First graders will learn and practice many important skills in Saxon Math 1. These include comparing and ordering numbrs and identifying ordinal positionn to tenth; skip counting by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s; identifying a sorting rule; identifying and extending patterns; mastering all basic addition facts and most basic subtraction facts; adding two digit numbers without regrouping; picture and name fractions; tell time to the half hour; read and write observations from real graphs, pictographs and bar graphs, and much more.
Just as in kindergarten, a day’s lesson in the 1st grade math curriculum begins with a “meeting” involving time and calendar work, skip counting and other mental exercises. That warm-up is followed by the lesson proper, which the teacher reads to the student from the script, using manipulative exercises to demonstrate the day’s concept. After practicing with the teacher, the student works on a worksheet on his own.
Just as at other levels, Saxon Math takes what is known as an incremental approach in the 1st grade math curriculum. Concepts are broken down into small pieces, which are taught one at a time, and added onto the previous material gradually. Daily review constantly repeats what has been learned, to ensure that over time these concepts become like second nature.