Grade 1 Reading

Readers Build Good Habits

Unit Sketch

This unit allows students to grow familiar with Reader's Workshop routines for independent and partner reading.

Enduring Understandings

Students will understand that...

  • Readers check their understanding as they read.

  • Readers read with a purpose.

  • Readers use strategies to figure out tricky words.

  • There are different ways to read books (words and pictures).

  • Readers talk about books they read.

Skills

Students will be able to...

  • Differentiate between "just right" and '"just because" (interest) books from the book baskets

  • Read independently for at least 10 minutes

  • Use pictures and/or words to construct meaning

  • Decode regularly spelled one syllable CVC words

  • Share their book with their reading partners

Tackling Trouble

Unit Sketch

In this unit, students will learn how to use decoding strategies independently to become more successful and confident readers. Students will become familiar with what it looks like to be a good reading partner and how to interact with one another.

Enduring Understandings

Students will understand that...

  • Readers think about their books before reading.

  • Readers use Decoding Strategies to read books.

  • Reading Partners help each other.

  • Readers reread to become more fluent.

Skills

Students will be able to...

  • Recognize the first word of a sentence is capitalized.

  • Recognize a sentence ends with punctuation.

  • Distinguish long from short sounds in a single syllable word.

  • Blend sounds including consonant blends to produce single syllable words

  • Segment single syllable words into their phonemes.

  • Decode regularly spelled one syllable words.

  • Read grade level appropriate text with purpose and understanding

  • Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression

  • Use a variety of reading strategies to ensure accuracy and understanding

  • Participate in meaningful conversations with parters.

  • Follow procedures and guidelines when working with partners

Being Our Own Teacher

Unit Sketch

This unit focuses on using reading strategies to become better readers: predicting, visualizing, asking questions, making connections, and retelling.

Enduring Understandings

Students will understand that...

  • Learning various reading strategies helps readers better understand text.

Skills

Students will be able to...

  • Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

  • Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 1 topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.

  • Ask questions to clear up any confusion about the topics and texts under discussion.

  • Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.

  • Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.

  • Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.

  • Compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in stories.

Readers Learn About the World

Unit Sketch

This unit is linked to our Writer's Workshop unit and Science unit. Students read to learn key content information.

Enduring Understandings

Students will understand that...

  • Readers read non-fiction texts to gain information about a topic

Skills

Students will be able to...

  • Ask and answer questions about a topic

  • Identify and explain text features

Readers Meet the Characters

Unit Sketch

This unit focuses readers attention on their getting to know the characters, looking closer at their traits and their behaviors. We begin the unit by looking at a character as a class, studying as a whole group and working together and with partners to discuss what we notice about the character. Students will examine both external and internal character traits and use evidence from the text, i.e. words and actions, to support their statements/opinion about the character.

Enduring Understandings

Students will understand that...

  • Authors add details (actions & adjectives) to their writing to bring their characters to life.

  • Character traits can be inferred by observing by what their character says, does and what the other characters say about them.

  • External traits are identified through illustrations and what the author writes.

Skills

Students will be able to...

  • Identify the main events (important things) that happen in a story.

  • Describe the external and internal character traits.

  • Retell a story they have read independently in sequence.

Reading Across the Genres

Unit Sketch

In this unit, the students will have the choice of reading books from various genres: Informational, Poetry, Fiction, Realistic Fiction, etc.

Enduring Understandings

Students will understand that...

  • Authors write books using different styles and approaches.

Skills

Students will be able to...

  • Identify the main topic and retell key details of a text

  • Distinguish between Nonfiction, Fiction and Poetry

  • Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression

  • Identify the reasons an author gives to support points in a text

  • Read poetry

Dramatizing Characters

Unit Sketch

In this unit, students have the opportunity to practice and build their oral reading fluency and expression. They will be developing their inferencing skills in order to convey how the characters they are portraying think and feel. Each week, students will have the opportunity to read short plays (based on well-known fairy tales and other familiar stories) independently and with a group of peers. They will work collaboratively to improve their fluency and expression in order to perform in front of their peers. Students will give and receive feedback after performances. At the end of the unit, students will have the opportunity to perform their favorite play for a wider audience.

Enduring Understandings

Students will understand that...

  • Readers build fluency and expression leads to deeper understanding of the text, author's purpose, and character traits.

  • Authors provide clues to enable readers to make inferences.

  • Authors include details to allow readers to understand how characters think and feel.

Skills

Students will be able to...

  • Identify who is telling the story at various points in a text

  • With prompting and support, read prose and poetry of appropriate complexity for grade 1

  • Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding

  • Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression

  • Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary