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March 2006

First grade is generally the first year of mandatory full-day

schooling in the United States and is thus, for many students,

the first time that they will be attending school in a full-day

setting (Education Commission of the States 2005). In addition to continuing the socialization into school that began in

kindergarten or preschool, first grade curricula are expected

to expose children more formally to instruction in reading

and language arts, mathematics, and other subjects, focusing

on such skills as identifying the beginning and ending sounds

of words and adding and subtracting (Denton and West 2002).

Learning in first grade helps lay the foundation for future

learning. Research has shown, for example, that the progress

that first grade students make in learning to read is a strong

predictor of their later reading outcomes through high school

(Cunningham and Stanovich 1997). Despite the importance

of first grade as a crucial period in a young student’s academic development, little is known nationally about how much

time first-graders actually spend in class on various subjects

or about the kinds of activities and skills that they work on in

class.

This Issue Brief details how often per week and how much

time per day first-graders were instructed in subjects such as

reading, mathematics, and science during the 1999-2000 academic year. It then focuses in more detail on students’ in-class

work on reading and language arts. Results are based on data

from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten

Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K). This study involved a sample of

16,165 first grade students that is representative of the 3.8

million first-graders enrolled in the United States in spring

2000. Data are based on first grade teacher reports from spring

2000.

In this Issue Brief, the measure of frequency of instruction in

different subjects is based on teacher reports of how often per

week children in their class usually worked on lessons or

projects in various subjects, whether as a whole class, in small

groups, or in individualized arrangements. Available response

categories were as follows: never, less than once a week, one

to two times per week, three to four times per week, and

daily. The measure of duration of instruction in different subjects is based on teacher reports of how much time children

in their class spent per day on various subjects. Available response categories were as follows: 1-30 minutes a day, 31-60

minutes a day, 61-90 minutes a day, and more than 90 minutes a day. For each subject, the analysis of duration excludes

those students whose teachers reported that they never worked

on lessons or projects in the subject. Taken together, the measures of frequency and duration of instruction used in this

Issue Brief provide information on how much instruction students received in various subjects in first grade.

Instructional Focus in First Grade U.S. Department of Education

Institute of Education Sciences

NCES 2006-056

IssueBrief

How often do first-graders work on different

subjects and for how much time?

Ninety-eight percent of students worked on reading or language arts lessons or projects daily, and 95 percent of students worked on mathematics daily (table 1). The percentages of first-graders who worked on lessons or projects in

these subjects daily were more than five times the percentages of students who worked daily on each of the other subjects reported on by ECLS-K teachers (table 1). Fifteen percent of students had teachers who reported that they worked

on social studies every day, and 13 percent had teachers who

said that they worked daily on science. Less than 10 percent

of students received daily instruction in music, art, dance,

theater, and foreign language. Subjects taught less than daily

may still have been taught on a regular basis. For example,

73 percent of students had teachers who reported that they

worked on art lessons or projects one or two times per week.

This statistic was 72 percent for music and 19 percent for

dance.

The amount of time devoted daily to different subject areas

varied as well. Some 60 percent of first grade students receiving reading instruction spent more than 90 minutes a day

working on lessons or projects in reading and language arts,

more than 10 times the percentage for any other subject, including mathematics; comparable figures for each of the other

subject areas were less than 5 percent. For most students receiving mathematics instruction (62 percent), mathematics

lessons were 31-60 minutes in duration.

What reading and language arts activities and

skills do first-graders work on daily?

With respect to in-class reading and language arts activities

and skills, first-graders were categorized according to whether

or not their teachers reported that their students worked in

class daily on specific reading and language arts activities and

skills. An “activity” is a pursuit that students engage in to

build their skills, whereas a “skill” is defined as a student

competency. This Issue Brief reports on the percentage of students performing the following activities in class daily: working on phonics, reading silently, reading student-chosen books,

reading aloud, discussing new or difficult vocabulary, practicing writing letters of the alphabet, and writing with invented spellings. This Issue Brief also reports on the percentage of students who worked daily in class on the following

skills: capitalization and punctuation, communicating ideas

orally, composing and writing sentences, reading aloud fluently, and using vocabulary. Findings regarding student reading and language arts activities and skills are broken out by
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teacher experience, the number of college courses taken by

teachers in teaching reading, school type, and the percentage

of a school’s students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.1

All of the reading and language arts activities investigated in

this Issue Brief were practiced daily by over half of the first

grade student population (table 2). While the largest percentage of first-graders worked on phonics daily, the smallest percentages of first-graders practiced writing letters of the alphabet and writing (with invented spelling as needed) on a daily

basis. Eighty-three percent of first-graders had teachers who

reported working on phonics daily, compared with 77 percent

for reading silently, 74 percent for reading student-chosen

books, 68 percent for reading aloud, 62 percent for writing

letters of the alphabet, and 61 percent for writing with invented spellings. In terms of skills, the greatest percentage of

students received daily instruction in capitalization and punctuation, although each of the skills investigated in this Issue

Brief were worked on daily by over half of the first grade student population. Some 81 percent of students had teachers

who reported that they practiced capitalization and punctuation with their classes daily, compared with 68 percent for

communicating ideas orally, 67 percent for composing and

writing complete sentences, 63 percent for reading aloud fluently, and 61 percent for vocabulary.

The frequency with which activities and skills were taught daily

varied with several teacher and school characteristics, including teacher experience. Students with teachers who had 20 or

more years of experience were more likely to be taught phonics daily and to discuss new or difficult vocabulary daily than

were students with teachers who had less experience. Students

with teachers who had three or fewer years of experience or

four to nine years of experience were more likely to read student-chosen books daily than students with teachers who had

10 years of experience or more. Students with teachers who

had three or fewer years of experience were more likely to be

encouraged to write with invented spelling as needed than were

students with teachers in any of the other categories of teacher

experience.

The number of college courses in reading pedagogy (i.e., teaching reading) taken by teachers was related to the reading and

language arts activities and skills worked on in first grade

classes. With respect to number of reading pedagogy courses

taken, students whose teachers had taken two or fewer courses

were the least likely to discuss new or difficult vocabulary and

to practice writing alphabet letters, whereas students whose

teachers had taken six or more courses were the most likely to

do so. Seventy-eight percent of first-graders whose teachers

had taken six or more reading pedagogy courses discussed

new or difficult vocabulary daily, compared with 65 percent

of those whose teachers had taken three to five courses, and

60 percent of those whose teachers had taken two or fewer

courses. Sixty-nine percent of first-graders whose teachers had

taken six or more courses practiced writing alphabet letters

daily, compared with 62 percent of those whose teachers had

taken three to five courses, and 56 percent of those whose

teachers had taken two or fewer courses.

In first grade, public school students were more likely than

private school students to work on the following activities or

skills in class daily: reading silently, reading student-chosen

books, reading aloud, discussing new or difficult vocabulary,

writing with invented spellings, communicating ideas orally,

composing and writing sentences, and working on vocabulary. For example, 63 percent of public school first-graders

were encouraged daily to write with invented spellings if

needed, compared with 49 percent of private school first-graders.

Table 1. Percentage of first-graders whose teachers reported they worked on lessons or projects, by number of times per week, minutes

per day, and general topic area: 1999-2000

1 For each general topic area, the analysis of minutes per day excludes those students whose teachers reported that they never worked on lessons or projects

in the general topic area.

# Rounds to zero.

NOTE: Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding. Not all apparent differences in this table are statistically significant. Standard errors are available at

http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006056.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K),

First Grade Public Use Data File, Spring 2000.

1 The free and reduced-price lunch analysis is limited to students in

public schools. In cases where missing data on free and reducedprice lunch kept the authors from determining whether or not at

least 50 percent of a school’s student body was eligible for free or

reduced-price lunch, participation in a school-wide Title I program

was used as a proxy. In 1999-2000, at least 50 percent of a school’s

students needed to be eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch for

the school to qualify for school-wide Title I funding.

 Less

than 1-2 3-4 More

General topic area Never 1 time times times Daily 1-30 31-60 61-90 than 90

Reading and language arts # # 0.6 1.2 98.2 1.3 10.0 28.4 60.3

Mathematics 0.1 0.3 0.6 3.9 95.1 4.9 62.4 29.2 3.4

Social Studies 0.5 5.4 47.3 32.0 14.7 54.0 43.5 2.2 0.3

Science 0.6 5.7 47.3 33.1 13.4 49.1 47.7 2.8 0.4

Music 2.6 11.6 71.7 6.9 7.2 63.6 35.7 0.6 #

Art 0.9 11.3 72.5 10.7 4.6 39.1 58.5 2.3 0.1

Dance/creative movement 39.5 37.3 18.6 2.6 2.1 85.6 13.8 0.6 #

Theater/creative dramatics 40.9 47.6 10.0 0.8 0.6 89.3 10.1 0.6 #

Foreign language 76.1 9.6 9.7 1.3 3.3 76.4 19.8 1.6 2.2

Minutes per day1 How often per week
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The Issue Brief series presents information on education topics of current interest. All estimates shown are based on samples and are subject to sampling variability.

All differences discussed are statistically significant at the .05 level as measured by two-tailed Student’s t tests; this means a difference is discussed only if the

probability that it is due to chance (i.e., sampling variability) is less than 1 in 20. Standard errors were computed to reflect the complex sample design. In the

design, conduct, and data processing of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) surveys, efforts are made to minimize the effects of nonsampling error,

such as item nonresponse, measurement error, data processing error, or other systematic error. For more information on the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study,

visit http://nces.ed.gov/ecls.

This Issue Brief was prepared by Lawrence Lanahan, Daniel Princiotta, and Christine Enyeart, of the Education Statistics Services Institute (ESSI). This Issue Brief was

formatted by Carol Rohr of Kforce Government Solutions. For further information, contact Edith McArthur, NCES, at 202-502-7393 or Edith.McArthur@ed.gov. To

order additional copies of this Issue Brief or other NCES publications, call 1-877-4ED-PUBS or visit http://www.edpubs.org/. NCES publications are also available on

the Internet at http://nces.ed.gov/.

Students in higher poverty schools (i.e., those where 50 percent or more of the students qualified for free or reduced-price

lunch) were more likely to work on phonics, to read aloud

daily, and to work on reading aloud fluently than were students in lower poverty schools. In higher poverty schools, 73

percent of students read aloud daily, compared with 65 percent of students in lower poverty schools.

Conclusion

In 1999-2000, more than 9 in 10 first-graders received daily

instruction in reading and mathematics. Perhaps not surprisingly given the research on the importance of early success in

reading, helping students to a good start in reading appears to

be a major focus of the first grade curriculum in most classrooms. The amount of time the typical student spent on reading lessons or projects per day was more than an hour and a

half, whereas the typical student spent more than a half hour

but less than an hour on mathematics per day. Although reading and language arts were taught daily to all but 2 percent of

Table 2. Percentage of first-graders whose teachers reported doing activities or working on student skills in reading and language arts

daily, by type of activity or skill and selected teacher and school characteristics: 1999-2000

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 The free or reduced-price lunch analysis is limited to students in public schools.

NOTE: Not all apparent differences in this table are statistically significant. Standard errors are available at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/

pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006056. SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Early Childhood Longitudinal Study,

Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K), First Grade Public Use Data File, Spring 2000.

students, the reading activities they took part in and the skills

they worked on in class varied depending on teacher and school

characteristics. For example, students whose teachers had taken

six or more college courses in reading pedagogy were more

likely to discuss new or difficult vocabulary daily than were

students whose teachers had taken two or fewer college courses

in reading pedagogy.

References

Cunningham, A. and Stanovich, K. (1997). Early Reading Acquisition

and Its Relation to Reading Experience and Ability 10 Years

Later. Developmental Psychology, 33(6), 934-945.

Denton, K., and West, J. (2002). Children’s Reading and Mathematics

Achievement in Kindergarten and First Grade (NCES 2002-

125). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC:

National Center for Education Statistics.

Education Commission of the States. (2005). Full Day Kindergarten:

A Study of State Policies in the United States. Denver, CO:

Education Commission of the States Distribution Center.

Prac- Write Cap- ComDiscuss tice with ital- Com- posing

Read new or writing invent- ization muni- and ReadWork student- difficult alpha- ed and cating writing ing

Teacher and school on Read chosen Read vocab- bet spell- punc- ideas sen- aloud Vocab-

 characteristics phonics silently books aloud ulary letters ings tuation orally tences fluently ulary

Total 82.6 76.8 73.8 67.9 67.4 61.7 61.0 80.9 68.1 67.2 62.7 61.5

Teacher characteristics

Years teaching

3 or fewer years 76.1 78.9 77.9 68.8 62.2 62.1 70.9 80.0 68.2 70.3 66.8 56.1

4-9 years 80.7 77.1 77.6 66.5 62.5 60.3 64.2 82.8 62.4 66.3 62.6 52.7

10-19 years 82.8 75.6 72.1 67.1 68.3 59.8 59.5 81.9 65.3 66.4 58.9 61.4

20 or more years 87.7 76.1 69.9 69.5 73.3 64.8 53.9 79.3 74.9 66.7 63.8 71.7

Number of college

courses in teaching

reading

0-2 79.2 75.7 72.6 65.9 60.2 55.8 61.1 79.5 64.8 64.4 62.3 57.1

3-5 82.0 77.5 73.9 67.7 65.1 61.5 59.7 80.3 67.4 65.1 62.9 58.3

6 or more 86.2 77.4 77.2 71.4 77.6 69.2 64.1 83.8 71.3 73.1 64.4 69.5

School characteristics

School type

Public 82.3 77.7 75.4 68.9 68.9 62.4 62.8 81.4 69.1 68.5 63.3 62.5

Private 84.2 70.3 63.4 61.2 56.9 56.9 48.7 77.7 61.4 58.4 58.5 54.9

Percentage of school's 

students eligible for free

or reduced-price lunch1

0-49 percent 80.5 76.6 75.9 65.2 67.1 61.1 61.3 81.7 67.8 68.5 60.1 61.4

50 percent or more 84.8 76.6 73.4 73.7 71.4 64.3 60.6 79.8 69.3 66.0 67.4 64.6

Activities Skills
Instructional Focus in First Grade NCES 2006–056

The Issue Brief series presents information on education topics of current interest.

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