Language Arts

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Introduction

Welcome to Home Free School’s 1st grade Language Arts! Language Arts is one of the four core courses for our 1st grade curriculum.

The course is broken down into weekly chunks of material to be completed over two semesters (180 days). They are designed to give you and your student the flexibility to work longer on a particular topic and review as needed without feeling rushed.

Course Goals

Upon completion of the the 1st grade Language Arts course, students should be able to do the following:

Read and spell using phonics
Understand digraphs, short and long vowel sounds, consonant clusters, vowels pairs, and R-controlled vowels in order to analyze words
Understand synonyms and antonyms
Use compound words
Understand prefixes, suffixes, syllables, possessives, abbreviations, and contractions
Use basic punctuation
Read 1st Grade (or above) books independently
Read more difficult books with an adult
Read short poems
Write from dictation
Write short poems
Write simple book reports
Explain what happened in a story in chronological sequence
Explain what events or characters in a story were the most important
Explain what they did or did not like about a story
Write their own short story

Why Phonics?

Many schools today are not teaching phonics and we believe that it is detrimental a child’s ability to learn. Reading with phonics eases the frustration that students encounter when tackling challenging material in later grades by giving them the power to analyze a new word’s structure and “sound it out.” An understanding of phonics provides a solid foundation on which to build subsequent proficiency in written language and the ability to appreciate literature.

In each of the lessons focused on reading and phonics, you will teach your student 10 example words. The purpose is not for your student to simply memorize these words, but to understand how to break them down into each sound and analyze their structure.

There are a number of spelling tests in this course and your student should study for them (we give you reminders each lesson before a spelling test). The purpose of the tests is to enable your student to apply what he or she has learned about phonics and word structure from the previous few lessons and not to recall a list of memorized words.

Staying Organized

Notebooks are really important for helping you keep the work for this course organized. We agree with the suggestion from The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer to have four notebooks, one each for reading, writing, grammar, and spelling.

This course also utilizes lapbooks, so be sure to have a handful of tab file folders and craft supplies.

We also recommend saving your student’s worksheets in a 3-inch, 3-ring binder. At the end of the course (or during if you need a little encouragement), you’ll be able to see the progress your student has made.

A Note About Reading

This course starts out slowly with reading by the student and to the student. The initial focus is on getting down the basics of written English. Of course, we encourage you to read to your child more during non-school hours. We think that limiting the school-time spent reading during the often grueling process of learning the basics of phonics prevents reading from becoming a dreaded chore.

All of the books used in this course are available for free online and we provide access options in the first lesson that uses them. You may also support Home Free School by purchasing them online by selecting a book from the carousel below. Amazon.com charges you the normal price for an item but gives a small percentage of the proceeds to Home Free School when you follow one of our links to purchase course materials.

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