What is your first grade son learning in Chumash now?

behappy2

Thu, Nov 26 2020, 1:24 pm

Im not understanding the question. Every school is diff. Most schools do Bereishis and either translate in Yiddish or English and have minimal homework. In the beginning they are probably covering a pasuk a week. I don't have a kid in first grade. This is off memory.

chatz

Thu, Nov 26 2020, 1:30 pm

Bereishis. They just started perek beis. English translation. They memorized a lot of chumash words with English translation from perek aleph last year, so they started already knowing a lot of words.

Hmwk is mostly kriah, making up from lost months last year. Takes 2 minutes.

I'm curious why are your asking.

amother

Thu, Nov 26 2020, 1:36 pm

Because my son's school covers a tremendous amount of ground and I was wondering if that's the norm. They already learned the entire first parsha, and continue to do chazarah from the beginning for the translation. They don't wait for the boys to understand the translation- they learn and learn, and simultaneously slowly review the translation. It was very interesting to me, and I wanted to know how they do it in other schools.

amother

Aquamarine

Thu, Nov 26 2020, 1:51 pm

My son's school does it differently.
They learn the parsha of the week.
My 1st grade son does the first 4 pesukim.
They actually learn next week's and review this week's.
Homework Sunday-wednesday is one passuk a week.
Example this week, they're learning Vayishlach and reviewing Vayetzei. Homework is from Vayetzei.
In general, their focus for Chumash is an emphasis on shoresh, prefix, suffix.
Each week they add more shorashim to the chart. Yataza, Holach, lan, etc, and as new prefixes and suffixes come up, they learn them.
The goal being to have a working vocabulary and understanding of the format of the passuk to eventually be able to understand the passuk alone.
Each year, they add more.
2nd grade 10 pesukim
3rd grade until shaini with one Rashi a week
4th grade until shlishi with 2-4 Rashis a week
By 8th grade, they have a combination of learning and preparing the whole parsha with most of the Rashis for Sunday's test.
It seems to work.

The story or halachos are taught in Parsha class.

amother

Thu, Nov 26 2020, 1:56 pm

amother [ Aquamarine ] wrote:

Wow! In my son's school they actually don't do Parshas Hashavua. They just do Chumash. Such opposite methods! But both very interesting.

amother

Aquamarine

Thu, Nov 26 2020, 1:59 pm

amother [ OP ] wrote:

Wow! In my son's school they actually don't do Parshas Hashavua. They just do Chumash. Such opposite methods! But both very interesting.

Parsha is really a fancy word for StoryTime and coloring time. The Rebbi gives out parsha coloring sheets for them to color while he talks
By the time the parsha gets more boring (mishpatim, teruma) it's already Purim/Pesach time.

mha3484

Thu, Nov 26 2020, 2:01 pm

My son did two full parshios in first grade from Sept-June. They did berashis and noach with English translation. They pick up the pace as they get older. The homework was pretty minimal. He’s in 4th now I can’t totally remember but I think it was kriah practice where he had to translate words they were learning.

amother

Chartreuse

Thu, Nov 26 2020, 2:05 pm

They started the year with vayikra because that’s the minhag when they start learning but they switched to bereishis at some point maybe after Sukkos. They finished the first Perek of bereishis last week. Homework started as one passuk a day and is now 2, Shabbos is chazarah of the whole week. At the end of the Perek any boy who wants can get tested on the whole perek reading and translating into English. Once they move on to the next perek they don’t review the previous perek anymore.

amother

Bronze

Thu, Nov 26 2020, 2:50 pm

I have a first grader. They completely went a different route this year. There were many boys who struggled to read coming into first grade this year. They have been focusing on kriah fluency and learning the basics of Chumash grammar, shoroshim etc. last week they learned the first pasuk of vayikra. I haven’t heard yet when this is happening, but eventually they’l start bereishis, they translate into English, and typically do a few pasukim a week, homework is minimal, just to go over the pesukim and translation. No tests! They learn parsha on Thursday and Friday, and in our yeshiva over the weekend they have extra credit homework to read some of the parsha pesukim, if they do it, they receive a prize that week..