Whitt first-graders are busy every day with a variety of literacy skills. Each day is filled with many opportunities to read: the weekly focus poem, a shared book, guided reading in a small group setting, and a sustained silent reading time. One of the goals of the first-grade teachers is to have all of their students "fall in love with reading!"

Students are being taught to think mathematically and to reason. With lots of "hands-on" lessons using a variety of manipulatives, they are learning to see relationships and patterns and to use numbers with confidence to solve problems. They are learning far more than arithmetic; they are delving into measurement, geometry, statistics, and probability.

Science and Social Studies are integrated into the reading program. The goal is to guide children to apply the skills they learn in reading to the acquisition of knowledge through reading information books, magazines, and children's encyclopedias. This develops their associative skills, as well as the "basic skills." Interest is high because children are naturally curious about the world in which they live.