When planning first grade lesson plans many teachers look for creative ways to engage students and get them moving while reviewing fundamental concepts. As teachers sit down to plan lessons for the semester, it’s sometimes hard to know where to start.
Table of Contents
- How Do You Write A First Grade Lesson Plan that Students Understand?
- 16 Comprehensive 1st Grade Lesson Plans
- What Are the Lessons In Grade 1?
- Check Out These Additional 1st Grade Resources
How Do You Write A First Grade Lesson Plan that Students Understand?
Many teachers build their lesson plans using resources widely shared from other teachers. Sharing resources is a great way to find unique lesson plans that actually work.
Some tips for writing a lesson plan include:
- Making sure you plan your lesson plans to incorporate different learning styles
- Creating lesson plans that build on prior learning
- Thinking about activities that are engaging for students
- Assessing students’ progress during the lesson so you know if you can move on
, whose marketplace is full of educational materials created by actual teachers (plus 50% of all revenues go to them), I’ve gathered a collection of some top lesson plans for you to adapt to your own teaching style and your classroom needs. You will find a great selection of topics, subjects, games, activities, and teaching content that focus on first grade concepts. These resources are created by teachers and posted for others to incorporate into their classroom.
16 Comprehensive 1st Grade Lesson Plans
Best First Grade Math Lesson Plans
Number and Operations Counting and Ordering Objects
This chapter mini lesson plan provides curriculum-based content in the form of real-world word problems focused on counting and ordering objects. This digital lesson can be projected for the class or printed out so students can work more independently. Students can also access the activities on a PC software table. This lesson plan also meets Common Core State Standards, STEM initiatives, and is written to NCTM.
This ready-made math program has over 150 individual activities on over 80 engaging and highly interactive screen pages. Your students will have ample opportunity to learn all the expectations within the NCTM and your State Curriculum Math Strand of Algebra.
In addition to both task and drill activities to provide children with a well-rounded learning experience, there are also pre-assessment activities, word problems centered around real-life experiences, and memory match games, board games, and spinner games. After every chapter, test your student’s comprehension with an assessment quiz.
Math Phonics Subtraction: Quick Tips and Alternative Techniques
Students can work on their subtraction math facts with this specially designed lesson plan. Using rules, categories, patterns, and memory tools similar to those used in language arts, this lesson is great for introducing concepts or providing alternative techniques for a subtraction focus.
Graphing and ordinal numbers are the focus of this comprehensive resource that is loaded with take-home worksheets and fun graphing art and activities. Ideal for centered or independent learning, this lesson plan comes with numerous pocket chart activities. Rebus chants and stories are also included.
Best 1st Grade Language Arts Lesson Plans
Primary Reading Prompts Task Cards
Build fluency and comprehension skills, expand vocabulary, and use powerful reading strategies with these engaging reading center task cards that put a unique spin on language arts lesson planning.
High Frequency Sight Words: Sentence Completion
For understanding the Dolch Sight Words of High Frequency Sight Words, this chapter mini provides curriculum-based content in the form of sentence completion activities. Also, materials included are printables, dolch sight word flash cards, graphic organizers and interactive activities to create a complete lesson plan.
This vocabulary based workbook and lesson plan provides a wide variety of activities designed to enrich and reinforce vocabulary skills taught at the early grade levels. Vocabulary words used in math, science, and social studies are introduced in varied formats such as crossword puzzles, picture identification, word scrambles, word searches, and matching.
Learning to identify words and comprehend their meanings provides the basis for successful reading. Each activity in this plan features a theme to promote interest in and retention of knowledge of learning the new vocabulary. The exercises are designed so a child can work with a minimum of supervision in a classroom or at home.
This fairy tales unit combines traditional fairy tales with new and exciting activities that will enchant young students. Included in this digital lesson plan are 20 Task Cards, most being open-ended, a student record sheet, fully illustrated stories; a fairy tale trivia game, reinforcement activities for ordinals, alphabetical sequence, classification, dialogue, math, and visual discrimination.
Treehouse Animated Writing Activity Short Film
This resource allows students to explore writing in a fun way. They will engage with an animated short film “Tree House.” It includes a short animated story and activities for sequencing, true/false, main ideas and details, and summarizing. It includes 1 PowerPoint with 13 ready-to-display slides.
Best First Grade Science Lesson Plans
Hands-on Physical-Science: Force and Motion
Students will get excited about force and motion with this lesson plan that helps them study balanced and unbalanced forces, measure the effect of gravity and air resistance, measure the distance of lightning by watching and listening for thunder, make models of water, sound, and light waves, experience static electricity, describe a solid, liquid, and gas, and make a compound machine.
Each concept is paired with hands-on experiments and comprehension activities. This lesson plan also includes reading passages, graphic organizers, and before-you-read and assessment activities in 1 product file.
This resource is a 31-page download to use in a lesson where students can examine texts in a cross-curricular way. Students will practice reading skills, such as character analysis and author’s purpose, while also exploring science topics such as wind energy and conservation.
The focus text for this resource is The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. There are lesson plans for 7 days worth of instruction as well as a STEAM extension activity. Everything students will need to complete this as a fact file or lapbook is included in this 1 PDF with ready-to-print pages.
Animal Science Unit: All About Bees
This lesson plan has real photos, non-fiction articles, crafts, worksheets, and writing templates to round out a unit about honey bees. This package has a variety of levels of reading and writing resources too so you can differentiate for all of your students.
It includes 1 zip file with a Google Doc describing what is included, JPEGs of pictures explaining some of the individual activities, and a 98-page PDF with ready-to-print pages.
Daffodils Lesson and PowerPoint
This lesson pack is great for classroom use or for home-education. It includes an 18 slide narrated PowerPoint to help children learn about daffodils, starting with the bulb under the ground; the PowerPoint shows how daffodils grow and teaches about the bulb, leaves, stem, buds, calyx (the papery covering of the buds), petals, trumpet and pollen.
Hands-on Physical Science: Matter and Materials
Provide a unique way for students to learn about matter and materials with this lesson plan. Students can do these activities in teams to increase social skills. Each concept is paired with hands-on experiments and comprehension activities to ensure students are engaged and fully understand the concepts. It has reading passages, graphic organizers, and before-you-read and assessment activities in 1 Product File.
The Biggest Night Light: A Unit on the Moon
The moon is visible in the sky on most nights of the year. Help your students understand more about the glowing orb in the sky with nonfiction text, activities, and worksheets in this lesson packet. It includes 1 PDF with all content and 7 ready-to-print pages.
Extend your lesson on the moon by going back in time and incorporating some history to learn about the first time people from the U.S. stepped foot on it. Students can engage in fun, educational activities that will make them feel like they’ve been with the astronauts to the moon and back!
What Are the Lessons In Grade 1?
In 1st grade students learn the fundamentals of many subjects that they will later build on throughout elementary school. Students will be challenged to become more adept at paying attention, teamwork, following instructions, asking questions, and gaining confidence.
Here is a list of the topics that are commonly covered in 1st grade common core standards:
- Math
- Reading
- Writing
- Science
- Social studies
- Visual arts
- Language arts
- History
- Word problems
- Character building
- Music
- Practical life
Whether you are running behind on lesson planning, are stumped on how to teach a certain topic, or your students have extra questions about certain subjects, you will be able to supplement your already amazing teaching when you incorporate 1st grade lesson plans created and shared by educational professionals.
Check Out These Additional 1st Grade Resources
About the Author
Jen Skolsky has a background in English, Psychology, and Creative Writing. She has taught for many years in international education, including ESL for all ages, middle school literature, speech and debate; high school AP Psychology, AP Language, AP Literature; university level Academic Writing, and Chinese Medicine Theory. She now works in marketing and book publishing.
