Pleasant Valley

First Grade Team Units

 

September	Animals
Mammals	Insects
Fish	Birds

December	Holidays
January	Mapping Skills
	Solar Unit
February/March	Economics
April/May	Plants

1st Grade Philosophy

• We believe that each child is a unique individual. Each child learns differently at his or her own pace. Therefore, we believe that our program needs to provide for a wide range of developmental interests and abilities. At the same time, we will teach and encourage respect for each child in order to foster an atmosphere of acceptance.
• We believe that our curriculum should provide for all areas of a child's development with the integration of all subject matters. These areas of development include physical, cognitive, social and emotional.
• We believe that creativity is an important factor enabling children to be successful at their own levels, and we will foster and encourage this creativity.
• We believe that it is our job to prepare a learning environment in which the children interact with adults, other children and through the exploration of a wide variety of materials, activities and equipment.
• We believe the learning materials and activities should be concrete, real, and relevant to the children and to what they experience within their own communities.
• We believe that we need to provide children with the opportunity to develop responsibility for their own actions by giving them the chance to make choices about the activities they will complete during the day as well as having to complete tasks that we have assigned for them to do.
• We believe that part of each day needs to be spent in learning centers to foster the development of social, mathematical, and problem solving skills.
• We believe that we must provide a nurturing environment which fosters risk taking and allows for mistakes in a non threatening manner.
• We believe that we must facilitate the development of self-control by guiding the children with clear, consistent, fair limits for classroom behavior and by guiding them to resolve conflicts and problems independently.