About our Class

Kathleen Matte
1st Grade
Email: kmatte@ourladyofthesacredheart.com

Welcome to first grade! Our first grade classroom is a loving and nurturing place for children to learn and grow. We work cooperatively in groups called learning clubs. These groups change each month so that each child works with every other child in the class throughout the year. These clubs foster friendships between all of our students. The children are taught to respect one another's opinion and to treat each other kindly. We truly are a classroom family.

Our day begins with religion. The children learn about church and attend mass every Friday. Our religion lessons in class are based on the children's workbooks. We learn about the bible with an emphasis on the gospel. We also learn about special people and holidays in the church. We learn and practice prayers as well.

The majority of our morning is spent on reading and language arts lessons. Reading is our greatest priority! Our reading series is Scott Foresman. Each week we read two stories in our hard cover readers. One story targets a particular phonics skill. The other focuses on comprehension skills, expanding vocabulary, and other varied language arts skills. Our reading series uses big books, audio tapes, leveled readers, vocabulary charts, workbooks, and take home readers to help the children learn each targeted phonics and comprehension skill. We also work on sight words, spelling, grammar and phonics throughout the morning.

Our afternoon begins with math. We use a hands-on approach with various math tools and manipulatives. Throughout the year we learn numbers to 100, skip counting, addition, subtraction, graphing, patterns, fractions, time, money, geometry, and measurement.

Our day ends with lessons in science and social studies. Our science series is divided into three components: Life Science (plants and animals living together), Earth Science (about our earth, weather and seasons), and Physical Science (investigating matter and energy). Lessons in social studies are integrated into particular reading units, or added as supplements to reading units. We will cover civics and citizenship, as well as US and world history.

The children also attend daily specials. We have gym twice weekly, art, Spanish, music and computer class once a week. We also have three computers in our classroom to reinforce lessons, one of which has internet access. First grade at OLSH is a great place to learn and grow!

 

 

 

 

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