First Grade Skills Review for the Spring
Buzzing bees, butterflies, longer days, and beautiful flowers announce the arrival of spring after a dreary winter. Students and teachers are already counting down the days until summer vacation. But there is still so much learning to pack into the last few months of school. I know all too well just how busy the spring months can be for teachers. As we start the process of winding up the year, review activities can be an important part of helping our students reach mastery on so many first grade skills. A spring first grade skills review is the perfect addition to your center rotations, morning work and homework in these final months.
the power of a review
As teachers we have worked hard all year long to help our students learn. We’ve been checking off standards one by one and our students have been exposed to a lot of skills and concepts. Strategically using review activities in the classroom can help students keep those skills and concepts fresh. Gone are the days of learn it, take a test on it, and forget it! We want our students to truly master these new skills.
Did you know that repetition is the key to learning. It takes multiple repetitions for information to make its way from short term memory into long term memory. So building these repetitions into the classroom routine is a necessary part of the learning process for our students.
As students gain independence, a skills review can be an important part of cementing the learning in their brains. Since the skills are review, students are generally able to complete these activities independently which makes them perfect for centers, morning work or even homework. And if you have some speedy workers in your room, review activities make a wonderful early finisher activity too! As students work independently you are able to focus on some of the other important things that need your attention.
A Peek into my classroom . . .
I would often use these printable pages for morning work, laying them out on student’s tables to work on while we got ourselves prepared for the day. Once we had the routine down, my students knew to go right to their tables, pull out their pencil boxes, and get right to work. It made the morning routine in our classroom so much smoother, and I was able to sneak in a little review activity at the same time.
In the past I have printed out the entire packet and made a monthly morning work journal for my students to work on each day. With over 60 pages there was enough for them to complete one math and one language arts page each day. That was a great way to start the day and engage the brain for the learning that was to come.
I have even had parents tell me they have pulled them out in July and August to have their kiddos go over the book with them while secretly helping them review their first grade learning over the summer.
Math Review Activities
First grade math is sure packed with a variety of skills and concepts. With everything from 2D & 3D shapes, to adding & subtracting 2 digit numbers, your students have worked on a vast array of math skills this year. As a classroom teacher it was important that I build in review of these skills for my students. I created a variety of printable practice pages that my students would use for this purpose. In this spring review packet your students will be working on the following math skills:
- 2D & 3D Shapes
- Fractions
- Money
- Measurement
- 2 digit Addition
- 2 digit Subtraction
- Time
- Graphing & Analyzing Data
- Word Problems
- Math Fact Fluency
Here’s a little glimpse inside this packet and some of my favorite activities.
Shape It Up
Learning shapes has always been a favorite activity for my first graders. There’s just something about moving beyond the circle, square and triangle that really makes the kids feel like they are learning “big kid” stuff! When it is time to practice and review 2D and 3D shapes the shape match is a winner! What’s better than shapes paired with a cut and paste activity? In the eyes of a 6 or 7 year old – nothing!
Another favorite shape activities requires students to put on those thinking caps and solve shape riddles. What Shape Am I? is a great review of the important characteristics of different shapes and a wonderful vocabulary review.
Money, Money, Money
Working with money is something our students will do for the rest of their lives. Even at an early age it is important to build a strong foundation in money skills. In this spring skills review packet, students will practice identifying coins, determining the value of sets of coins and even shopping!
The Let’s Shop page gives students the opportunity to do some critical thinking. With a price for an item like a toy truck, game system, or teddy bear students are asked to color the coins to match the price. This is a great review for coin identification, coin value and adding money! That’s a lot of great skills practice in one activity.
Tick-Tock
Telling time is a brand new skill for many first-graders. The First Grade Spring Skills Review packet includes 4 pages dedicated to reviewing time on digital and analog clocks. This is another one of those skills that our students will use for many years to come.
When students finish the time activities, I would ask them to turn their paper over and list some of the activities they might do for each time listed on the page. It was always fun to see some of their silly answers like, “Watch my cat look at birds.”, “My brother is yelling.” or “Nothing”.
adding, subtracting and more, Oh My!
This spring skills review wouldn’t be complete with some practice with the important and foundational skills of adding and subtracting. This Work It Out page has students working with multiples of ten to add and subtract. Not only is this a great number sense review when it comes to working with tens, but students are also asked to identify odd and even numbers. I don’t know about you, but any time my students can work on more than one skill at a time it is time well spent. While it is not always recommended to do that for a new skill, a review is a great time to combine skills.
Language Arts Review Activities
Similarly to math, it is important our students review and practice language arts skills too! There is so much growth that happens in the areas of reading and writing during the first grade year. There are also lots and lots of new grammar concepts too! A good review in the spring, and all year long, helps those new concepts to take root.
There are many language arts skills covered in this spring skills review pack. Here’s what your students will be working on with these activities:
- Spelling with Vowel Teams
- Spelling with Bossy R
- Short and Long Vowel Sounds
- ‘ed’ and ‘ing’ Endings
- Contractions
- Verbs
- Articles
- Demonstratives
- Adjectives
- Opinion Writing
Here’s a sneak peek at some of my favorite language arts activities from this packet!
Contraction Attraction
Using contractions with speech comes quite naturally for native speakers. However, knowing what those contractions stand for and how to spell this is not so natural. This spring skills review includes a variety of contractions review activities. Students will work on making contractions with have/has, is/are and would. I love to extend these activities by having students make sentences from the contractions when they are done. This is a great opportunity for students to not only review but also do a quick check for understanding.
Wow! That’s Intense!
Not only will students work on ordering words by their level of intensity but they will also review a variety of amazing vocabulary words! The Levels of Intensity activities will have your students focus on adjectives and verbs. Students will take four provided words and put them in order from least intense to most intense.
This makes a great activity to connect with word choice in writer’s workshop. Students can practice writing a sentence and replacing the adjective or verb with a more intense word. When they make their new sentence they are so proud because they can tell the difference that one word can make.
phonics practice
Can you have too much practice on phonics skills? At the first grade level I think that answer is ‘NO!’ As students learn to read they are learning so many different phonics skills and rules. And as they learn to read these rules, it is also important to work on spelling patterns too! This spring skills review packet has lots of phonics review activities too.
One of the most difficult spelling concepts for students is Bossy R. After all, three of the five vowels + r make the exact same sound. It’s a wonder any of us learned to spell! 🙂 The See & Spell activities give students lots of practice with spelling using phonics based spelling patterns.
One of the favorite activities in my classroom was word list writing. Students would use a list of words and write a story that must include all of the provided words. They took this challenge very seriously and some of their best writing came from this engaging activity. These See & Spell activities make great word lists for writing challenge. It also added a strategic phonics based spelling aspect to writing time too!
grab your First Grade Skills review
You can find all of these math and language arts skills review pages, and many more, in the Spring Skills Review Pack. The No Prep printable pages are perfect for morning work, independent centers, homework or small group instruction for students who need a little reteaching.
As a former classroom teacher, I understand how hectic and busy teacher life is! This spring skills review pack also helped me save time with planning. I could quickly prepare morning work and center activities without sacrificing the rigor and review I wanted my students to have.
You can grab these Spring First Grade Skills Review Activities for your classroom too!
save these spring skills review activities
Pin this to your favorite classroom Pinterest board and come back when you need some great skills review and practice activities for your first grade students.
