♪- [Man] Good morning to a brand new day.

♪ ♪ Time to learn and games to play.

♪ ♪ Learning things is so much fun.

♪ ♪ Learning is good for everyone.

♪ (upbeat music) - Good morning fabulous first grade!

Welcome back to our PBS classroom.

I'm Mrs. Hammack, and I'm here to help you practice and learn all the skills you need to be excellent readers and writers.

Today I'm reading a story called "Elmer".

It's about a patchwork elephant.

Have you ever seen a patchwork elephant?

This story is by David McKee.

And Elmer has a problem, all the other elephants make fun of him because they're gray, but he is not.

And they make fun of him because he looks different.

Has that ever happened to you before?

It doesn't feel very good does it?

But you know what?

Elmer learns to celebrate his difference and he learns that it's important to be true to yourself.

I think this story has a great lesson and I hope you'll check it out.

Either your County public library or you can look for it on Sora.

This is a great story and I think you will really enjoy it.

All right.

Speaking of Sora, let's check our top five for this week.

Today we're gonna check the number five spot and see who is in the five spot for the most checkouts last week on our Sora.

Here we go.

(gasps) Birney bears.

Great job, Birney.

You've been on our list for a few weeks.

I'm very proud of you.

Great job.

I'm gonna give you a round of applause.

That is awesome.

There's one more thing I want to tell you about.

I was noticing my friend Clifford, what's that?

Yeah, right there.

Do you see he's working on one of our activity books?

Do you have an activity book like Clifford?

Well, I'd love to send you one.

All you need to do is write to me here at PBS with the address on the bottom of your screen you can even send an email if you'd like, just make sure that you send me your home address so I know exactly where to send your activity book.

I hope you'll write to me.

I look forward to hearing from you.

You could suggest a book that's one of your favorites and I'll be sure to share it on our classroom with everybody else.

So write to me.

All right.

I think it's time for us to train our ears for sound, don't you?

Yes.

All right.

We're gonna play a game that you've gotten really good at.

It's called the categorization game.

That's where we listen to the phone names or sounds of words and two words-- I'm gonna give you a sample.

Two words are alike in some way and one word does not belong.

All right.

So here's our practice.

Are you ready?

More, treat, shore.

What do you hear?

Right!

More and shore, both say or, don't they?

But treat does not.

Good listening.

All right.

So that's kind of how we play the game.

I'm going to tell you a list of three words and you're gonna tell me which one does not belong.

Okay.

All right, here we go.

Poor, stack, store.

Poor, stack, store.

Good.

Poor and store both have the or sound but sta-ah-ack, doesn't.

Good listening.

All right, let's try this one.

Cart, stop, heart.

Did you hear it?

Oh, good.

Cart and heart, both say the R sound, but sta-ah-op, does not.

All right.

One last one.

Let's see.

Let's see if I can trick you.

Are you ready?

Turn up those listening ears.

Paid, trade, lend.

Oh, that was too easy for you.

Paid and trade, they both say the ade sound but le-eh-end does not.

Great listening.

All right my friends, we're gonna do some fluency because we've learned a lot of spelling patterns that are kind of tricky for first graders to remember.

So let me get my cards and let's take a look at some of our spelling patterns.

You're gonna say the spelling pattern and then the sound that it makes, with me.

You ready?

Now, remember if one of these spelling patterns you're not too sure about, I want you to write it down and I want you to practice it all week long so you can get it locked into that great, big, beautiful brain of yours.

Okay.

All right, here we go.

E-Y says E. O-A says O. A-Y says A. I-G-H says I. E-E says E. O-E says O. O-W says O. E-A says E. A-I says A.

Now, remember last week we practiced these R controlled vowels.

I-R says er.

U-R says er.

E-R says er.

And then a couple weeks ago we practiced this vowel, that's controlled by the R. A-R says R. Remember the star card.

Good job.

All right.

This week I have another R controlled vowel that we're gonna learn the spelling patterns for.

Here I brought them my corn card.

It says, or, like in the middle of corn.

Did you hear it?

Yeah, you're right.

You heard some of those in our categorization game.

Good listening.

All right.

So for the, or, for the corn card we can spell that three different ways.

And we're gonna practice all three of those ways this week so that you can learn them.

So we can spell it with the O-A-R says or I want you to say this with me: O-A-R says or.

We can also say O-R says or, and O-R-E says or.

Okay.

Now, today I have some words that we're going to practice blending together, using those spelling patterns.

So you can see how that looks in a word.

So here's our first word because O-A-R is the most common way to spell the or sound.

So here have the S says (hissing) Good.

Now all of those letters together say or.

(hissing) or, say it with me (hissing) or, soar.

Great job.

Did you hear how many sounds it has.

(hissing) or, only two sounds but look at all those letters.

One, two, three, four, four.

Isn't that amazing?

Wow.

All right.

Let's do check the next one.

We're gonna use our O-R spelling pattern.

(hissing) or, what's that one?

T, good.

(hissing) ort sort, great job.

How about this one?

Shh or shore.

Terrific.

If that's tricky, don't worry.

We've got all week long to get that locked in our memory but let's take a look at what our reading chart and what it looks like with words.

Are you ready?

Let's read O-R words.

Actually, it's not O-R, it's the or.

When you see the lines here that says say the sound.

Or, for, buh-orn, born, mm-or, st or, store, shh or short t orn torn and t or ch, torch.

How'd you do?

Great job.

All right.

It's time for us to look at our high-frequency words for the week.

Every week, we have six words and today we have six words.

So we're gonna take a look at each one of them.

All right.

The first one is better.

B-E-T-T-E-R.

Better.

Make sure you're practicing saying them out loud.

We wanna read it, we wanna spell it and if you have something to write with, write it.

That way they get locked in fast as you know your name.

The next one is began.

Let's spell it.

B-E-G-A-N, began.

Then we have sure, sure.

S-U-R-E, sure.

Good job.

We have the word, right.

R-I-G-H-T, right.

Now this isn't the kind of write that you do with a pencil.

This is more of a direction.

I turned right.

Or this is my right hand.

Okay?

And this word is learn.

Learn.

I want you to learn all these words.

L-E-A-R-N, learn.

Good job.

And the last one is guess.

G-U-E-S-S, guess.

Terrific.

All right, I have some sentences for you and remember on Mondays, we just look with our eyes to identify those high-frequency words because we have to train our eyes to see them, right?

So that we can read them.

All right, let's read sentence one.

This is the right way to hold a fork.

Right, as in, correct.

So it can mean a direction and it can also mean, correct.

She will learn to ride a bike.

There's our word learn.

It began to snow last night.

Began.

Good job.

I hope you feel better.

There's our word better.

Now, look at this word here.

Do you see how it has a question mark at the end and we're starting with the word can?

That means we need to change our voice a little.

Can you guess how old he is?

Do you hear how it goes up because it's a question?

And here's our word guess.

He is sure he will be on time.

There's our word sure.

Great.

This week, while you're practicing, I want you to be looking for those words in all of the stories that you're reading and see if you can find them.

And when you do circle them or write them down so that you can practice all week long and get those locked in.

Remember high-frequency words are the words that show up the most often.

They show up all the time in stories that we read.

So we want to really get those memorized.

Boys and girls, I am so excited that you came to spend some time with me and practice and learn.

Will you sing with me?

♪ Good bye now.

Good bye now.

♪ ♪ The clock says we're done.

♪ ♪ I'll see you tomorrow.

♪ ♪ Good bye everyone.

♪ Come back tomorrow so we can practice more of that or sound and all of those crazy spelling patterns that go with it.

Have a great day.

Buh-bye.

(upbeat music) ♪- [Man] Good morning to a brand new day.

♪ ♪ Time to learn and games to play.

♪ ♪ Learning things is so much fun.

♪ ♪ Learning is good for everyone.

♪