(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 ♪ (guitar music) (upbeat music) - Good morning third grade, my name is Mrs. Nixon.

I am so excited to be here with you on this Friday before Valentine's day.

Speaking of that, I have a little joke for us.

So this one says, let me show you the picture, look how cute it is.

So the picture or the caption reads, "What happened to the ox who bought his wife chocolates on Valentine's day?

He became more lovable."

Aw, he's an ox.

All right, but now if you enjoy reading joke books there are lots and lots of them out there.

These happen to be my kids' favorite ones, these are called "Just Joking."

This is actually volume four, I can't even tell you how many volumes we have at home but they're so silly and the pictures are great.

It's put out by "National Geographic" which is that magazine we talked about yesterday.

So, where can you check these out from?

Well, you can check them out from your local County library, or check on Sora and see if you can find any joke books for you to check out at home.

Now, speaking of Sora, we're counting down our top schools here in Fresno Unified who have been checking out books using Sora and we are to the first place, that top spot.

And today let's talk about it.

It goes to, Heaton.

So Heaton Elementary, excellent job.

There you are, you are in the top spot for our top checkout of books from Sora.

Now it's super easy if you wanna see your school here on our poster, all you need to do is check out books through Sora and then maybe tell some of your classmates to do the same and your school can get a shout out here on PBS.

Speaking of other things that we love to do down here at PBS in our classroom, we love to send activity books and it's so easy to do.

You just need to send me a letter.

And it's, here comes that address they're gonna pop it up right there on the screen for you.

You just send me a letter to the address or an email.

There's an email address that's listed there, and I'll make sure that you get one of these really fun activity books in the mail, it's totally free.

And you can dot to dots and word searches and fill in the letters, lots of things to be making your brain smarter every single day.

In that letter you can tell me something that you're learning in your classroom, something you've learned here on PBS, maybe you have a question you'd like us to talk about it.

I'm always open to that.

All right, let's get started today.

I have three things we're gonna go through, we're gonna talk about variant vowels, Greek and Latin roots and then we're gonna finish off our day with a little bit of comprehension, looking at context clues.

Okay, we've been practicing these high frequency words all week long and I know that you've practiced those ones that maybe at the beginning of the week were giving you a little bit of trouble but you've got 'em now because you are responsible for your learning success.

And I know that you've got it.

I can hear you all the way down here.

Great job.

Okay, let's read 'em big and loud together.

Here we go; than, ten, tell, take, such, stop, start, soon, so and some.

Okay, our last two words that we're gonna talk about this week we've got, so, which is so easy, it's got two letters, S-O and some, S-O-M-E.

Okay.

Let me put them into a couple of sentences.

Would you like ice cream?

I have a clue as to which word would go there.

I have a guess.

It began to rain the trip got canceled.

Hm.

Okay.

Do We all know this one?

Would you like some ice cream?

Yes, I would like some ice cream.

What's your favorite kind?

You gotta think about that, right?

It began to rain so the trip got canceled.

Oh, bummer.

Okay, great job third grade.

We're gonna go through, we're gonna start with our variant vowels.

Now remember the sound that we've been practicing all week is a.

Good, I brought my sound spelling card, my straw card to remind me of that sound.

Now there's multiple ways that we can spell a.

So we're gonna look at them.

We're training our brains to recognize those spelling patterns so when we come to words that have them, we know that this is a spelling, a sound that we can practice with those different spelling patterns.

Okay, let's go through and let's look at 'em.

We have aw says, a, like at the end of the word raw or at the beginning of the word awesome.

Nicely done.

Au says, a, like in the middle of haul and also in the middle of haunt, haunt.

All right, we don't want any haunted houses.

All right, al says, a, like in salt and talking, good.

All says, a, like in halls and fallen.

Ough can say, a, like in bought and thoughtless.

Look at that.

All those letters say, a.

And wa can say, wa as the, a, like in water and waffle.

Good job.

Okay, let's move this over just a little bit and we're gonna talk about Greek and Latin roots.

Now we've had two of 'em, we've practiced them all week long, but you're still thinking to yourself.

Well, at this point, you know, right?

The reason that we are practicing these, because many of our English words come from the Greek or Latin language.

And so, if we can learn those Greek and Latin roots they can help us figure out the meanings of unfamiliar words.

Now, we've got two of 'em that we've been practicing.

This first one is graph, and graph comes from a Greek word that means something written.

So here's an example, the word photograph, photo means a picture and graph means written.

So if we put this into a literal translation it means written picture.

Excellent.

And the word part aud comes from a Latin word that means to hear or listen.

So the word audience means a group of listeners.

okay, excellent job.

We're gonna go through and I have a story today that we're gonna go through and we're gonna read, we're practicing some of those variant vowels and we're gonna look for those.

So, beyond the lookout, we're gonna go back and we'll kind of read it a couple of times, we're gonna circle some of the words that we can find.

Okay?

All right.

So, let's go through, this one's called "Hurt Pet" and I'm gonna tell you that actually our hurt pet is not that hurt it's okay.

I don't want anyone to panic.

Our pet is just fine.

It's about a bunny and we're gonna find out about Dawn's pet bunny.

Okay, "Hurt Pet", read with me.

Most mornings Dawn's pet bunny runs to her.

Dawn calls her bunny Salt.

This is because he's white.

But one morning, Salt was having trouble walking.

He kept licking a back paw.

Dawn looked at his foot and saw a broken claw.

Dawn called her vet.

The vet asked how Salt had broken his claw.

Dawn wasn't sure of the cause.

She thought for a minute.

Maybe Salt had caught his claw on the rug.

The vet wanted to see Salt.

So Dawn brought him to the vet that day.

The vet treated Salt's paw.

Salt wasn't hurt badly.

Dawn was happy to take her bunny home.

At home, Salt ate his parsley and drank some water.

Soon he was running up and down the hall very fast.

So did Salt ended up being okay?

Absolutely.

Did we see some of those variant vowels patterns that we were looking for?

Okay, let's go back and let's look to see if we can find some of 'em.

Okay, I'm seeing some right here at the beginning.

So most mornings Dawn, nice, Dawn's pet bunny runs with her.

and we see Dawn's name a lot.

So I'm not going to highlight those every single time.

But what about her Bunny's name?

What is it?

Salt, and what sound do we hear?

A, right there.

Good.

How about, let's keep going.

But one morning Salt was having trouble walking.

You see that a sound.

Kept licking his back paw, do you see how many words?

Saw, claw, lots and lots of a words.

I love this one too called, we see that often.

Cause, I remember I was going through this and I thought, Oh my goodness look at all of our a sounds.

Even down here, what did Salt drink?

Do you remember?

Some water.

Absolutely, so how's that?

Awesome.

Boys and girls, this is something that you can take a piece of your text and look for different spelling patterns.

This is gonna help train that brain and get you thinking about different spelling patterns.

You could even take some of these words and then create a sort and organize them.

Just like we've been practicing all week.

Remember, you're responsible for your learning success.

So make sure you're practicing.

All right, let's finish off today.

We're gonna go through, or we're gonna talk about some of those context clues.

Now, a context clue is simply the authors are trying to tell you if they're introducing you to some new vocabulary, they're giving you some clues to help you figure out what that word means.

Now, down here we have some different types of context clues and this anchor chart we talked about at the beginning of the year, but there's a couple of them here that we really are focusing on this week.

And that's these first two.

This first one is, authors can sometimes just give you a definition and they just define it in the text.

They might use some signal words like is, are, means, refers to, and they're just straight up telling you; here's what the word means.

They might also do what we call a restatement.

And this is a word or a phrase that defines or explains the word.

And the big signal is, or, and it's usually set off by a comma or two.

Okay, so let's look and see if we see how the author gave us some clues here.

So the word is environment.

And if I had to just tell you, Ooh, what does the word environment?

I'm not sure I can remember it.

So I'm gonna look for some context clues to help me out.

So let's look: A bears fur helps them blend in with the trees and rocks in their environment or where they live.

Ah, what did the author do for us?

They provided a comma and the word or where they live.

So what are they referring to?

That's right.

The word environment.

So the word environment simply means where they live.

That's where the bears live.

You guys did a great job.

We've made it through till Friday.

You've got Valentine's day on Sunday, so make sure that you are sharing with all of your friends and family how much you love them and adore them, although I know you do that already every day.

So, thanks with that for hanging out with me today as you're getting ready for school remember you are responsible for your learning success.

So listen, ask questions and share your ideas because together we can do so much more.

Have a great weekend.

I look forward to seeing you back here on Monday, until then bye-bye.

(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 ♪ (guitar music)