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Alabama Standards

Alabama 1st Grade ELA Standards

All 48 Alabama English language arts standards for 1st grade, each explained in plain English. The official wording is in Alabama State Department of Education's document, linked at the end of this page.

48 standards

Recurring Standards for K-3

5 standards
1.R1
Listen actively during partner chats, group work, and class discussions, following the agreed rules, like looking at the speaker and not interrupting.
1.R2
Use letter-sound patterns and word parts to read and spell words correctly, like sounding out and writing ship or jumping.
1.R3
Build world knowledge and new vocabulary through class talk, reading, and writing, like learning the word habitat in a science unit.
1.R4
Use computers and other digital tools in safe, fair, and responsible ways to look things up and write, on your own or with a partner.
1.R5
Work through a writing process from plan to published piece for many kinds of writing, like a how-to on making a sandwich.

Oral Language

4 standards
1.1
Join group discussions about topics and texts with classmates and adults, in small and large groups, following the agreed talk rules.
1.2
Take part in shared reading and group talks to build background knowledge and hear what smooth reading aloud sounds like.
1.3
Ask and answer questions to get help, gather facts, or check understanding of things heard, read, or seen on a screen.
1.4
Share information aloud in full sentences at a good volume, describing people, places, things, and events with fitting details.

Concepts of Print

1 standard
1.5
Find where a book shows its title, contents page, glossary, and who wrote and illustrated it, and explain what an author and an illustrator each do.

Phonological Awareness/Phonemic Awareness

1 standard
1.6
Play with spoken sounds, like clapping syllables in long words, blending three to five sounds, telling long from short vowels, and swapping a sound to turn cat into hat.

Phonics

1 standard
1.7
Sound out words alone and in decodable books using phonics patterns, like blends, sh and tch, silent e, ar and or, vowel teams like ai and ee, prefixes, and suffixes.

Fluency

3 standards
1.8
Apply the letter-sound patterns already learned to read decodable words quickly and accurately, on their own and in stories.
1.9
Read first grade texts accurately and smoothly, rereading with expression, fixing mistakes while reading, and noticing rhythm and rhyme in poems.
1.10
Read the common sight words found in first grade books, like said, was, and they.

Vocabulary

6 standards
1.11
Use new school and subject words, link them to known words and background knowledge, and study their sounds, parts, and spelling to learn them.
1.12
Ask and answer questions about new words, using clues like plurals, possessives, and endings such as -ed and -ing, and telling apart close meanings like look and stare.
1.13
Use clues in the text to work out the meaning of a new word or a word with several meanings.
1.14
Sort words or pictures into groups by meaning and give each group a label, like foods, tools, or feelings.
1.15
Find adjectives in stories, poems, and other texts and explain how they describe, like fluffy in a fluffy kitten.
1.16
Use first grade school words in speaking and writing, like describing a science project with the words observe and compare.

Comprehension

13 standards
1.17
Show knowledge gained from story and fact read-alouds by talking about the topic with classmates or by drawing and writing about it.
1.18
Move, add, and swap words and phrases to build simple statements and questions, like turning a telling sentence into an asking one.
1.19
Tell apart stories, fairy tales, poems, and informational texts, and point to the features that mark each kind.
1.20
Use text features like headings, bold words, captions, and menus to find key facts in print or on a screen.
1.21
Tell what a story or informational text is mostly about and pick out the key details that support it.
1.22
Ask and answer who, what, where, when, and why questions about important details in stories and fact texts.
1.23
Describe a story's characters and setting using pictures and words from the text, and retell the major events in the order they happened.
1.24
Tell who is narrating a story, using evidence from the text and the word narrator for the storyteller.
1.25
Describe how two characters, events, or ideas in a story connect, like cause and effect, order of events, or a problem and its solution.
1.26
With help, use details from a story to explain its lesson or central message, like being kind pays off.
1.27
Use details in a story to predict what will happen next.
1.28
Notice when the meaning gets lost, then pause to sum up what happened so far or reread that part to fix it.
1.29
Compare characters, settings, and events across stories, tell how ideas connect in a fact text, and note how two texts on one topic are alike and different.

Writing

14 standards
1.30
Hold a pencil correctly and print neatly and smoothly, using mostly lowercase letters, writing full names correctly, and writing the alphabet in order from memory.
1.31
Spell words using sound-letter patterns, like blends, digraphs, silent e, -tch, double letters in hill and puff, endings like -ing and -est, and with help vowel teams.
1.32
Write complete sentences with a subject and predicate, capital letters, end marks, and commas in dates and lists, and with help name nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
1.33
Help the class write an organized paragraph with a topic sentence, supporting details, and a closing sentence.
1.34
With help, write a story that tells two or more events in order with time words like first and then, adds details, and ends clearly.
1.35
With help, write an informational piece on a subject that uses facts drawn from a source and ends with a closing that wraps it up.
1.36
With help, write an opinion about a topic, give at least one reason taken from a source, and end with a closing.
1.37
With help, write short poems about a subject of choice, like a pet or the rain.
1.38
Write and fix up first drafts with correct spaces between letters, words, and sentences, moving left to right and top to bottom.
1.39
Make writing better by planning, revising, and editing with a peer partner, answering their questions and using their ideas.
1.40
Share thoughts and feelings with describing words, pictures, or other visuals that make the meaning clearer, like a drawing of a sunny day.
1.41
Put a list of words in ABC order by the first letter, and by the second letter when two words start the same, like bat before bed.
1.42
Help with group research and writing that answers a question or explains a topic, adding memories from your own life and facts from sources provided.
1.43
With adult help, use a range of digital tools to write and publish work, on your own and together with classmates.

The official Alabama documents

The plain-English lines on this page are EMStudio's own explanations of Alabama's standards, not the official wording, which Alabama State Department of Education publishes in the documents above. Codes and strand names identify each standard.