1st grade · History
What a 1st grade student learns in History
First-grade history centers on chronological thinking and connecting personal/family/community life to the broader American past through changes over time, national symbols and holidays, and age-appropriate stories of key people and events.
The skills for the year
- 1Use temporal vocabulary (past, present, future, long ago, before/after) to describe events
- 2Sequence familiar events on a simple personal or family timeline
- 3Compare daily life (homes, schools, work, play) long ago versus today
- 4Identify ways families, schools, and local communities have changed over time
- 5Describe family traditions, roles, and customs and how they connect to the past
- 6Explain why Americans celebrate major national holidays (Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day)
- 7Identify U.S. symbols (American flag, bald eagle, Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell, White House) and state their basic meanings
- 8Recite and explain the purpose of the Pledge of Allegiance
- 9Retell age-appropriate stories about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and their contributions
- 10Learn basic facts about other historically significant Americans (e.g., Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr.)
- 11Use photographs, artifacts, and simple primary sources to gather information about the past
- 12Distinguish between factual historical accounts and fictional stories set in the past
- 13Describe contributions of diverse cultural groups to community and national history
- 14Identify simple cause-and-effect relationships in familiar historical narratives
- 15Connect local community history and landmarks to larger national stories
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