Mrs. Vella's 1st Grade Super Stars

**Please let me stress that this is optional practice for your student, not required.  We do ask for students to read 20+ minutes every day to develop their love for reading, increase fluency, vocabulary, and spelling .  

Although we have optional reviews, we  STRONGLY encourage your children to read. Reading with and too your children, and reading as a family has shown to increase student vocabulary, spelling and fluency.  We have learned that the public library has a wonderful app to access amazing books online called Libby.
You can access the app information at this link:  Libby Link   By using your public library account, your students can log in and choose from thousands of books online for free to read to you, you to read to them, your family to read together, etc.  Audio books followed along also are a great source to develop this love for reading with your child as they follow along in the book.  

1- Optional Math Practice: 

• The family letter below provides review in math that you can do with your student.  Please read the letter and invite your child to share what they know about the concept by doing the activity together.
• This is the standard we are working on this week:                                    

• This is the standard we worked on last week: Test will be on Tuesday, February 18th.
  

• Optional: for extra math practice, play any of these Math Fact Activities 2018

• Language Arts this week:                                                                                                  Reading 20 minutes per day.  No need to submit minutes, but we strongly encourage you to make reading a priority. Reading comprehension strategy: Help your child read a story and then retell the events from the story in the correct order while they are focusing on the characters, setting, and events. As well as, making and confirming predictions.  
  

2-FLUENCY PASSAGE FOR THE WEEK: Here is the example.  I hope you and your student will find the information interesting, as well as helpful in preparing for future fluency testing.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO RETURN THE FLUENCY PASSAGE.   It may take the entire 20 minutes to work through the passage on Monday. ALL the time your student spends on fluency counts toward their reading minutes.

MONDAY:
1st- Using a yellow crayon or high lighter, have your student highlight each word in the passage they can read correctly without any help.
2nd- Go back through the passage and have a “Good MEATY Conversation” about the words they were unsure of or didn’t know. Talk about what strategies good readers can use to figure out the word. Here are a few suggestions…CVC if there is only one vowel, it USUALLY make the short vowel sound, CVCe-is there an /e/ at the end of the word that makes the first vowel say it’s name. Is there a vowel team that follows the rule…When vowel teams go a walking, the first one USUALLY does the talking  such as ee, ea, ai, oa, etc. Are there words within words like “ants” at the end of elephants…”and” in the word land…Go over the fact that they can skip the word and use the context of the sentence to help them figure out what the word is and if it makes sense.
3rd- Lastly, read the passage together,  then using the retell rope,  have your student tell you what they read in order of event of information.
TUESDAY – THURSDAY
*AGAIN* POINT OUT THE WORDS YOUR STUDENT KNOWS and then GO OVER THE ONES THAT ARE TRICKY.  Have them sound out words that follow “Regular Rules.” Time them for ONE, one minute timing each day to see how far they can read on their own. Their accuracy/fluency should increase each time they read the sentences.
WE are looking for how many words they are reading correctly out of how many they read and then what they can retell.
PLEASE use the Re-Tell Ropes below OR the one I sent home, whenever you are reading with your student checking for understanding.  THIS  HELPS STUDENTS PREPARE FOR OUR  LANGUAGE ARTS WORK AND DIBELS  TEST COMPREHENSION.



















These are the high frequency words, vocabulary, phonics as well as other essential Language Arts skill we will be working on this week :

PLEASE REMEMBER TO SEND YOUR ORDER FORMS IN TOMORROW.  I just wanted to give you a HUGE THANKS for all your help and support with this fundraiser. Funds are used for class field trips, end of the year carnival and so much more. Feel free to support the kids at Quest, in our quest (LOL), for success with this fundraiser while saving money on something your already buying. 

We are selling Little Caesars crazy bread and sauce punch cards for $10. Each pass has 10 punches to get free crazy bread and sauce with every purchase. Please return the order form and money in the envelope by February 10th. Orders (cards) will be ready for pickup on Feb. 14th from 8am to 4pm. If needed, you can print the order form below. Thank you for your help and support.

1- FRIDAY:  Early out 1:00 pm
Students are welcome to wear a Quest Spirit shirt with uniform pants or traditional uniforms.

2- Please support our POQA Little Caesars Pizza fundraiser. It’s a great way to save money on something you’re already buying and support our school at the same time. Money from fundraisers pay for class field trips, end of the year carnival, books and OH SO MUCH MORE!

3- Valentine Day Friday, February 14th: Please DON’T WORRY about making a Valentine’s Day box for your student’s valentines. I always have the kids make a Valentines Day “Heart Boy/Girl” bag. They are so cute and the kids just love making them. We have have 22 students in our class. To make things easy, just have your student write FROM:________ (their name). As per Quest wellness policy, please don’t send  your student with food to hand out.

4- Valentine’s Day party: WE will be partying it up from 11:30-12:50. Our class will rotate to Mrs. Nelson’s class at approximately 12:10. We will be making Valentine’s Day hats and reading a story in our class, and decorating cookies and playing a games in Mrs. Nelson’s

5- Scholastic Book Order.  January book orders will be due on Friday, February 28th. Click here for easy online ordering, our class code is JBTR2: Scholastic Book Club


Upcoming dates:
February 5- 100 days of school
February 10- Little Caesar’s Fundraiser orders due
February 14- Valentine’s Party starting at 11:30-12 55 (approximately) volunteers welcome
February 17- NO SCHOOL (President’s Day)

• 
• The 100th Day of School if tomorrow!!!  Wednesday, February 5 and we are excited to celebrate!  Each child is welcome to bring a collection of 100 items that day to school (100 buttons, 100 signatures, 100 pom poms…) It’s fun to see what 100 of something looks like!  Just a couple guidelines:  

* Please let your child only bring in a collection that they can carry and manage by themselves.  IT NOT BE ANY BIGGER THAN WHAT  CAN EASILY FIT IN A GALLON SIZED (or smaller)  ZIP-LOCK and BE STORED IN THEIR CUBBY.
* No food items (per Quest policy)
*Please no items that have been banned (like Pokemon cards)
*Have fun thinking of a creative or unique collection you want to bring

WOW, how crazy is it to think that we have been in school for almost 100 days! WE are counting the days on our calendar math board. Friday, January 31 was the 97th day…

The 100th Day of School lands on Wednesday, February 5th and we are excited to celebrate!  Each child is welcome to bring a collection of 100 items that day to school (100 buttons, 100 signatures, 100 pom poms, 100 pennies, 100 small Legos, 100 cotton balls etc…) It’s fun to see what 100 of something looks like!  Just a couple guidelines:  
*  Please ONLY have your child only bring in a collection that they can carry and manage by themselves (in fact it would be nice if it could fit in a small Ziplock bag)
* No food items (per Quest policy)
*Please no items that have been banned (like Pokemon cards)
*Have fun thinking of a creative or unique collection you want to bring