First graders add a new marker to the Calendar Grid for each day of the month. Students delve into important mathematics as they identify patterns that emerge in the markers over time. Each month also features a collection of some kind— cubes, sticks, shapes, coins—that serves as a springboard for representing and analyzing data, practicing computation, and solving problems. Students keep track of the number of days they have been in school using a hundreds grid, which encourages them to see groups of 1, 5, and 10 in different numbers.

Many days also feature an activity or game for strengthening students’ counting skills and computational fluency. These games and activities often incorporate visual models like ten-frames, double ten-frames, number lines, and hundreds grids