Mrs. Vella's 1st Grade Super Stars

Your child has worked SO hard this year and deserves to maintain or even increase his/her skills over the summer!  Here are some ideas for keeping your child learning over the summer:

#1: READ!  

No other skill is more important to maintain over the summer months.  Children who read regularly are shown to have higher intelligence and general knowledge, less stress, better fluency, improved analytical thinking, broader vocabulary, better memory and increased writing skills. Please use every opportunity (long car rides, waits at the dentist/doctor, before bedtime, etc.) to have your child read to you.

• Your child’s iReady (clever.com) and Wonders accounts will still be available until July 30, and RAZ kids will be available thru the entire summer.
• Visit the public library.  Your public library has excellent resources for choosing appropriate books for your child.  Or check out some great online resources, such as:
• http://www.greatschools.org/cgi-bin/showarticle/623
• http://www.scholastic.com/parents/books-and-reading/book-lists-and-recommendations/ages-6-7
• Mrs. Anderson, our librarian, has several summer reading programs and links in her Google Classroom (reading lists, library programs, reading journals, reading logs etc.)

#2: Write!

Writing is “backwards reading” and not only improves your child’s writing skills, but also improves his/her reading skills as well.  Encourage your child to use best penmanship and to sound out words phonetically, and assist your child in creating complete sentences that include proper use of upper and lower-case letters, and to include proper punctuation.

• Encourage your child to keep a journal of happenings or discoveries over the summer months.  You may even have your child continue to use the extra pages in his/her first grade journal, which is in a format familiar to your child.  We strongly encourage students to write (with an actual paper and pencil!) over the summer – not just write electronically.  This helps to maintain proper penmanship and puts a greater focus on sentence structure, rather than on hunting for letters on a keyboard.
• Electronic writing is great, too, though!  It is important that your child maintain familiarity with the keys on the keyboard!  

#3: Math!

We learned SO many different math skills this year and it is important that your child remember these skills so that he/she can build on them in 2nd grade!  Review addition, subtraction, place value, time, measurement, 2 and 3-dimensional shapes, graphing, skip-counting, etc. with your child

• Math Games & Activities.

• Your child’s iReady account (clever.com) will be available until July 30.

• Summer Math Challenge (recommended by the state!) https://hub.lexile.com/summer-math-challenge
• Find great online games and resources for sharpening math skills, including:
• Turtle Diary: http://www.turtlediary.com/grade-1-games.html
• Education.com: http://www.education.com/games/math/first-grade/

To encourage reading throughout the summer check out these fun summer reading programs:

Barnes and Noble-
Summer Reading Program  
Fill out the reading journal, then bring your completed journal to a Barnes and Noble store to receive a FREE book.  Click here for more information and to print your own reading journal: Barnes and Noble Summer Reading




Weber County Libraries-
Fun Things to Do
Lots of summer fun links; reading and more! Make sure you check out San Diego Zoo and Monterey Bay Aquarium live cams: Weber County Summer Reading 



Quest Academy 
Genre Reading Journal with Mrs. Anderson
Read a story from each genre, or have a story read to you, then color a picture about the story. Return your completed genre reading journal to Mrs. Anderson at the beginning of the next school year and you will get a prize!
(Reading Journal to be included in your end of year pickup

• Please join me for our last “Morning Meeting” of the year. Use the daily code to join me at 9:00. We will play the “Guess Who” game, share and then I will leave to come and visit my 1st grade friends who I didn’t have the chance to visit yesterday.
• I can’t wait to see everyone!!!