1st Grade

Teachers
Mrs. Hoback

Mrs. Steffan

Mrs. Morgan

Mrs. Johnston

Email

choback@salem.k12.va.us

ssteffan@salem.k12.va.us

emorgan@salem.k12.va.us

Welcome to First Grade at G.W. Carver!  First grade is such an exciting time to watch students make progress and reach goals in so many areas. 

Each of our four classrooms is an inviting place for students to take risks and develop a love of learning!  Our curriculum is based on, but not limited to, the Virginia Standards of Learning.  Each student is unique and comes to first grade at different stages of readiness.  Therefore, we use a variety of teaching methods to reach each child at his or her level and help them celebrate individual achievements.

In language arts, students spend much of their time reading texts on their instructional reading level and meeting with the teachers in small groups to develop decoding, phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency skills.  We use authentic literature and interactive read alouds to learn comprehension skills, vocabulary, grammar, and model our writing topics in a whole group setting.  Creative and narrative writing on a variety of topics is both encouraged and explicitly taught through the use of shared writing techniques, modeling, and conferencing.  Students learn phonetic principles and develop spelling skills through sorting, reading, and completing various tasks with words on their developmental level. Sight words are an important part of our reading curriculum as well! These are words that make up a large percentage of any common text and often cannot be sounded out or contain phonics principles that students may not yet be familiar with, so recognizing them automatically improves accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. Students will also spend time with an online learning program called Lexia Core 5 to individualize language arts learning.

In math, students spend a great deal of time developing number sense.  First graders will learn addition and subtraction strategies, place value concepts, geometry, telling time to the hour and half hour, skip counting, identifying and counting coins, fractions, measurement, estimation, graphing, probability, and problem solving.  Math looks different each day and is made up of both whole group and small group components to meet the needs of each child.  Students will also use an online learning program called ST Math to individualize their math instruction.

Science and social studies are generally taught on alternating weeks.  Many exciting topics will be explored including famous Virginians, geography, Virginia symbols and traditions, economics, life processes of plants and animals, the relationship between the sun and the earth, conservation of natural resources, matter, force and motion, and many more!

Our students have the opportunity to work with specialist teachers each day in guidance, P.E., library, music, and art on an 8 day rotation. 

Above all, we value helping your child feel safe, successful and excited about learning! Positive behavior will be modeled, discussed, and explicitly taught.  Our school wide goals are:

We are kind.

We are honest.

We always do our best.

We look forward to working with our students and families this year and will keep you informed about what is going on in the classroom. Thank you for your support at home to help your child be successful! It’s going to be a fun year.



Mrs. Steffan, Mrs. Morgan and Mrs. Hoback