Welcome to First Grade at Immaculata Catholic School! Mrs. Meredith Canning and Mrs. Tina Okpych are the First Grade teacher and teacher assistant. Mrs. Canning’s email at Immaculata School is mcanning@immac.org. Please feel free to call or email with any questions you may have.

First Grade has had a wonderful school year during 2009/2010. We have accomplished much and will continue to do so as the year progresses. Here are some examples of what we do:

Religion: First Grade continues to teach students using the Sadlier text series. Units consist of learning about our Catholic faith through being a member of a church family. Students learn about Jesus’ love for us as well as specifics like the Seven Sacraments and early preparation for First Holy Communion in Second Grade.

Saxon Math: the Saxon Math program consists of a Morning Meeting: calendar skills, completing patterns, oral reading, weather, graphing, time, money, place value, tallying, problem solving and mental computation. We do daily fact practice activities as well as fact homework and the new concept of the day. Examples of concepts taught in this program are: telling time to the hour and half hour, money, column addition with and without regrouping and simple geometry. The program contains manipulatives and ample opportunity to practice skills during guided center time.

Saxon Phonics: the Saxon Phonics Program in First Grade continues to build upon what the students began in Kindergarten. Learning to read and spell are integral parts to this program. One way that this is accomplished is by formal handwriting instruction. Another part of the program is by intense, systematic phonetic instruction. Learning to read comes easier to students when taught through phonics and building upon skills already learned. Through this process of incremental development and review, your child can experience daily success. First Grade uses the Basel reading series Macmillan/McGraw-Hill. We have started the AR (Accelerated Reading) Program on our classroom computers and weekly reading logs at home.

Social Studies: the First Grade Curriculum for Social Studies consists of learning about citizenship, communities and map skills. We integrated a reading unit on Flat Stanley, by Jeff Brown, where we incorporated map skills as well as beginning letter writing. We read many different nonfiction books at grade appropriate levels that apply to current instruction.

Science: First Grade uses the Foss Program. Our units consist of hands on activities involving rocks and soil; the investigation of matter (solid, liquid and gas); magnets and weather.