Learning to read with skills of phonemic awareness, code instruction, and comprehension is the heart of the first grade year. Children experience language in books, through listening to and telling stories, and in their own writing. Folk tales, poetry, mysteries, fiction and non-fiction, rhymes, and riddles all contribute to the first grader's growing knowledge of written and spoken language. Reading instruction is enhanced by the use of the Fly Leaf Decodable Literature Library. Its techniques, which are used daily, facilitate success for each student at his or her own pace. They promote the mastery of decoding skills and fluency, including text comprehension and vocabulary growth. Transitional novels and higher-level comprehension activities provide added challenges for students to expand their reading skills.

The first grade program focuses on using a variety of strategies that build an understanding of place value, addition and subtraction of tens and ones, measurement of length, attributes of shapes, and telling time. There is an emphasis on problem-solving and students are encouraged to find ways to explain how and why math works, using oral, written, or pictorial formats, as appropriate for each child.

First graders are completing their final year of early childhood music education. Students have music in the music room twice per week. They continue to develop their singing voices with pitch exploration activities, echo songs, simple songs, and call and response songs in a variety of languages. Students are invited to create their own tunes and to create new lyrics to familiar folk songs. They listen to stories set to song. Movement exploration activities help children develop a movement vocabulary, develop gross motor skills and enhance their ideas for creative movement. Students also learn fingerplays and add choreographed movement to their singing and to recorded music, which builds an understanding of musical form and expressive movement. Keeping the beat in music is central to all later rhythmic development, so the children use a variety of beat motions and percussion instruments to keep the beat along with songs they sing, rhymes they chant, and recorded music they hear. First grade students perform twice each year as part of the winter and spring lower school concert series. They also put on a theatrical production of their own, often involving music and art, and even sometimes with a focus on their Mandarin language learning.  

First graders learn the skills of careful observation, predicting outcomes, communicating clear ideas, and hands-on experimentation. Topics explored during the year include magnets, ramps and Newton’s Law of Motion, seed germination and dispersal, life cycles of plants and animals, and simple electrical circuits. The course is designed to foster the students' appreciation of the environment and an understanding of the importance of sustainability.

Through foundational topics that include families and neighborhoods, fall harvest, geography, and economics, children learn about themselves and the world around them. Specific content varies from year to year as our curriculum is grounded in the cultural perspectives and important festivals in each child’s background. Children learn through discussion, technological and informational resources, hands-on activities, field trips, and cross-curricular projects. The culminating activity of our annual play provides an opportunity for students to share their knowledge and talent.

The world language program in Lower School includes classes in Chinese Mandarin (PreSchool, PreKindergarten, Kindergarten, and grade 1), Spanish (grades 2–4), and Latin (grades 5–6). In the younger grades, children learn basic vocabulary and grammar as well as the culture and traditions of countries where the target language is spoken.  Fifth and sixth graders are introduced to Latin and the Roman world through Unit 1 of the Cambridge Latin Course.