Whole Earth Curriculum WEC

Grade 1

Grade 1 turns Kindergarten's play-based foundations into a first year of formal learning while keeping the whole child at the center. The year opens with feelings, identity, and the sensing body, deepens through friendship and community, then gives real, joyful time to the two great tools of school — reading and writing, and number — before moving outward through science, the arts, health, and the wider human and living world. Emotional and physical foundations stay strong, even as literacy and numeracy begin in earnest.

180 school days Draft

Year timeline

  1. 1–15 My Feelings, My Story 10 lessons
  2. 16–30 My Body, My Senses 10 lessons
  3. 31–45 Learning to Live Together 10 lessons
  4. 46–65 Letters, Sounds & Words 15 lessons
  5. 66–85 Numbers All Around Us 15 lessons
  6. 86–100 Wondering About the Living World 10 lessons
  7. 101–115 Making, Music & Movement 10 lessons
  8. 116–125 Healthy, Safe & Strong 8 lessons
  9. 126–140 People, Places & Long Ago 10 lessons
  10. 141–155 Fairness & Our Shared Rules 10 lessons
  11. 156–170 Tools, Stories & Our Earth Home 10 lessons
  12. 171–180 All of Me, All of Us 7 lessons

Domain weighting

Grade 1 Scope

How to read this scope

Each unit_id in the frontmatter resolves to a unit file under units/. start_day/end_day map the unit onto the 180-day school year; the list is a continuous sequence from day 1 to day 180 with no gaps or overlaps. domain and pillar name the primary domain(s) and pillar(s) each unit serves. domain_weighting expresses the intended balance of instructional time across the ten domains, in percent of the year. lesson_count counts the core lessons; the days between lessons carry flex time, assessment, integration, and celebration. assessment_plan describes how a child’s growth is seen and recorded at this level.

Year at a glance

The Grade 1 year is a spiral from the self outward, now with real tools in hand, and it begins inward. My Feelings, My Story (U.01.001, D01) grows a feeling-vocabulary and the story of who each child is; My Body, My Senses (U.01.002, D03) reads the body as a home to sense, move, and care for. Learning to Live Together (U.01.003, D02) then turns outward into the practice of relationship — listening, sharing, and solving a disagreement with words.

The heart of the year is given to the two great tools of formal school. Letters, Sounds & Words (U.01.004, D04) teaches decoding, reading, and writing with explicit instruction and real objects; Numbers All Around Us (U.01.005, D05) builds number, pattern, and shape from counting and comparing — both in the learner’s home language first, with other languages alongside. From there Wondering About the Living World (U.01.006, D06) looks out through wonder and close observation, and Making, Music & Movement (U.01.007, D07) gives the whole body and the imagination to making, song, and dance. Healthy, Safe & Strong (U.01.008, D03) returns to the body with growing independence for health and safety.

The final third steps into the wider human story. People, Places & Long Ago (U.01.009, D08) asks how people live across time and place; Fairness & Our Shared Rules (U.01.010, D09) asks what it means to be fair and to decide together; and Tools, Stories & Our Earth Home (U.01.011, D10) looks at the tools and stories we share and the living Earth we are stewards of. The year closes in All of Me, All of Us (U.01.012, D01 + D02), a celebration of self and belonging, looking ahead to Grade 2.

Throughout, the four pillars are interwoven. Intellectual awareness (P3) now carries the most weight, because reading, writing, and number are the year’s central work — but emotional and social awareness (P1) and physical and somatic awareness (P2) remain strong, for a known, cared-for, and capable body-and-self is the ground all formal learning stands on. Contextual and ecological awareness (P4) is introduced gently — history as “then and now,” fairness as sharing and making rules together, and the Earth as a shared home to care for. No high-stakes tests anywhere: a child’s growth is seen through reading aloud, writing, number work with real things, and a portfolio of what they make, say, and do.