Virginia’s yearly state standardized tests are based on the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) approved by the Virginia State Board of Education. Global Tutors structures our curriculum along the Virginia Standards of Learning for each grade level to ensure students are performing above and beyond proficiency levels.
| Virginia Standards of Learning – 1st grade |
The Global Tutors Approach |
| Students will have an understanding that language can be used to express ideas and tell stories and develop the ability to use language to convey their own ideas. |
Tutors will teach students and parents how to read together and prompt personal connections through guided reading. Students will regularly read poems and stories each session with their tutor and be asked to connect passages to their own life. Students will participate in activities that rely on the ability to retell a story with the beginning, middle, and end, with focus on characters and settings. Students will read and be read stories and poems aloud daily and asked to respond through verbal and written mediums, thus developing their language skills. |
| Students will build grade level vocabulary and begin using context clues to derive meaning from difficult to understand words. |
Tutors will read passages and stories together with students and obtain vocabulary word lists from the texts, which will become the daily vocabulary building focus. Students will be urged to ask questions when they come across unfamiliar words or concepts. |
| Students will adapt or change oral language to fit the situation. |
Tutors will emphasize the rules for different social and academic contexts and how the different settings require different methods of communication. Tutors will work with students on following multi-step directions, asking questions, maintaining focus throughout the session, and responding appropriately to different audiences using students’ developing language skills. |
| Students will orally identify and manipulate phonemes (small units of sound) in syllables and
multisyllabic words.
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Students struggling with phonemic awareness will be introduced to the Sound Stoplight board, where students break words down with their tutors to sound them out together and then independently. Tutors will spend time reviewing sight words with the “I see, you say, we say” method. |
| Students should apply phonetic principles for reading and spelling. |
Students will participate in supplemental spelling tests if needed, and play educational games with their spelling words with tutors to make spelling fun. Students will spell words within the texts they read, and write their own sentences in order to re-tell concepts within the story to their tutor. |
| Students should develop an interest in reading and learn to question texts they do not understanding. |
Tutors will prompt students during the reading of texts to infer what will happen next. Students will engage in verbal and written activities that supplement the reading of texts in order to stimulate cognitive processing of the important textual elements, while keeping students engaged and interested. |
| Students should develop key reading and writing response skills that incorporate their grade level vocabulary, exposure to narrative text, and understandings of simple grammatical conventions. The student will apply knowledge of how print is organized and read. |
Tutors will prompt students daily to write a daily journal entry about what they did today. Students will share their journal entries with their tutors and tutors will in turn get an idea of the focus for the day. For instance, if a student continually fails to write complete sentences, tutors will review the differences between letters, words, and sentences. (See example below) Or, if students are struggling with capitalization, a review of capital letters and punctuation would become the focus of the lesson for the day, with assignments given for home that promote understanding of concepts covered during sessions. |
| The student will learn to use simple reference materials. |
Tutors will introduce students to the difference between encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference resources. Students will build dictionary skills through emphasis on putting words in alphabetical order. |
| Students will learn to write legibly and how to best communicate their ideas through writing. |
Tutors will assign students activities for parents to review, involving having students write clearly on lined paper and develop key penmanship skills. Emphasis will be put on how to use descriptive words to better convey your ideas through writing. |
Here is an example of how Global Tutors would test a knowledge of a student’s ability to differentiate between letters, words, and sentences:
1. As you read each line below, tell whether each item is a letter, a word, or a
sentence. Circle the answer.
