter Shoppe. 
• Foundations of multiplication and division: equal groups, arrays, and skip-counting, building the foundation for the fluency. 
• Measurement: length in inches, feet, centimeters, and meters; mass; time to the nearest five minutes; geometry (attributes of two-dimensional shapes, shared partitioning); and data (line plots, picture graphs, bar graphs).

Science

Three FOSS modules through direct investigation:

• Solids and Liquids: sorting and testing properties of matter, building, and distinguishing reversible (heating and cooling) from irreversible changes, with an engineering tower-building challenge. 
• Pebbles, Sand, and Silt: observing and sorting rocks and soil, understanding weathering and erosion, locating natural sources of water, and how people use earth materials as resources.
• Insects and Plants: raising mealworms, milkweed bugs, silkworms, and painted lady butterflies.  Growing flowering plants from seed, comparing complete and different metamorphosis, and studying pollination and seed dispersal.

Social Studies

Organized around the question of community, through three units:

• Unit 1, The Three Communities: suburban, rural, and urban- how people live and belong.
• Unit 2, Economics: needs and wants, goods and services, producers and consumers, culminating in the Winter Shoppe where students make crafts on a classroom assembly line and run a shop, practicing supply and demand and counting coins to make change.
• Unit 3,  The Seven Continents: researching each continent through books and multimedia, representing their learning, and ending with each student making a tie-dyed continent T-shirt to be worn by the whole class on Earth Day.

 

 

Third Grade

Third grade marks the shift from learning to read to reading to learn. It is a year of growing independence and developing stamina. Students engage in deeper reading, more extended writing, and the transition to multiplication, division, and fractions.

Language Arts

• Spelling, grammar, and handwriting work are undertaken daily through Sadlier Grammar and Zaner-Bloser Handwriting programs 
• Reading moves students into longer, more complex chapter books. We begin by getting to know one another and the routines of Reader's Notebooks with Poppy. Then we dive into realistic fiction and conflict resolution through War With Grandpa and differentiated Book Clubs (Jake Drake, Beezus and Ramona). We read folktales and legends from around the world and students create a stop-motion video version of a story.
• Writing spans a personal narrative, a research-driven I Am From" poem, an informational research paper on a specific Indigenous group (connected to Social Studies), and a persuasive piece encouraging readers to take action on sustainability.
• The Coyote play involves costuming, staging, and performing a play to parents and younger students. 

Mathematics

• Number sense extends to numbers within 10,000 (adding, subtracting, rounding to the nearest ten and hundred).
• Multiplication and division moves from facts through 10 to facts through 12, with fluency, patterns, and multiplication of multi-digit numbers.
• Fractions build understanding of fractions as numbers- part of a whole, part of a set, equivalent fractions, and comparing.
• Measurement and membership includes standard metric units of mass and liquid volume, time, area and perimeter. 

Science

Three modules through the FOSS Pathways program:

• Forces and Motion: investigating magnetism and gravity, balanced and unbalanced forces and developing an evidence-based model of magnetic fields. This work culminates in a Race Car Derby. 
• Water and Climate: investigating how water interacts with different materials and slope, gathering and graphing schoolyard observations and world climate data, and comparing climates across regions.
• Structures of Life:  growing seeds, observing the bean plant life cycle in hydroponic containers, and constructing explanations for how environment affects plant characteristics.
• Throughout the three modules, students keep science notebooks, recording observations, data, and reflections like working scientists and planning and carrying out real investigations.

Social Studies

Framed by the year's essential question: "How do geography and human societies mutually shape one another?"

• Unit 1, Community and Culture: we consider our individual and group identities and write an "I Am From" poem.
• Unit 2, Landforms and the Americas: we work on world geography, the regions of the US, and all 50 states.
• Unit 3, How Where We Live Affects How We Live. Students write a three-paragraph research essay on how a community's geography shapes its way of life, food, trade, and work.
• Unit 4, Indigenous Cultures Across the Americas. Students research an indigenous group in some depth, and present their findings through models and posters. 
• Unit 5, When Worlds Meet. We study the impact of European exploration and colonization on Indigenous Peoples.