English Language Arts

About this course

First grade is where sounding out turns into reading. The phonics strand moves from short vowels and CVC review through consonant blends (bl, cl, fl, br, cr, dr, st, sl, tr, gr), the four digraphs (ch, sh, th, wh), and the silent-e rule for a_e, i_e, and o_e words, finishing with whole sentences built from those patterns. Alongside it, vocabulary work covers word families, compound words, synonyms, antonyms, context clues, and a set of Bible words such as covenant, blessed, and worship. Grammar starts from zero: what a sentence is, nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, capital letters, end marks, statements, questions, exclamations, proper nouns, and plurals. Comprehension is taught as named strategies your student can actually use, one per lesson, including main idea, sequencing, cause and effect, predicting, visualizing, retelling, author's purpose, and telling fiction from nonfiction. There is also a literature unit on fables, folktales, Bible narrative, and the poetry of Psalms and Proverbs, a handwriting-and-composition unit that runs from pencil grip to thank-you notes and lists, a beginner research unit ending in short animal, plant, weather, and Bible-person reports, and a full unit on speaking and listening politely.

The course is 204 lessons across 15 units. Fourteen of those units hold 12 lessons each and run about 40 minutes; the fifteenth is a 36-week spelling sequence of shorter lessons. A typical lesson is a scripted page you read with your student: an opening prayer, a KJV verse, the new teaching with word lists and example sentences, two or three hands-on games such as word sorts, rhyme challenges, or an action parade for verbs, a short dictation, and a wrap-up. Pencil, paper, and an eraser are all that is needed. Every regular lesson ends with a ten-question multiple-choice quiz that grades itself. The weekly spelling lessons work differently and are worth knowing about: each is a set of eight sentences with a word missing, a button that speaks the word aloud, and a box where your student types the spelling from hearing it, so those need working audio on the computer or tablet. The spelling themes run in order from short-vowel words through blends, silent-e, vowel teams, r-controlled vowels, sight words, and everyday word sets.

Coming in, your student should already know letter sounds and be able to blend a simple three-letter word. Everything past that is taught here. One thing to plan around: six of the fifteen units are a second pass, and five of them (phonics, vocabulary, writing, literature, and research) repeat their earlier lessons word for word rather than advancing. That makes 60 of the 204 lessons review of material already covered. Many first graders benefit from hearing the phonics rules twice, but if your student has them solid the first time, you can move through that second pass quickly. The lessons are written to be read aloud by you, with lines like "Say to your child" and questions to ask, so this is a course to sit beside rather than assign.

What the course covers

• Consonant blends, digraphs, and the silent-e rule
• Word families, compound words, synonyms, and antonyms
• Comprehension strategies: main idea, sequencing, cause and effect
• Fiction and nonfiction, author's purpose, and context clues
• Sentence basics, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns
• Capitalization, end marks, and sentence types
• Handwriting, spacing, dictation, and short compositions
• Fables, folktales, Bible narrative, and biblical poetry
• Beginning research: asking questions, taking notes, short reports
• 36 weekly typed spelling quizzes with spoken words

What your student will be able to do

• Decode words with blends, digraphs, and silent e
• Read a short passage and state its main idea and sequence
• Identify nouns, verbs, and adjectives in a sentence
• Write a correctly capitalized and punctuated sentence from dictation
• Spell grade-level words from hearing them spoken
• Gather three facts on a topic and report them aloud or on paper

Scope and sequence

All 15 units of English Language Arts for Grade 1, in the order they are taught.

Every lesson, by title

All 204 lesson titles are listed here — nothing is withheld until you download. Open a unit to read its contents.

One whole lesson, exactly as it comes

This is a real lesson taken from the middle of the course — the teaching text, the practice, the homework, and the first three quiz questions with their answers. It is not a marketing excerpt.

What you will need

Drawn from the materials named across all 204 lessons of this course. Most families already own most of it.