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. It begins inward — with a growing feeling-vocabulary and a story of who each child is (My Feelings, My Story) and with the body as a home to sense, move, and read (My Body, My Senses) — then turns outward into the practice of relationship (Learning to Live Together). The heart of the year is given to the two great tools of formal school: decoding, reading, and writing (Letters, Sounds & Words) and number, pattern, and shape (Numbers All Around Us), taught with explicit instruction and real objects, in the learner’s home language first and other languages alongside. From there the year looks out at the living world through wonder and close observation (Wondering About the Living World) and gives the whole body and the imagination to making, song, and movement (Making, Music & Movement), then returns to the body with growing independence for health and safety (Healthy, Safe & Strong). The final third steps into the wider human story — how people live across time and place (People, Places & Long Ago), what it means to be fair and to decide together (Fairness & Our Shared Rules), and the tools, media, and living Earth we are stewards of (Tools, Stories & Our Earth Home). The year closes by gathering all of it together in a celebration of self and belonging (All of Me, All of Us).

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.