Numbers and facts to 20
Kindergarten counted to ten. Grade 1 asks for something harder than a bigger number: facts to twenty that come back instantly, without counting on fingers. That shift from working it out to knowing it is what the year is really about.
What Alberta asks for by the end of Grade 1
The subject: Mathematics
- Recall addition facts to a sum of 20, and the subtraction facts that go with them.
- Identify and sort 2‑D and 3‑D shapes.
- Put objects in order by length, by area and by how much they hold.
- Identify cycles of time from nature and from a calendar.
This is the published snapshot, not the whole program. Grade 1 also covers numbers to 100, place value in tens and ones, and skip counting — all of which the facts work sits on top of.
The words, first
These are the terms a teacher will use at a parent interview, defined before anything below uses them.
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Number fact | A single addition or subtraction a child knows outright, like 7 + 3 = 10. The word recall in the outcome is doing real work: counting it out is not recall. |
| Fact family | The four facts built from one set of three numbers: 7 + 3 = 10, 3 + 7 = 10, 10 − 3 = 7, 10 − 7 = 3. |
| Addend / sum | The numbers being added, and the answer. In 7 + 3 = 10 the addends are 7 and 3. |
| Difference | The answer to a subtraction. |
| Part-part-whole | The picture behind a fact family: two parts make a whole, and the whole minus one part gives the other. |
| Ten frame | A 2 × 5 grid. It makes numbers to ten visible at a glance, and shows how far a number is from ten — which is what makes bridging to twenty possible. |
| Subitize | Seeing how many without counting. A full ten frame is ten at a glance; so is a die showing five. |
| Place value | What the position of a digit means. In 24 the 2 is two tens, not two. |
| Non-standard unit | Measuring with paper clips, hand spans or blocks instead of a ruler. Grade 1 orders and compares before it measures with numbers. |
| Cycle | Something that repeats in the same order: day and night, the seasons, the days of the week, the months. |
- 7 + 3 = 10
- 3 + 7 = 10
- 10 − 3 = 7
- 10 − 7 = 3
What to do at home
- Ask for facts, not sums — “What's 6 and 4?” expecting an answer in a second. If it takes ten seconds and some fingers, that fact is not learnt yet — and knowing which ones are missing is the useful information.
- Play with a die and a ten frame — Roll, fill, and ask how many more to ten. Making ten is the single most useful fact family in Grade 1.
- Count the change — Skip counting by fives and tens is easier with real coins than with a worksheet.
- Order three of something — Three spoons by length, three cups by how much they hold. Alberta asks for ordering, not measuring, and ordering needs no ruler.
- Use the calendar — Which day is it, which comes next, how many days until Saturday. Cycles of time is a fridge-door outcome.
- Name the solids — A tin is a cylinder, a box is a cube, a ball is a sphere. Sorting the recycling is a shapes lesson nobody has to schedule.
Sheets you can print for this
- How many? — ten frames
- Making ten — the most useful facts in grade 1
- Fact families — one picture, four facts
- Adding to 20 — twelve facts
- Taking away from 20 — twelve facts
- Put them in order — longest, biggest, holds most
The expectations above are paraphrased from Alberta Education's New K–6 curriculum fact sheets, which publish a snapshot of each grade rather than the complete program of studies. Alberta's full programs are at alberta.ca/curriculum.