Mrs. Vella's 1st Grade Super Stars

Weekly Reminders

Posted on January 3, 2019 by darsie.vella

Image result for free winter clipart reminders

1- FRIDAY:
Homework due
Students are welcome to wear a Quest Spirit shirt with uniform pants or traditional uniforms to show their Ram PRIDE

2- Scholastic Book Order. Orders due Thursday, January 31st. Click here for easy online ordering, our class code is JBTR2: Scholastic Book Club

3- Library day is Monday, January 7th. The kids are really looking forward to getting a new book so please make sure their book in in their backpack Monday morning before heading to school. If they don’t return their book they can’t check out a new one.

Dear Parents,
Just a reminder again, that homework is due tomorrow. Please remind your student to make sure they put their GREEN homework folder in their backpacks each night/morning before heading to school.

I apologize for not getting the kids December reading calendars replaced with a January calendar. I had them printed out and all ready to go this morning but ran out of time to get them in today…UGH… I will make sure they are in their homework folders tomorrow. LOL On the bright side, it gives you one more day/night to make sure you have ALL your students reading minutes recorded.

Also, I REALLY, REALLY wanted to thank each and every one of you for being so awesome to work with. You are one of the best groups of parents I have ever had!!! I consider myself VERY, VERY fortunate, and appreciate your continued help and support with all things classroom…field trips, class parties, in class volunteers who help with centers in the morning or math in the afternoon etc, YOU ROCK!!!

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Homework for January 2nd-4th

Posted on January 1, 2019 by darsie.vella

1- Math Homework: Understand Sums Greater than Ten

A letter titled “Dear Family” will be sent home in your child’s green take-home-folder (Monday). Please have your student review it as the students still need some extra work on it. It provides an activity to do together. Please read the letter and invite your child to share what they know about the concept by doing the activity together. $Math Homework Lesson 14$
- PLEASE HAVE STUDENTS SHOW THEIR WORK
- ***Parents, I need YOUR SIGNATURE on the math homework as well as your student’s, indicating you did this activity with your child**
*These are due on Friday. When students return this letter with their name and a parent signature (indicating a parent read it and did the activity with their child), the student will earn “Star Dust”
- Optional: for extra math practice, play any of these Math Fact Activities 2018
2-*NEW* FLUENCY PASSAGE sample FOR THE WEEK:
YOU DO NOT NEED TO RETURN THE NEW FLUENCY PASSAGE or THE RETELL ROPE. USE IT TO HELP PREPARE YOUR STUDENT FOR JANUARY DIBELS TESTING. 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.
1st- Using a yellow crayon or high lighter, have your student highlight each word in the passage they can read correctly without any help FLUENTLY.
2nd- Go back through the passage and have a “Good Conversation” about the words they were unsure of or didn’t know. Talk about what strategies good readers use to problem solve/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.

WEDNESDAY– 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.

3.-Daily Reading Fluency (available in the Green Homework folders). I am sending home a “Fast and Fluent” page for your student to practice reading this week. There are 10 words and 10 sentences that your student needs to read daily. Have your student do 3- 1 minute timings each day on the words and sentences then, record how many words they read CORRECTLY in each one minute timing, NOT how long it took them to read it 3 times. Let me know if you have any questions. The goal is to get more words read correctly each day with each timing. The time they spend reading can count toward their 20minutes.

These sentences contain words that focus on the phonics concept/sounds we will be working on that week. They also help students with what correct sentence structure should look like.

This week we will focus on LONG /i/: i_e (aka CVCe consonant/vowel/consonant/e, The Tickle “e” where the vowel e on the end of a word reached over and tickles the vowel and makes it say it’s name) as in:
- bike, spike, mine, and write
- Below is a bigger overview of this weeks LA focus:

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Welcome Back!

Posted on January 1, 2019 by darsie.vella

We are excited for your return tomorrow. We hope you had a very happy break with your family and friends. We know that the children are excited about the gifts they received, but we are requesting that all toys and gifts remain at home. Thank you for your support on this matter.

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Happy New Year

Posted on December 31, 2018 by darsie.vella

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I hope you ALL have a wonderful New Years Eve Celebration!!! See you in a couple days…

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MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Posted on December 25, 2018 by darsie.vella

Image result for christmas free clip art

Merry Christmas to all my Quest 1st grade families. I hope you are all enjoying your time off! It’s sure is hard to believe that we’ve already been out for 10 whole days! Please be safe if/when traveling. I’m sure looking forward to seeing all my cute little kidlets faces next week and hearing all about their fun adventures.

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Library Day Reminder

Posted on December 10, 2018 by darsie.vella

Just a reminder that tomorrow is our library day.

Please make sure your student comes to school with their library book in their backpack. Students who fail to return their library book will not be able to check out a book tomorrow. If your student loses their book, or it gets damaged, PLEASE talk with Mrs. Anderson for replacement fees.

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Important!!! Weekly Reminders for December 10th-14th

Posted on December 9, 2018 by darsie.vella

Monday, December 10th:
Library Day
Last day of Science and Art club.

Tuesday, December 11th:
Growth Monitoring test (School Wide) so please make sure your student had a good night sleep, good breakfast and is on time to school.
Make up missed assignments and tests

Wednesday, December 12:
Pajama Day
Growth Monitoring test (School Wide) so please make sure your student had a good night sleep, good breakfast and is on time to school.
Make up missed assignments and tests

Thursday, December 13:
4th Grade Choir Concert
Stem Lab
Make up missed assignments and tests

Friday, December 14th:
Early Out
Free Dress Down Day
Christmas Sing-A-Long (In the morning)
First Grade Party: (In the afternoon)

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Weekly Reminders for December 3rd-7th

Posted on December 6, 2018 by darsie.vella

1- FRIDAY:
Homework due
*Students are welcome to show their Quest pride by wearing their school spirit shirts (with uniform pants)

2- On Friday, December 14th we will have our First Grade Winter Party 11:40am-1:15pm. Let me know if you can and would like to come in and help. However, if find that you have time and haven’t let me know in advance, LOL you can always just show up. Many hands make fun, light work!

3- Amazon shopping at smile.amazon.com/ch/26-0198425 and AmazonSmile donates to Quest Academy at no extra cost to you.

Upcoming events:
BIG PAINTING PROJECT TOMORROW so you may want to send an old shirt in with your student to wear on top of their clothes if you are worried that they may get paint on them.

Growth Monitoring Testing– December 11-12 (sleep well, eat a good breakfast)
Pajama Day– December 12th
Christmas Sing-along– December 14th (in the morning)
Christmas Party– December 14th (after lunch)
Winter Break– December 15-January 2

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Homework for December 3rd-7th

Posted on December 3, 2018 by darsie.vella

1- Math Homework: Understand Sums Greater than Ten

A letter titled “Dear Family” will be sent home in your child’s green take-home-folder (Monday). Please have your student review it as the students still need some extra work on it. It provides an activity to do together. Please read the letter and invite your child to share what they know about the concept by doing the activity together.
- PLEASE HAVE STUDENTS SHOW THEIR WORK
- ***Parents, I need YOUR SIGNATURE on the math homework as well as your student’s, indicating you did this activity with your child**
*These are due on Friday. When students return this letter with their name and a parent signature (indicating a parent read it and did the activity with their child), the student will earn “Star Dust”
- Optional: for extra math practice, play any of these Math Fact Activities 2018
2-*NEW* FLUENCY PASSAGE sample FOR THE WEEK:
YOU DO NOT NEED TO RETURN THE NEW FLUENCY PASSAGE or THE RETELL ROPE. USE IT TO HELP PREPARE YOUR STUDENT FOR JANUARY DIBELS TESTING. 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: Sorry I didn’t realize I had copied the same passage again for this week but it will give the kids another chance to really knock their reading out of the park this week. Re-reads are ALWAYS a good thing especially for beginners…
1st- Using a yellow crayon or high lighter, have your student highlight each word in the passage they can read correctly without any help FLUENTLY.
2nd- Go back through the passage and have a “Good Conversation” about the words they were unsure of or didn’t know. Talk about what strategies good readers use to problem solve/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.

3.-Daily Reading Fluency (available in the Green Homework folders). I am sending home a “Fast and Fluent” page for your student to practice reading this week. There are 10 words and 10 sentences that your student needs to read daily. Have your student do 3- 1 minute timings each day on the words and sentences then, record how many words they read CORRECTLY in each one minute timing, NOT how long it took them to read it 3 times. Let me know if you have any questions. The goal is to get more words read correctly each day with each timing. The time they spend reading can count toward their 20minutes.

These sentences contain words that focus on the phonics concept/sounds we will be working on that week. They also help students with what correct sentence structure should look like.

This week we will focus on LONG /a/: a_e (aka CVCe consonant/vowel/consonant/e, The Tickle “e” where the vowel e on the end of a word reached over and tickles the vowel and makes it say it’s name) as in:
- bake, rake, game, grate, and ape
- Below is a bigger overview of this weeks LA focus:

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First Grade Class Christma Party

Posted on December 2, 2018 by darsie.vella

Let’s Kick off Christmas Break with a Pre-Break First Grade Party on Friday, December 14th!!!!
ALL PARENTS ARE WELCOME TO COME AND VOLUNTEER…Please let me know if you can come and help with the fun in our classroom.

ALL Students will visit each 1st grade classroom for a fun activity.
Below are the current planned activities:
Vella- Snowman Hats (No Food)
Knight- Service Members Christmas Cards (No Food)
Nelson- Game (No Food)
Hills/Tiechert- Christmas Bingo Game (No Food)
Gieseke- Grinch (whipped cream, M&M, pretzel)

APPROXIMATE Rotation times are as follows:
11:40-11:55
12:00-12:15
12:20-12:35
12:40-12:55
1:00-1:15