(acoustic guitar music) ♪ Good morning to a brand new day ♪ ♪ Time to learn and the games to play ♪ ♪ Learning things is so much fun ♪ ♪ Learning is good for everyone ♪ (acoustic guitar music) (playful music) - Happy Friday, second grade!

Welcome back to our PBS classroom.

My name is Mrs. Vang.

I'm so excited to have you join me so that we can become amazing readers and writers.

Now remember, all week we are focusing on becoming an amazing writer, 'cause you guys are doing such a good job at becoming amazing readers.

Now I have another book to share with you guys, and this is actually a fun book.

This is a book called Nouns and Verbs Have a Field Day, because if you have been watching, you know we've been learning a lot about verbs, and we have already learned about nouns.

Now in this book, we go back to Mr. Wright's class, and guess what?

The nouns and the verbs cannot get along and cannot play together, so they have to find out a way to work together to make a complete sentence.

Isn't that such a fun book to read?

It really is, boys and girls.

So if you want to read more about this book, see if you can find it on Sora or at your county library.

It's a really fun book to read, boys and girls.

Now, speaking of Sora, let's see which school came in at number one!

Are you excited?

Okay, let's see!

Fingers crossed, is it your school?

The school with the most checked out books in Fresno is Heaton!

Awesome job, Heaton Elementary!

You guys are doing an awesome job reading!

And you guys have been in our countdown for a couple of weeks, so I know you guys are checking out those books on Sora and reading.

Because remember the more we read, the stronger our brain gets, you're right.

And boys and girls, I would love to hear from you guys!

Write me a letter and send it to me here in our PBS classroom.

And I'll send you one of these fun activity books.

So use the address you see below, or you can email me, and I'll send you these amazing activity books.

Now, I have to do a quick shout out because I hear that Mrs. Wong's class at Adams, in second grade class is watching me every day, and I'm so excited!

So I want to say hi to all the boys and girls 'cause Mrs. Wong is telling me that you guys are doing such a great job.

Awesome jobs, second grade at Adams in Mrs. Wong's class!

Okay, re you guys ready to get started with our learning today?

Awesome, okay, remember all week, we're working on our writing skills.

So we're going to start off with combining and rearranging sentences, and then we're going to go into our sentence punctuation, and then we'll end it with our general writing, which is opinion letter.

Okay, you ready to get started?

Awesome.

So today we're gonna work on combining and rearranging our sentences.

Now you can combine two simple sentences with similar ideas into one longer sentence, because boys and girls, you guys are in second grade now.

We can put those sentences together for one nice long sentence.

How are we going to do that?

Well, we can join sentences with a comma, and a words such as and, but, or, and so.

Okay, these are what we call our conjunctions, right?

We can rearrange words or put them in different order to make a sentence more interesting.

I know, you can do that.

We can make our sentence more lively that way.

So remember these, boys and girls, as we go into our writing.

And don't forget, our sentence begins with a capital letter, not just, and don't forget and proper nouns.

But boys and girls, this is what I see a lot of second graders forgetting, the beginning of that capital.

But getting that sentence with a capital letter.

And don't forget to end that sentence with a period, a question mark, or an exclamation point.

So let me put that in there, because I see a lot of boys and girls forgetting this too.

You need to end your sentence so we know that you are done with your thoughts.

Okay, so I have some practice for us to do.

Let's see if we can practice combining, rearranging, and fixing some of those punctuation in our sentence, ready?

It says, "Combine the two sentences, "write the new sentences on the line."

Okay, so I'm going to combine them, and if you're at home, you can rewrite them so that it'll make sense, okay?

So here's my sentence: "I sing soprano.

"Myra sings Alto."

Now, those are two simple short sentences, but guess what?

I can combine them by using one of our conjunctions: and, but, or, and so.

So, "I sing soprano."

And guess what?

"Myra sings alto."

She sings something different, we're comparing, so I can use the word, actually, I'm going to take out that, but I can use the word but, okay?

"I sing soprano, but Myra sings alto."

Does that make sense?

Awesome.

You see how nice that sentence is?

Instead of two short sentences, it's one long sentence.

Okay, let's look at number two.

"Our singing group is going on tour.

"We will visit the White House."

Again, two simple sentences, but guess what?

They're doing two things, aren't they?

So we can use the conjunction and, you're right!

Take that period, don't forget to put and, and let's read it now.

"Our singing group is going on tour "and we will visit the White House."

And I forgot, if we are adding the word and, and taking off the period, then that capital needs to come off because it's not going to start a sentence anymore, it's part of a sentence.

A nice, long sentence.

Okay, how are you doing?

Awesome, let's keep going, number three.

"We practice often.

"We can learn difficult songs."

Now two simple sentences, but guess what?

This is what we call like a cause and effect, so we're going to use the conjunction so, that's going to say, "We practice often so we can learn difficult songs."

You see that?

Now it's one nice long sentence.

And because we took out that period, you're right, we also need to take off that capital letter, 'cause it's not starting a sentence anymore.

Good job, boys and girls.

Okay, now let's rearrange the words in this sentence to write it on the line.

So now that we're done practicing combining, we can rearrange the words in a sentence to make our sentence more interesting.

So here's my sentence: "We began our practice on Tuesday with an old song."

That's an okay sentence, but guess what?

If we took that "on Tuesday," and moved it to the beginning and say, "On Tuesday," now, as I'm reading it, my mind now can visualize when first.

"On Tuesday, we began our practice," good, "With an old song."

So you see how now, if I visualize my sentence, it makes sense, or it gives me a better picture.

So sometimes boys and girls, just rearranging those words around will make it interesting.

Okay, how are you doing on that?

Awesome.

Let's go and quickly correct our sentence, 'cause this is the type of sentence I see my second graders write.

And I hope this isn't you I see.

"This is an awesome song."

It is, but what did we forget?

That's right, that capital, because it's going to start a sentence.

And if I say it as, "This is an awesome song!"

What do I need?

Good, an exclamation mark, because that has feelings, not a period.

How about the next one?

"Does anyone want to dance?"

What did they forget?

That capital letter.

Remember that book that we read on Monday?

I know all those capital letters, not being used.

"Does anyone want to dance?"

What do I need?

Oh, I thought I was going to trick you and I didn't, good job!

We need a question mark, because it's asking a question.

Awesome job, boys and girls.

Okay, now let's go into our general writing.

'Cause all week we've been focusing on this opinion letter, right?

So let's quickly remind ourself, what is an opinion letter?

Remember, it's just a letter, but it expresses our opinion, which is how we think or feel a topic.

And within our letter, we're going to give our opinion, reasons, and what we call examples or evidence to support our reasons, and then we're going to have a concluding sentence, and a closing and a signature.

And again, because it's a letter, we're going to follow the letter format.

So all week we have been focusing on our opinion letter, and let me pull this over to remind us, and we've been following the writing process.

Every time we write, boys and girls, and it doesn't matter what we write, we follow the writing process, right?

We start with a pre-write, which is your draft, where we get all of our ideas out.

We then go to our draft, which is where we put our ideas into a writing.

And this week it's an opinion letter.

And then yesterday we worked on revise andq editing, right?

Revising is improving and making changes to your writing so that it sounds better, editing is making corrections needed to your spelling or punctuation, and your capitalization, right?

Now, the last step in our writing process is the publish.

And this is what we write our final copy of our corrected writing so that's nice and neat.

So we are on our last step today, 'cause today's Friday.

So let's quickly go over what we did yesterday.

So we went over our writing that Carrie wrote, right?

But before we do that, boys and girls, let me quickly go over, and I forgot to share this with you guys.

What writing, oops, sorry.

That did not work well, did it?

There we go.

Mrs. Vang has the dropsy right now.

Okay, when you revise, ask yourself, does the letter give an opinion about a topic?

Is the opinion supported with reasons?

Are the reasons organized by their importance?

Does the letter include linking words to show how ideas are connected?

Does the letter have a clear introduction and conclusion?

This you can do with an adult, right?

Your teacher, your mom, your dad, an aunt, an adult to help you.

Your edit list is what I say you can do by yourself.

You can try to see those, are there verb tenses used correctly?

Remember all those verb tenses we were learning this week?

Do you have your letter's parts with the correct punctuation?

That's another skill that we learned.

Is there a subject-verb agreement?

We learned that this week also.

And are your words spelled correctly?

And then with an adult that can help you, really edit and revise your writing.

So that's what I did with Carrie's writing.

So she met with me, and we went through.

Now, remember how we started our revising and our editing?

Well with Carrie, we finished.

So we stopped here and we said, "Kids need," and I said oh, you don't need that S, because that doesn't make sense, 'cause kids is plural, we just need need.

Subject-verb agreement, right?

And then we kept going, "To run, play and get fresh air.

"City parks can be a good place for this."

And then look what I saw?

No capital.

And that's why.

So we had to fix it, and I just underlined it so that she knew.

"If we clean city parks, "it will be a good place for kids to go.

"Also during the storm last week, the tree branches fell.

"Now some things of the park were broken.

"We could fix broken stuff."

And I kind of said, don't just put stuff.

And I said, what do you mean?

And she said, "Well, the swings and the slides."

So I said, well, then let's add it, and that would make your sentence more interesting, right?

We're going to add to it.

And then we said, "A park cleanup is a good idea because people," and I told her oh, don't forget, people is spelled P-E-O-P-L-E, that's one of our high frequency words.

"Will work together."

And then I kind of said, why?

Give me more, give me a reason.

And then she said, "Well, then more people might use the park."

And I went, that's perfect, so let's add it in so that our paper sounds nice and juicy, right?

We were having all those evidence to go with our sentence.

And then we said, "City park is important to our community."

And I just reminded her, this is how we spell community.

And then I told her, guess what you forgot?

She just put her name, but we forgot the closing.

So maybe we can say, "Yours truly."

Don't forget your truly, oops, sorry, boys and girls, that's really hard to see there.

Don't forget your comma.

And then we're going to end it.

Now, Carrie, then guess what she did?

She went home for her homework and she wrote it all nice and neat with all the mistakes.

So boys and girls, that's your final step today.

You're going to publish your writing so that it is nice and neat.

And that will conclude our extended activity for this week.

And you should have a whole letter to write!

So boys and girls, I can't wait to get your letter, make sure you're writing to me.

Have a good weekend, bye bye!

(acoustic guitar music) ♪ 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 ♪ (acoustic guitar music)