Clair Hoey's List: Common Core - First Grade

This lesson focuses on a “learn by doing” series of reading and writing activities designed to teach research strategies. The activity uses KWL charts and interactive writing as key components of organizing information. As a class, students list what they know about insects, prompted by examining pictures in an insect book. Students them pose questions they have about insects, again using picture books as a visual prompt. Students then search for answers to the questions they have posed, using Websites, read-alouds, and easy readers. Periodic reviews of gathered information become the backdrop to ongoing inquiry, discussion, reporting, and confirming information. The lesson culminates with the publishing of a collaborative question and answer book which reports on information about the chosen topic, with each student contributing one page to the book.

As a little boy searches for his cat in Eric Carle's Have You Seen My Cat? he repeatedly asks the titular question only to have to answer "This is not my cat!" when he’s met with tigers, lions, and other felines that clearly aren't the boy's cat. This lesson uses Carle's predictable text and a repetitive format to help students learn high-frequency words. Students develop fluency as they participate in a choral reading of the predictable text. After reading the story, students construct sentences using the words found in the predictable text. At the conclusion of the lesson, students have the opportunity to write and illustrate their own stories by creating a stapleless book.

Boom! Br-r-ring! Cluck! Moo!—Everywhere you turn, you are bound to find exciting sounds. Students begin exploring these sounds through a read-aloud of Dr. Seuss's Mr. Brown Can MOO! Can You? They then play with the sounds in their classroom, creating words that capture what they hear. Next, they explore sounds from selected Websites and record what they hear on a chart, using spelling strategies to help them. Finally, students create original cinquain poems using sound words.

This lesson describes how to use selected fiction and nonfiction literature and careful questioning techniques to help students identify factual information about animals. Children first identify possible factual information from works of fiction which are read aloud, then they listen to read-alouds of nonfiction texts to identify and confirm factual information. This information is then recorded on charts and graphic organizers. Finally, students use the Internet to gather additional information about the animal and then share their findings with the class. The lesson can be used as presented to find information about ants or can be easily adapted to focus on any animal of interest to students. Resources are included for ants, black bears, fish, frogs and toads, penguins, and polar bears.

This lesson focuses on the strategy of "wonder" statements, asking students to stop, think, and write about what may be happening in the text as they read a story. This strategy helps students think about what they are reading and helps increase reading comprehension.

First the teacher reads a Leo Lionni book aloud, pausing periodically to wonder what might happen next in the story and writing these wonder statements on the board. Next, the teacher reads another Lionni book aloud, again pausing periodically for students to record their own wonder statements on a handout. Finally, students work in small groups to read another Lionni book, recording wonder statements in a stapleless book that they later share with the class. This lesson can also be used during guided reading centers, while the rest of the class is participating in other Leo Lionni activities, such as those suggested in the Extensions section.

After exploring a variety of circle plot story books, students identify, explore and apply the elements of circle plot structures to their own stories. "Reading like writers," students will explore the ways that stories are structured; then, "writing like writers," students explore organizational structures in their own writing. Students first examine the attributes of circular shapes and brainstorm things with a circular pattern, such as seasons. After exploring how Cynthia Rylant’s Long Night Moon might be a circular story, students listen to a circle story read aloud. Students discuss why the story is called a circular story and make connections to Rylant's book. They then read several more examples and, using circle plot diagrams as their tools, students write their own circular plot stories. Finally, students share their work with peers, revise their work using a checklist for self-evaluation, and compare their self-evaluation to teacher assessment.

Learning to write nonfiction text is an important literacy skill. This lesson guides students in writing descriptions of 100th day bottles they create at home. They will write clues about their bottles for a guessing game, practice descriptive writing, and create a class book. Several pieces of literature appropriate for use with this lesson are suggested.

Focus students attention on alliteration, or repeated beginning word sounds, in this unit which explores an ocean theme. Students begin by reading the book Look Who Lives in the Ocean, by Allen Baker, and then sharing what they notice about the words in the story. Then they work as a class to craft a definition of alliteration and record the definition on chart paper. Students continue to expand their knowledge of alliteration by finding examples in classroom books and their own writing and then adding these examples to a class list. Next, they practice revising sentences to include alliteration and then share their revisions with the class. Finally, students compose their own class book to explore the technique in their own writing. The lesson is a natural extension after alphabet books have been introduced, when writing a class book, or to supplement independent writing projects.

This games provides practice in phonological awareness with beginning sounds.

From PBS the Quiet Machine develops a student phonological awareness skills of beginning sounds.

This website contains a "Dolch Kit" with many practice activities for students to use as they learn the Dolch, 220 high frequency words

This online activity is designed for beginning and struggling readers to help them recognize word patterns and learn about onset and rime. Students are first asked to select a vowel, and are then presented with a series of words to sort into short-vowel w

PBS LearningMedia™ is the go-to destination for instant access to tens of thousands of classroom-ready, digital resources including videos, games, audio clips, photos, lesson plans, and more! You can search, save, and share with ease. Best of all, PBS LearningMedia is free for educators.

Although this site does have items for sale, it also has free little books, poetry and links to other good resources.

Six lesson that support narrative writing.

To add to students’ growing ways of looking at and listening to words, students will “mine” texts for favorite words from familiar children's literature. Working together, students select words and phrases to create a collective class poem, that they will then turn into a performance. This lesson helps students recast the text they are reading in a different genre, which in turn, makes students more insightful readers and helps develop creativity in thinking and writing.

Students are likely to know many more words than they use in their writing. This lesson is designed to help students better use their vocabulary by teaching (or reviewing) what verbs are and to then help them access verbs they already know and use them in sentences. Students work together to brainstorm and create lists of verbs for each of the letters of the alphabet. Then, choosing one verb for each letter, they create pages for an Action Alphabet book. Each page includes an illustration and a sentence using the verb in context. The project can be adapted according to age level and language ability. Students in kindergarten may work together on a class book, while older students may work in small groups or individually. Similarly, the complexity of the example sentences will vary depending on students' writing levels.

In this classroom project, students and the teacher produce a class book through a group-writing activity, focusing on a basic before-during-after sequence of events. After discussing what they know about pumpkins, the class carves a jack-o-lantern, pausing at each step to chart their observations on before, during, and after charts. The class then uses their sentences from the chart to write the sequence of events for carving the pumpkin. Finally, the class publishes their work, using one of several publishing options. Though this lesson focuses on the carving of the class jack-o-lantern, the lesson plan could be customized for explorations of other items in the classroom. For instance, as part of a foods unit, you might explore a variety of fruits. For a field trip, you might write about the events before, during, and after your trip.

This lesson describes small-group, guided writing lessons, which are taught in four steps for students who are in need of extra support. Students learn how to communicate information of interest, stimulated by discussion of Nicola Davies' Bat Loves the Night and several websites. Students learn three sets of strategies for writing: (1) engaging in writing with fluent, sustained attention, (2) writing informative titles, and (3) adding enough information to communicate clearly.

Receiving mail is exciting, especially when it is delivered to school! In this activity, students write to friends and family asking them to send postcards. This activity provides motivation for writing and reading and provides a wonderful opportunity to learn about maps as students discover where their family members and friends live. Students first read and discuss a book with correspondence as the focus. Judith Caseley's Dear Annie is used in the lesson and a list of other books is included. Next, students arrange to have penpals by writing to family members and friends, asking them to send back postcards of the places where they live. Once letters are mailed, students share the postcards they receive with the class as they arrive. Graphs can be constructed to record how many towns, states and countries the postcards come from. In addition, students can research the places where the postcards came from.