Teaching is the easiest job in the world, isn’t it? And the younger the students, the easier it gets, right? Nearly anyone could be a first grade teacher!
All you have to do is show up for class, have fun with a bunch of six-year-olds, have some coffee, teach, sleep, and repeat until the time comes for a whole summer off! Sure, you also have to organize teacher conferences, take meticulous attendance, follow the curriculum, and make standardized lesson plans for each class. But with such an easy job—who are you to complain?
If your instinctive reaction to your predicament is to start scouring Pinterest for fresh ideas for your 1st grade lesson plans—don’t despair. We have a better solution for your woes and a whole host of tips on how and where to find top-quality teaching resources.
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No Patience for Browsing? Try These Lesson Plans for 1st Grade
Don’t have anything prepared for your upcoming class? Experiencing cold sweats and existential dread at the idea of standing in front of 1st graders and not knowing what to do?
Here’s a list of ready-made 1st grade lesson plans that will help you get back in control:
- Order and Write Numbers 0–5 | Digital Math Lesson
- Math Practice Simplified: Subtraction (Book D)—Developing Fluency With Basic Number Combinations for Subtraction
- Math Champs! Counting and Place Value
- Ordering Numbers
- 100 Little Language Lessons: Skill-Building Activities Featuring 600 Essential Vocabulary Words
- ABC Seek and Spell
- High Frequency Picture Words: Sentence Completion
- Four Square: Writing Method for Grades 1-3: A Unique Approach to Teaching Basic Writing Skills
- Building Bigger Words: Building Words With Prefixes and Suffixes
- Nouns Lesson Plan
- Grammar Grades 1–2
- Plants and Animals
- Hands-On STEAM—Life Science, Gr. 1–5
- Hands-On Physical Science: Matter and Materials, Gr. 1–5
- Seasons Lesson Plan
If you need more resources, read on and learn about the best place to find them.
Should You Use 1st Grade Lesson Plans From the Internet?
Why invent something that already exists? Many have already paved the way; you only need to walk the same line—work smarter, not harder.
If you look up first grade lesson plans, you’ll find dozens of websites offering free or paid resources. You can download a template for individual, daily, weekly, or monthly plans to make your work easier if you’re writing them on your own. Or you can get pre-made, ready-to-use lesson plans for 1st grade that you can use instantly.
Getting a lesson plan online can save you tons of time and energy you’d have to put into writing one on your own. The problem is that lots of plans out there are of shoddy quality. You’ll have to sift through them to see which one works best for you, and that alone will take time.
Speeding Up the Research—Spotting Bad Lesson Plans
If you want to use online lesson plans, you will encounter those that are free and those that cost money. If you opt for a free lesson plan, you’ll get what you pay for.
The quality of free lesson plans is questionable at best. When you download a free lesson plan, you can quickly determine that it’s bad if it:
- Doesn’t have a clearly defined objective
- Doesn’t meet curriculum requirements
- Is vague and doesn’t define timelines thoroughly
- Has a single type of learning activities and doesn’t take into account varying learning styles
- Doesn’t define assessment methods
- Focuses on the teacher and not on the students
You can run into a good free lesson plan, but it takes a lot of time and patience. Some might find a gold nugget in the river here and there, but let’s just say that there is a good reason why gold panning is not more popular.
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Paid Lesson Plans for First Grade
Paid resources are more reliable in terms of quality, but with paid lesson plans, you have a different type of risk.
In most cases, before you open your wallet, you’ll only get a little preview that doesn’t paint the whole picture. Most websites charge per item, meaning that you can spend hundreds of dollars on potentially unusable lesson plans. So, now you’re sifting the mud for gold, AND you need to pay for every bucket!
Source: GIPHY
If only there were a sort of Netflix for top-quality teaching resources where you pay a small fixed monthly price and get to browse and download good lesson plans and materials for 1st graders…
Find Your Ideal 1st Grade Lesson Plans With Teach Simple
Teach Simple is an online source for teaching materials that is completely subscription-based. All you need to do is start your 30-day free trial, and you’ll be able to download all first grade lesson plans and materials you need without any costs. Forget about the days when you had to whip out your credit card every five minutes and spend money on unusable lesson plans.
To sign up for Teach Simple, you need to:
- Click the Join Free button in the upper right corner on our platform
- Click the Start Free button
- Enter your information, such as your email address and password
- Press the Start Free Trial button
During the trial period, you can download every piece of content that catches your eye without any strings attached. Once the trial ends, if you want to go back to the world of wasting hours on writing your own lesson plans and editing the subpar ones you find online for free, you can cancel your subscription, and you won’t be charged a dime.
Why You Should Choose Teach Simple
Perhaps the most important part of teaching first graders is making learning fun for kids and not losing your mind when they struggle to remain engaged and focused. Those unfamiliar with how teachers work believe you just need to entertain the kids with various games and go with the flow. That’s far from true.
Keeping students entertained and focused at the same time requires preparation. You can use our resource library to enrich your classes and make students put in the extra effort by making learning fun.
On our platform, you’ll find plenty of materials adapted to first graders’ attention spans and interests. Download flash cards, e-books, audiobooks, videos, graphics, projects, games, and various activities—you have unlimited downloads at your disposal with no extra fees.
Aside from paying only the subscription fee, the main benefit of Teach Simple is the quality our platform delivers. Our contributors are teachers who know what teaching 1st graders is like and who create interactive, curriculum-aligned lesson plans that will help keep the kiddos interested and engaged.
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You can find lesson plans for various subjects, such as math, science, English, and ESL classes, as well as materials for various social and life skills.
Teach Simple strives to support teachers directly. We understand what it takes to teach and what difficulties the profession comes with—that’s why Teach Simple shares 50% of revenue with contributors.
How To Use Teach Simple
Thanks to our user-friendly interface and easy-to-use filters, you can easily navigate our rich library. You can search for materials based on:
- Subject
- Grade
- Material type
- Publishing date
- File type
You can combine filters to fine-tune your search—for example, you can look for zoology lesson plans for first graders that have been published this month—or you can use the search bar to look for a particular title or keyword.
Once you get your search results, you can click on the one that catches your eye to learn more about it. Any material webpage consists of:
- A convenient preview
- Attributes
- About This Product section
- What’s Included section
- Recommendations for other materials
If it’s the right material for your class, you can easily download it or add it to your collection.
How To Adapt a First Grade Lesson Plan To Fit Your Class
While we’re sure our lesson plans will make your life much easier, no two student groups are the same—you may still have to tweak a detail or two to maximize the impact of the lesson.
The most important segments you should always focus on are learning objectives and activities. Depending on your student group, you may need to adjust the set learning goal or include additional activities that will suit your students or the class timeline better.
You need to plan exactly what you want to achieve with your lesson, how you will achieve it, and how you will measure whether you’ve succeeded or not.
1st Grade Lesson Plan Objectives—Examples
When adjusting the objective, you need to ensure that it follows the S.M.A.R.T. formula. A lesson plan objective must be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Timely
Luckily for your sanity, 1st graders are not complete beginners that know nothing about the world around them. First grade curriculums build on what the students have already mastered in preschool and kindergarten. You’ll need to introduce some more advanced but still simple concepts to prepare them for 2nd grade.
Take a look at the following table to find some common lesson plan objectives for 1st grade subjects:
| Lesson Plans by Subject | Lesson Plan Objectives |
| 1st grade math lesson plans | Write the date and tell the time Understand money and its value Count to 100 by 10s Add and subtract single-digit numbers Identify and classify two-dimensional shapes Add appropriate numbers on a number line Identify correct graphical representations of fractions |
| 1st grade English lesson plans | Use simple sentences to write a short story in chronological order Go from left to right and write words correctly with spacing in between Read short sentences independently and fluently Recap a short story after reading it Be able to identify parts of a story Recognize all consonants and sounds Use punctuation and capitalization Identify compound words Identify parts of speech and types of sentences |
| 1st grade lesson plans for science | Identify different parts of plants Classify animals based on their habitats Compare different states of matter Tell the difference between seasons |
Learning Activities for First Graders—Examples
Good learning activities keep your students interested and engaged in the subject while driving the learning point home.
As a teacher, you know your classroom best. Pick an activity you know your students will relate to and allow them to have fun. With the right activities, you will set your students up for success and shape their positive attitude towards learning.
Some common activities first graders enjoy include:
- Reading a story out loud and comparing yourself to the main character
- Adding missing lyrics to a song
- Creating a collage
- Assembling domino puzzles
- Giving gummy bears a bath in different liquid solutions
- Playing with magnets or Play-Doh
- Doing word search puzzles
- Playing rhyming games
Get a Ready-Made Lesson Plan Without Breaking a Sweat
Staring nervously at an empty sheet of paper on a Sunday evening, hours before your lessons begin, is something you can leave behind. Teach Simple provides you with detailed and top-quality lesson plans and other resources you can start using instantly, regardless of the subject or grade you’re teaching.Sign up for Teach Simple today and enjoy the first 30 days of free, unlimited downloads. You’ll never have to dread going into a classroom unprepared again.
