Family and Community Guide for 1st Grade

Working Together: To support families, communities, and teachers in realizing the goals of the Colorado Academic Standards (CAS), this guide provides an overview of the learning expectations for 1st Grade. This guide offers some learning experiences students may engage in at school that may also be supported at home.

Why Standards? Created by Coloradans for Colorado students, the Colorado Academic Standards provide a grade-by-grade road map to help ensure students are successful in college, careers, and life. The standards aim to improve what students learn and how they learn in 12 content areas while emphasizing critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, collaboration, and communication as essential skills for life in the 21st century.

See all of the Family and Community Guides here.

• Comprehensive Health
• Computer Science
• Dance
• Drama and Theatre Arts

• Mathematics
• Music
• Physical Education
• Reading, Writing, and Communicating

• Science
• Social Studies
• Visual Art
• World Languages

Comprehensive Health (adopted 2018)

The comprehensive health standards in the elementary years focus on developing individual skills to enhance physical, emotional, and social wellness and using those individual skills in family, school, and community environments. In each grade, the standards ask students to investigate healthy eating and living habits, explore positive communication strategies, examine effective decision-making, and identify ways to ensure personal and community safety.

Expectations for 1st Grade Students:

• Physical and Personal Wellness: Establish how eating a variety of foods from the different food groups is vital for good health; demonstrate health behaviors to prevent injury or illness.
• Social and Emotional Wellness: Demonstrate how to express emotions in healthy ways; identify parents, guardians, and other trusted adults as resources for information about health.
• Prevention and Risk Management: Demonstrate strategies to avoid hazards in the home and community.

Throughout 1st Grade You May Find Students:

• Classifying healthy food options in each major food group; examining healthy foods and beverages.
• Identifying how the taste, color, smells, and textures of foods provide sensory experiences that add or take away from enjoying what we eat.
• Identifying ways to prevent germs.
• Classifying types of wounds and infections.
• Using effective listening and communication skills; practicing skills for cooperation and sharing with others; investigating problem-solving strategies.
• Identifying trusted adults in home, school, and community.
• Identifying potential hazards and appropriate responses.
• Investigating places where help might be found in times of emergency; demonstrating how to use 911 and other emergency numbers; discussing safety procedures for various emergency situations.
• Investigating internet safety.

Computer Science (adopted 2018)

Computer science may be taught at all levels preschool through high school, but the State of Colorado only has standards for computer science in high school.

Read the high school computer science family and community guide.

Dance (adopted 2022)

The dance standards in the preschool or elementary years focus on general dance knowledge and skills. In each grade, students learn and perform dances, discuss and create dances, describe and critique dances, and give feedback about dances. 

Drama and Theatre Arts (adopted 2022)

The Drama and Theatre Arts standards in the preschool and elementary years focus on general theatrical knowledge and skills. Students learn acting techniques, create and perform scenes and plays, read plays, and discuss what they like about theatre. 

Mathematics (adopted 2018)

The mathematics standards in the elementary years focus on number and operations. Ideas from measurement and geometry help students learn about numbers and quantities. In each grade, students make sense of problems, explain their thinking, and describe their world with mathematics.

Expectations for 1st Grade Students:

• Number and Quantity: Fluently (consistently) add and subtract within 10; mentally add or subtract 10 to any number; break apart numbers into groups of tens and ones.
• Algebra and Functions: Solve a variety of addition and subtraction word problems; use equations to show the relationship of numbers in a world problem (9 = ? + 4).
• Data, Statistics, and Probability: Measure and compare the length of objects; tell time to the nearest hour and half-hour.
• Geometry: Join and break apart shapes to create new shapes; find halves and fourths of shapes.

Throughout 1st Grade You May Find Students:

• Exploring the meaning of the equal sign (Does 9 + 7 = 9 + 1 + 6?).
• Using connections between addition and subtraction to solve problems (if 5 + 7 = 12 then what is 12 – ? = 5).
• Mentally solving problems like 43 + 10 and 56 - 10.
• Describing a number like 37 as three tens and seven ones.
• Explaining the difference between seven, seventeen, and seventy.
• Solving addition and subtraction involving lengths.

Music (adopted 2022)

The music standards in the preschool and elementary years focus on general music knowledge and skills. In each grade, students perform a variety of music styles, identify and write music notation, practice musical creativity, and describe their own musical preferences.

Physical Education (adopted 2018)

The physical education standards in the elementary years focus on enhancing movement concepts and skills, understanding basic health-related components and skill-related components of fitness and how it relates to personal fitness, demonstrating respect, and the ability to follow directions. In each grade, students demonstrate various movement concepts; assess personal behaviors; connect fitness development to body systems; demonstrate respect for self, others, and various physical activity environments; and utilize safety procedures during physical activities.

Expectations for 1st Grade Students:

• Movement Competence and Understanding: Demonstrate basic locomotor skills (e.g., walking, running, sliding) and non-locomotor skills (e.g., twisting, bending, stretching, turning), and rhythmic and cross-lateral movements; demonstrate fundamental manipulative skills (e.g., jumping rope, throwing, catching, kicking); establish a beginning movement vocabulary.
• Physical and Personal Wellness: Identify the body’s normal reactions to moderate and vigorous physical activity.
• Social and Emotional Wellness: Work independently and with others to complete work; follow the rules of an activity.
• Prevention and Risk Management: Develop movement control for safe participation in games and physical activities.

Throughout 1st Grade You May Find Students:

• Performing a simple dance step in keeping with a specific tempo.
• Manipulating objects such as jump ropes, scarves, hoops, and balls.
• Throwing an object with an overhand or underhand motion while stepping forward in opposition.
• Kicking a stationary object using a simple kicking pattern.
• Distinguishing between a jog and a run, a hop and a jump, and a gallop and a slide.
• Identifying physical activities that require strong muscles.
• Inviting others to use equipment before repeating a turn.
• Developing rules for an activity with teacher assistance and participating in the activity while following the rules.
• Recognizing appropriate safety practices in general space (e.g., throwing objects when appropriate, only throwing objects when others are not in the direct line of the throw).

Reading, Writing, and Communicating (adopted 2018)

The reading, writing, and communicating standards move from developing skills in reading, writing, and communicating to applying these literacy skills to more complex texts through the elementary years. Standards at each grade emphasize skills related to speaking and collaborating with others as students work with literature and informational readings and participate in individual and group research projects.

Expectations for 1st Grade Students:

• Oral Expression and Listening: Identify specific sounds in words and experiment with those sounds (changing ch- in chip to sh- to make ship, for example); expand their spoken vocabulary; demonstrate how words, gestures, and actions are used to give and receive information.
• Reading for All Purposes: Apply letter sounds (short and long vowels) and letter combinations (sh-, ch-, -tion) to decode words (sound out and pronounce); understand word structure (how words are put together) and word families (words that contain–ack: attack, snack, black, for example); fluently read (with appropriate speed, accuracy, and expression) and comprehend (understand) a variety of stories, informational writing (“how to” books, instructions), and opinion pieces (favorite movies, foods).
• Writing and Composition: Explore the writing process (plan, write, clean-up, share) to develop ideas for their own writing; use correct spelling and conventions (capital letters, punctuation) in their writing.
• Research Inquiry and Design: Use different resources to locate information and answer questions; ask questions and gather information as part of a research process.

Throughout 1st Grade You May Find Students:

• Applying phonics rules (sounds of letters) to decode (sound out and pronounce) one- and two-syllable words; reading with purpose, understanding, and fluency (the right speed, accuracy, and expression); recognizing punctuation and grammar in books and stories (end punctuation followed by capital letter); asking and answering questions about key ideas and details to understand stories and informational books; using text features (headings, captions, table of contents) to comprehend (understand) the reading.
• Working with fellow students to discuss different readings and topics; responding to the ideas of others by asking/answering questions; actively listening by making eye contact and demonstrating positive body posture.
• Comparing and contrasting the adventures of characters in stories; identifying similarities and differences between two texts on the same topic; explaining how illustrations and visuals work with the words in a book or story; identifying how an author supports ideas.
• Writing a story with interesting details; writing to explain a topic; writing to state an opinion about a topic and using supporting details; talking about their writing with others to improve writing; using correct grammar and mechanics (complete sentences, end punctuation, correct upper- and lower-case letters).

Science (adopted 2018)

Three-dimensional science standards in the elementary grades lay the foundation for students to work and think like scientists and engineers. We also see strong connections to skills students will use to be successful with reading, literacy, and mathematics. In elementary grades, we will explore disciplinary core ideas in physical, life, and Earth and space sciences via phenomena in the world around us. Learners in elementary grades develop and ask testable questions, collect, and analyze different types of evidence, and write and communicate our understanding. Mastery of these standards will result in young learners who have a deep understanding of how scientific knowledge can provide solutions to practical problems we see in our world.

Expectations for 1st Grade Students:

• Physical Science: Understand that sound can make matter vibrate and vibrating matter can make sound; objects can be seen if light is available; and people use different devices to communicate.
• Life Science: Explain that offspring have characteristics that are similar to but not exactly like their parents characteristics; understand that an organism is a living thing that has physical features that help it survive.
• Earth Science: Understand that patterns of the motion of the sun, moon, and stars in the sky can be observed, described, and predicted.

Throughout 1st Grade You May Find Students:

• Planning an investigation to provide evidence that vibrating materials make a sound.
• Making observations about how we see objects based on the amount of light present.
• Using tools to build a device that uses light or sound to communicate
• Developing an understanding of how plants and animals use their external parts help them survive and grow.
• Making observations and constructing explanations about how young plants and animals are like, but not exactly like, their parents.
• Observing that the sun and moon appear to rise in one part of the sky, move across the sky, and set in a different part of the sky.
• Making observations about the amount of light in the winter versus the summer.

Social Studies (adopted 2022)

The social studies standards in the elementary years begin with individuals and families and move from there to explorations of neighborhoods, communities, the state of Colorado, and the United States. In each grade, students investigate historical events, examine geographic features and resources, consider economic decision-making processes, and define civic roles and responsibilities.

Visual Arts (adopted 2022)

The Colorado Academic Standards in visual arts are organized by elements of the creative process taught in a cyclical, interconnected manner the way artists learn, connect, think, come up with ideas, experiment, plan, work, refine, share, and reflect in repetitive ways. 

World Languages (adopted 2018)

Instead of being organized by grade level, the world languages standards are organized into ranges that describe the progression of learning a student should experience as they grow from novice language learners to an advanced user.

Read the world languages family and community guide for elementary school here.