First grade is a very important year in your child's education -- a year when your child will learn to read well, especially with the support and encouragement at home.

By learning reading skills now it will provide the basic foundation and bring success throughout their years in school and after. First-graders also improve on writing and mathematics skills.

All first-graders will learn the following skills at HPPA. The following is a simple framework on our first grade experience.

Expectations

At the end of First Grade, your child should be able to:

• Read and write her/his name, address, and phone number
• Follow simple directions
• Read at least 25 books for entertainment or information and retell them in his/her own words.
• Match sounds with letters
• Read word families such as cat, rat, bat, hat, sat.
• Sound out words, such as boat, happy, pen, and frog
• Recognize and read words used often
• Figure out new words and pronunciation
• Recognize reading mistakes and apply strategies to correct them.
• Count by 1's, 2's, 5's, and 10's to at least 100.
• Add and subtract to 99
• Build number families to 18 (8+5=13, 13-5=8, etc.)
• Read math symbols such as <,>,=,+,-.
• Divide groups into equal parts
• Name and draw shapes such as circle, rectangle, square, and triangle
• Count pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters and exchange coin values (one nickel = 5 pennies)
• Read and use a calendar
• Write and tell the time to the half hour
• Measure length, height, area and capacity
• Conduct a survey
• Sort, count, and classify objects
• Measure in inches and centimeters
• Use math to understand and solve problems