Grade 1

Sample weeks, a Scope and Sequence, a CCSS correlation, and several helpful documents are available to download and print at the end of this landing page.

"We LOVE our new DLI!  The pace is thoughtful and rigorous for our first graders.  The instruction allows for gradual release with major impact. We haven’t seen anything better to help with language instruction.”

1st grade team, Woodglen Elementary

 

With more rigor throughout, the new 2018 Grade 1 DLI edition is a must-have resource!

Features of the 2018 Grade 1 edition

New skills strengthen the alignment to the CCSS:
*exclamations
*commas for single words in a series
*matching simple nouns and verbs in sentences

Enhanced skills offer more depth and rigor to these areas:
*questions are introduced eight weeks earlier to match your students’ use of questions in their writing and to offer more
 variety in student items
*more rigorous treatment for recognizing nouns and verbs and more sustained emphasis
*more rigorous treatment of past tense verbs including identification of context clues

In response to the advice of our first grade experts:

*They said: ”The first of the year is spot on, but the second half should be more rigorous and have longer sentences.”
The 2018 edition features longer sentences at mid-year. These sentences serve as models for the kind of writing you are encouraging at this point in the year. The format shifts to a smaller font and two sets of narrower lines below.

*They asked: “Could you increase the pacing on the color and number words? It helps our students if we introduce both the color and number words by mid-year.” 
The 2018 edition introduces one color word AND one number word each week and wraps that instruction up by week 16, ten weeks earlier.

*They said: “We like that fact that you feature a family in the beginning of the book, and it limits the names in student items, but the family lacks diversity; so many of our students’ families are non-traditional.
The 2018 edition features the Sotos, a family with mixed ethnicity, an adopted Chinese daughter, and a live-in grandparent.

*They said: “You introduce capitalizing and punctuating dates, but the dates used for student items in the current edition are “out-dated.”
The 2018 edition features a different format for dates allowing students to customize most items to the current year. (check it out on the Snapshot Sample)

*They said: “Our students need more exposure to antonyms and synonyms.  Is there any way to include them?
The 2018 edition features weeks with both antonyms and synonyms in the Following Directions Box starting mid-year.

What else is new?
*Between Weeks 12 and 15, the 2018 edition features a student-friendly introduction to the use of three proofreading marks.  Using them to mark missing capitals and end marks beginning at Week 12 and commas beginning at Week 15 on the DLI student items, provides a gentle way to develop this as a practice that students can transfer to editing their own writing.  Our Grade 1 pilot teachers have given this a “green light,” and they say that this has the potential to help their students to better apply what they have learned since they often run out of steam on the editing step. (Download the Week 12 sample to view their introduction.)

*New topics treated in the Following Directions Box include the following: adjectives, prepositions/position words (under, between, above), ordinal words (first, second, third), shapes, and right/left.