First Grade

Essential Content

Two students engaged in a conversation with each other

Guiding Question: Are All Students Working With Content Aligned to the Appropriate Standards for Their Subject and Grade?

Ensure that all students are working with content aligned to the appropriate standards for their subject area and grade. Each content area listed includes a summary of the priority standards that students should be able to demonstrate proficiency in by the end of first grade. These prioritized items are considered foundational understandings that students will build upon in second grade and beyond.

These items are derived from the first-grade standards found within the - Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, California History and Social Studies Framework, and ELD Framework.

Priority Standards

What students will know, what students will do, and what thinking skills students will develop to apply and transfer understandings that endure within the discipline, leverage deeper understandings, and/or support readiness for success at the next grade level. These are the standards that should anchor and drive instruction.

 

Signature Elements

The practices, strategies, and routines at the core of teaching and learning within the content area/discipline.

First Grade Standards

This is the list of first-grade standards found on the SFUSD report card. They represent understandings that endure within the discipline, leverage deeper understandings within the content area, and/or support readiness for success at the next grade level.

Arts
  • Engages and develops the ability to express self with increasing creativity, complexity, and depth through 2D and 3D
    visual art
  • Engages and develops the ability to express self through creative movement and creative expression
  • Engages and develops the ability to create music through instruments, voice, or with objects
Digital Learning
  • Demonstrates increased independence with the different purposes of using technology
  • Locates the different parts of a computer including specific letters on the keyboard 
  • Makes choices about what digital learning resources to use based on audience and purpose
  • Shares and listens to the ideas of others digitally  
English Language Arts
  • Retells stories and names the topic of informational texts including important details
  • Compares and contrasts stories and informational texts on the same topic
  • Writes narratives about events in the correct order; includes details, and provides a sense of closure
  • Writes informative/explanatory pieces; names the topic, supplies some facts, and provides a sense of closure
  • Writes opinion pieces; states an opinion, supplies a supporting reason, and provides a sense of closure
  • Participates in discussions, asks and answers questions about topics and texts
  • Uses grade-level phonics and word-solving strategies to read unknown words in a text
  • Uses grade-level writing conventions for capitalization, punctuation, and spelling
  • Reads at grade level expectations 
English Language Development
  • Contributes to discussions in all settings by taking turns and asking and answering questions
  • Expresses an opinion to persuade and negotiate using basic learned phrases in conversations in all settings
  • Listens actively to read-alouds, presentations, and discussions by asking and answering detailed questions, restating
    and paraphrasing
  • Describes ideas, experiences, and key details from a variety of grade-level texts and multimedia
  • Understands and applies how writers and speakers use language
  • Knows and applies basic literacy skills in reading and writing
Health
  • Describes how humans grow and names major body parts
  • Explains and applies ways to stay healthy (oral & personal hygiene practices; sun safety; prevention of disease & germ transmission - hand washing, covering coughs & sneezes)
  • Identifies and explains safe and unsafe practices (identifying labels on products; distinguishing safe & unsafe touches and using refusal skills; explaining the use of seat belt & sitting in the back seat of a vehicle; defining conflict resolution techniques)
History/Social Studies
  • Understands what laws are and the role of a citizen/being a member of a community
  • Recognizes the features of a map including directions, bodies of water, and land masses
  • Identifies and understands symbols, icons, and traditions of the U.S.
  • Compares and contrasts life in different times and places around the world
  • Understands the concept of exchange and use of money
Mathematics
  • Reasons about problems, explains thinking, and considers thinking of others
  • Represents and solves addition and subtraction situations with unknowns in all positions, in various ways
  • Adds and subtracts within 20 using various strategies, fluency to 10
  • Works with addition and subtraction equations to solve for unknowns and determines if equations are true or false
  • Counts, reads, writes, and represents objects to 120
  • Composes, decomposes, and compares two-digit numbers by tens and ones
  • Adds within 100 using the understanding of tens and ones in various ways; mentally finds 10 more or 10 less than a
    two-digit number
  • Orders and compares objects using a third object; measures lengths using repeating units
    Tells and writes time to the hour and half-hour
  • Uses tables, picture graphs, and bar graphs to show and understand data
  • Uses the attribute understanding of 2D and 3D shapes to build, draw, compose and decompose shapes
Physical Education
  • Performs a variety of locomotor skills to tempos, rhythms, and signals
  • Jumps a swinging rope held by others
    Catches a self-tossed ball
  • Explains the differences between a variety of locomotor skills (walking/running, jumping/hopping,
    skipping/galloping)
  • Identifies physical activities that cause the heart to beat faster
Science
  • Asks questions based on observations to find more information about the natural and human-made world
  • Participates in class investigations; makes observations and collects data that can be used to answer a question or
    make comparisons
  • Records and shares scientific observations, thoughts, and ideas in the form of pictures, drawings, and/or writing
  • Designs or builds a device that solves a specific problem
Social-Emotional Development
  • Works/plays collaboratively with others
  • Regulates emotions and works with focus
  • Approaches challenges as learning opportunities
  • Accomplishes personal and academic goals
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Essential Content CORE Rubric Teaching Practices

Design Lessons that Advance Students to Grade-Level Standards and/or IEP Goals
  • Demonstrate knowledge of subject matter and academic content standards.
  • Address rigor and depth of standards.
  • Select appropriately demanding instructional materials, tasks, texts for grade/course and time in the school year based on guidance in standards, students’ language development, and/or students’ IEP goals (e.g. Lexile level and complexity of text).
  • Use developmentally appropriate practices.
  • Use subject-appropriate pedagogical practices, including those found in SFUSD curricula (Reader’s Workshop, Writer’s Workshop, Math Signature Strategies, ELD practices).
  • Explicitly address how English works through complex texts (i.e. text level, sentence level, phrase level, word level)
  • Develop and provide accommodations and modifications as needed to ensure all students are able to attain learning goals.
  • Address students’ IEP goals and other specific learning needs in developing learning goals and preparing lessons.
  • Design single lessons and sequences of lessons.
    • Develop a vision for student success and standards-aligned, long- and short-term goals that are ambitious, measurable, and appropriate for all students.
    • Develop and/or uses a long-term, sequential plan that leads to mastery of the most important content for the grade or course.
    • Develop and clearly communicate a well-framed, standards-aligned, and appropriately rigorous instructional objective(s) and language objective(s) to describe the goal(s) of the lesson.
    • Develop and/or use daily lesson activities that are well-sequenced and move students toward mastery of grade-level standards.
    • Develop and/or use appropriately demanding instructional materials, such as texts, questions, problems, exercises, and assessments.
  • Plan differentiated instruction considering students’ individual learning needs and levels of readiness, ensuring content is accessible to all students.
  • Anticipate common student misunderstandings given the content and ensure strategies are in place to overcome those misunderstandings.
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Teaches Lesson Content Accurately and Coherently
  • Explain and model accurate content, practices, and strategies, and all content necessary for students to achieve the learning goal(s).
  • Use explanations of content that are clear, coherent, and support student understanding of content.
  • Provide opportunities for engagement and identity exploration through a variety of creative, technological, and artistic forms and disciplines.
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This page was last updated on August 29, 2023