English Language Arts Grade 1
Educational Links

Reading: Literature Standard 2

Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.

• A Journal for Corduroy: Responding to Literature
  This lesson from ReadWriteThink leads first-grade students to reflect on and respond to literature through journal writing. Students read books in the Corduroy series and interact with a stuffed bear to personalize their experiences. They also record their own adventures with Corduroy, share their stories with the class, and create a class book using the computer.
• A Trip to Wonderland
  This unit explores Lewis Carroll's adaptation for younger readers of his beloved classic, 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'. After sharing their concepts about Wonderland, students listen to the opening chapters of the story and view Sir John Tenniel's illustrations from the original edition. Using images of 'big' and 'small' from Alice's experiences, students develop these concepts in their own drawings. Students then compare Carroll's fantastic animals with creatures from other children's stories and use computers to craft images of their own fantasy creatures.
• Aesop and Ananse: Animal Fables and Trickster Tale
  In this lesson from EDSITEment, students will become familiar with fables and trickster tales from different cultural traditions. They will explore how folktales employ animals in different ways to portray human strengths and weaknesses and how this wisdom is passed down from one generation to the next. These lessons introduce students to the world of folklore and explore how folktales convey the perspectives of world cultures.
• All Together Now: Collaborations in Poetry Writing
  This set of 3 lesson plans from EDSITEment makes poetry exciting for students as they listen to, write, and recite poems that are sure to please. By the end of these lessons, students should be able to create lines of poetry in response to poems read aloud, identify musical elements of literary language, and recite short poems or excerpts.
• Cinquain Poems: A Quick-Writing Activity
  In this lesson from ReadWriteThink, students write simple cinquain poetry of their own as a follow-up to a subject they have been exploring in class. Cinquain (pronounced "cin-kain") is a five-line poetic form, using a wavelike syllable count of two-four-six-eight-two.
• Dr. Seuss's Sound Words: Phonics & Spelling Play
  Boom! Br-r-ring! Cluck! Moo!-Everywhere you turn, you're bound to find exciting sounds. Whether you visit online sites that play sounds or take a sound hike at school, a near-by park, or on a field trip, ask your students to notice the sounds they hear then write their own book, using sound words, based on Dr. Seuss's "Mr. Brown Can MOO! Can You?" By focusing on these sound words, this ReadWriteThink lesson helps students develop spelling strategies that help them move from phonemes, the sounds they make, to graphemes, the written representations of those sounds.
• Fairy Tales Around the World
  In this unit of six lessons, from EDSITEment, students will read and learn to understand fairy tales so that they can better comprehend the structures of literature as well as for the sake of the wonder, pleasure, and human understanding these stories can provide in their own right.
• Guess What's in the Bag
  This lesson, from ReadWriteThink, gives students opportunities to interact and play with language. Students will use their imagination to describe hidden objects, listen to clues, and tap prior knowledge while playing the game "What's in the Bag." This lesson challenges students to develop and use descriptive language when communicating. This lesson incorporates interactive student activities and links to a variety of web resources.
• Have Journal...Will Travel: Promoting Family Involvement in Literacy
  This lesson from ReadWriteThink is designed to engage families in shared literacy activities. The students take turns taking home a book bag that includes a stuffed toy, a book, art supplies, a topic to discuss with their families, and a journal to share their thoughts and ideas. Through the experience they build positive memories of literacy activities.
• Learning Vocabulary Down By the Bay
  Students will sing a song that contains 32 words from the Dolch word list; become familiar with concepts of print; recognize and read high-frequency vocabulary words; spell and write the vocabulary words.
• Let's Talk About Stories
  This lesson from ReadWriteThink develops students' reading comprehension and understanding through a variety of interpretive activities. Students become more aware of their personal reactions as they read, develop sensitivity to language, and come to value their own curiosity about a text.
• Silly Billy's World
  Lesson plans for 5 well-known children's read-aloud books on plants/seeds that encourage literature, writing and language skills from the common core.
• Teaching Short Vowel Discrimination With Dr. Seuss
  The study of common rimes, or word families, is vital to students' early reading and writing skills. Through the contrast of short vowel patterns, this ReadWriteThink lesson supports first- and second-grade students' use of analogy to apply their knowledge of vowel sounds in reading and spelling new words. The integration of Dr. Seuss rhymes creates an engaging study of onsets and rimes. Students will discover patterns in words, sort words based on their vowel patterns, and apply their knowledge in reading and writing activities.
• Text Talk: Julius, the Baby of the World
  This lesson from ReadWritethink helps young readers interact with and interpret text using "Julius, the Baby of the World" by Kevin Henkes. The text talk strategy provides students with open-ended questions, which allow them to interpret the language, plot, and characters of the story.
• Using a Predictable Text for High-Frequency Words
  In this lesson, from ReadWriteThink, students develop fluency as they participate in a choral reading of the predictable text. After reading the story, students construct sentences using the words found in the predictable text. Students then have the opportunity to write their own stories using the interactive Stapleless Book.
• Word Recognition Strategies Using Nursery Rhymes
  This lesson from ReadWriteThink uses familiar nursery rhymes to draw attention to words that end with the same letters. Kindergarten and first-grade students are encouraged to create word family lists and compare them to words in different word families.

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http://www.uen.org - in partnership with Utah State Board of Education (USBE) and Utah System of Higher Education (USHE).  Send questions or comments to USBE Specialist - Sara  Wiebke and see the Language Arts - Elementary website. For general questions about Utah's Core Standards contact the Director - Jennifer  Throndsen.

These materials have been produced by and for the teachers of the State of Utah. Copies of these materials may be freely reproduced for teacher and classroom use. When distributing these materials, credit should be given to Utah State Board of Education. These materials may not be published, in whole or part, or in any other format, without the written permission of the Utah State Board of Education, 250 East 500 South, PO Box 144200, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114-4200.