First graders continue to learn by doing and adding a broader repertoire of skills across their academic disciplines. Learning and practicing fundamental concepts continue to be the bedrock of their learning; students receive thorough and deep instruction in math concepts, handwriting, vocabulary building, and reading skills. Lessons go well beyond the practice of those skills by creating avenues for students to demonstrate their understanding and expression of them. Whether it is writing and publishing their own book in language arts class or creating their own musical fantasy matching moods and images to a piece of music, teachers create lessons and projects where students explore content and create their own representation of it. First graders demonstrate confidence, creativity, and expression in their spring main-stage musical production. In science, students observe, collect, record, and analyze data through the studies of invertebrates, chemistry and forensic science.

The first grade math curriculum helps students develop the strategies needed to understand numbers in their world. Focusing on topics such as computational skills in addition and subtraction within 20, whole number relationships, and geometry, students engage math problems through hands-on manipulatives, games, and logic problems. Math becomes a means of explaining how the world works. While students are assessed through unit tests, they also complete projects and experiences that help math come alive for young students excited to see the world this way for the first time.

In the Lower School, the art curriculum enables students to gain confidence, knowledge, experience, and appreciation for a wide variety of art ideas and materials. Throughout their experiences in art class, students are introduced to a sequential program which emphasizes process while exposing them to the elements of art. Media covered include drawing, painting, ceramics, collage, sculpture, and printmaking. As students develop as artists, teachers emphasize the development of personal expression, imagination, curiosity, and careful observation. Students apply these concepts and techniques while making connections, problem solving, and developing self-confidence and their personal artistic voice.

First graders develop an appreciation for the role illustrations play in developing the story in picture books. They are introduced to Early Reader books and begin to learn basic library skills. The students continue to use iPads to support curricular goals and, continuing and building on the foundations from kindergarten, students work to refine their keyboarding awareness.

The lower school music program is devoted to instilling a joyful sense of music and music making in every child. The goal is to increase musical understanding through activities involving performing, listening, and creating. These activities include singing, playing rhythm instruments, playing xylophones, reading music, dancing/movement, dramatizing, and composing. After establishing an emotional connection with music performed and heard, these activities lead students to discover, explore, demonstrate comprehension of, and create something new using concepts related to the elements of music: rhythm, melody, harmony, form, expression. Highlights for first graders include: creating dance/pantomimes to match the structural and expressive qualities of listening selections as well as performing in a staged spring musical program.

In the Lower School, students are introduced to basic loco-motor skills and activities that develop hand-eye and hand-foot coordination, spatial awareness, teamwork, and sportsmanship. Each year builds on the skills, games, and experiences from the previous year. Going beyond the games and activities, teachers process the experiences with students individually and in groups, asking questions like, “Can a self-win also be a team win?” and “What does it mean to be a good sport?” In the lower grades, students learn the mental and physical foundations that will help them succeed in later experiences on and off the field of play.

Through hands-on activities, first graders continue to explore the world through the scientific process. Students develop their observational skills in a unit on invertebrates, noting lifecycles and physical characteristics. In the chemistry unit, students classify liquids based on certain characteristics and explore states and changes of matter. In the unit on forensic science, students arrive in class to discover a roped-off crime scene; someone has stolen a fictitious teddy bear and students must work together to solve the crime using a series of forensic tests and other clues. By immersing themselves in the experimental design process, students learn the content by experiencing the scientific process.

Through the use of thematic units, storytelling, movement, games, music and art, first grade students are immersed in the Spanish language and acquire a variety of vocabulary and expressions. As students learn greetings, how to state feelings, and understand classroom directions, they make puppets to stage conversations with classmates. Students continue to build their vocabulary and conversational abilities around topics such as colors and numbers, parts of the body, family members, household vocabulary, and clothing.