First Grade

The following are the Colorado academic standards for first graders. 

Comprehensive Health

• Apply knowledge and skills to engage in lifelong healthy eating
• Apply knowledge and skills related to health promotion, disease prevention, and health maintenance
• Utilize knowledge and skills to enhance mental, emotional, and social well-being
• Apply personal safety knowledge and skills to prevent and treat intentional or unintentional injury

Dance

• Demonstrate awareness of fitness, wellness, and the body's potential for movement
• Understand that dance performance requires technical competency
• Demonstrate and use the principles and practices of choreography in the creative process
• Improvise and create movement based on an intent or meaning
• Explore and perform dance styles from various cultures and times
• Understand and appreciate a dance in terms of the culture in which it is performed
• Demonstrate thinking skills such as describing, analyzing, interpreting, evaluating, and problem-solving through dance movement and verbal discussion

Drama and Theatre Arts

• Create drama and theatre by interpreting and appreciating theatrical works, culture, and experience through scenes and scenarios, improvisation, creating environments, purposeful movement, and research
• Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of theatre history, dramatic structure, dramatic literature, elements of style, genre, artistic theory, script analysis, and roles of theatre practitioners through research and application

Mathematics

• Understand the structure and properties of our number system. At their most basic level numbers are abstract symbols that represent real-world quantities
• Apply transformation to numbers, shapes, functional representations, and data
• Solve problems and make decisions that depend on understanding, explaining, and quantifying the variability in data
• Make claims about relationships among numbers, shapes, symbols, and data and defend those claims by relying on the properties that are the structure of mathematics
• Understand quantity through estimation, precision, order of magnitude, and comparison. The reasonableness of answers relies on the ability to judge appropriateness, compare, estimate, and analyze error

Music

• Employ musical skills through a variety of means, including singing, playing instruments, and purposeful movement
• Perform music with appropriate technique and level of expression at an appropriate level of difficulty in sight reading and prepared performance
• Demonstrate the processes of development of musical literature from rehearsal to performance, exhibiting appropriate interpersonal and expressive skills, both individually and within ensembles
• Demonstrate the expressive elements of music - including melody, harmony, rhythm, style, genre, texture, voicing/instrumentation, mood, tonality, and form - through voice, musical instruments, and/or the use of electronic tools
• Display instrumental or vocal improvisation skills by performing extemporaneously what is created in the mind
• Create music by composing and/or arranging what is heard or envisioned, in notated or non-notated form, with or without the use of music technology, demonstrating originality and technical understanding
• Read and employ the language and vocabulary of music in discussing musical examples and writing music, including technology related to melody, harmony, rhythm, style, genre, voicing/orchestration, mood, tonality, expression, and form
• Demonstrate melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic aural skills through identification, transcription, and vocalization or instrumental playback of aural musical examples
• Know the place of each of the participants in the performance environment and practice appropriate audience participation; recognize the place and importance of music in life
• Make informed, critical evaluations of the effectiveness of musical works and performances on the basis of aesthetic qualities, technical excellence, musicality, or convincing expression of feelings and ideas related to cultural and ideological associations
• Develop a framework for making informed personal musical choices, and utilize that framework in the making and defending of musical choices
• Demonstrate a nuanced understanding of aesthetics in music, appropriate to the particular features of given styles and genres, as it relates to the human experience in music

Physical Education

• Demonstrate competency in motor skills and movement patterns needed to perform a variety of physical activities
• Demonstrate understanding of movement concepts, principles, strategies, and tactics as they apply to learning and performing physical activities
• Achieve and maintain a health-enhancing level of physical fitness
• Exhibit responsible personal and social behavior that respects self and others in physical activity settings
• Apply personal safety knowledge and skills to prevent and treat intentional or unintentional injury

Reading, Writing and Communicating

• Use language appropriate for purpose and audience
• Demonstrate skill in inferential and evaluative listening
• Collaborate effectively as group members or leaders who listen actively and respectfully pose thoughtful questions, acknowledge the ideas of others, and contribute ideas to further the group's attainment of an objective
• Demonstrate comprehension of a variety of informational, literary, and persuasive texts
• Interpret how the structure of written English contributes to the pronunciation and meaning of complex vocabulary
• Implement the writing process successfully to plan, revise, and edit written work
• Apply standard English conventions to effectively communicate with written language
• Gather information from a variety of sources; analyze and evaluate the quality and relevance of the source; and use it to answer complex questions
• Articulate the position of self and others using experiential and material logic

Science

• Apply an understanding of atomic and molecular structure to explain the properties of matter, and predict outcomes of chemical and nuclear reactions
• Analyze how various organisms grow, develop, and differentiate during their lifetimes based on an interplay between genetics and their environment
• Analyze the relationship between structure and function in living systems at a variety of organizational levels, and recognize living systems' dependence on natural selection
• Describe how humans are dependent on the diversity of resources provided by Earth and Sun

Social Studies

• Develop an understanding of how people view, construct, and interpret history
• Analyze key historical periods and patterns of change over time within and across nations and cultures
• Develop spatial understanding, perspectives, and personal connections to the world
• Examine places and regions and the connections among them
• Understand the allocation of scarce resources in societies through analysis of individual choice, market interaction, and public policy
• Acquire the knowledge and economic reasoning skills to make sound financial decisions (PFL)
• Analyze and practice rights, roles, and responsibilities of citizens
• Analyze origins, structure, and functions of governments and their impacts on societies and citizens

Visual Arts

• Recognize, articulate, and debate that the visual arts are a means for expression
• Recognize, articulate, and implement critical thinking in the visual arts by synthesizing, evaluating, and analyzing visual information
• Develop and build appropriate mastery in art-making skills using traditional and new technologies and an understanding of the characteristics and expressive features of art and design
• Recognize, interpret, and validate that the creative process builds on the development of ideas through a process of inquiry, discovery, and research
• Identify, compare, and interpret works of art derived from historical and cultural settings, time periods, and cultural contexts