♪ 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 gentle music) - Good morning third graders, My name is Mrs. Nix, and I am so excited to be here with you to support you as you become amazing thinkers, readers, and writers.

This morning, I was reading one of my favorite stories, this one's called "Tar Beach".

It's about a young girl named Cassie Louise Lightfoot.

She had a dream to be free to go wherever she wants to go for the rest of her life.

And if you wanna know more about her dream and what her plans are one starry night, then you're going to have to check out this particular book, "Tar Beach".

This one happens to be a Caldecott Honors book and it's by Faith Ringgold.

Now how do you check out a book like this?

You can do it a couple of different ways.

You can visit your local County library or you can go online and check it out through the app called Sora.

Now here in Fresno Unified we love to celebrate our students who are going through and are using our app, we even have the top school checkout poster here.

So, today, let's find out who's in that second place last week for the most books checked out on Sora.

Are you ready?

All right here it is.

Heaton Elementary, nice job Heaton.

So again boys and girls, if you would like to see your school up here, it's super easy, you just simply check out a book from Sora and then encourage a classmate or two to do the same.

And then your school can be up and get a quick little shout out here.

All right, the other piece that I would love to kind of give a little shout out to, are these super fun activity books that we have, they're absolutely free and the way that you get them, very easy to do.

You can send an email or write a letter, see that address that's popping up on the screen down below?

Jot it down and then let us know what your return address is and we'll put one of these fun activity books in the mail for you for free.

Now what do you need to put in that letter to me?

That's up to you.

Maybe it's about a book that you've been reading and that you would love to just share with other third graders here in the Valley.

I'll make sure to give you a little extra shout out too.

All right, are we ready to start our day today?

Excellent, I've got three things that we're gonna go through today, we're gonna talk about homophones, we're gonna talk about R controlled syllables, and we're gonna finish up with some multiple meaning words.

Are you ready to start?

Excellent.

So, looking at these high-frequency words remember these are words you see often in your reading and writing, and so it's important that you not only be able to read them but you need to be able to spell them.

So how do we practice those?

Well, everybody does them a little bit differently but I just encourage you put it on a little post-it note as you're brushing your teeth at night and you can practice spelling it a few days of practice and I know that you'll have it.

All right, let's go through and let's read them today.

Big and loud I should hear you all the way down here at PBS.

Here we go, their, there, then, them, these, they, things, think, this, and those, excellent job.

All right, today we're gonna look at things and think.

Things is T-H-I-N-G-S, and think T-H-I-N-K. All right, help me put these in a couple of sentences.

Here we go, you have many (mumbles) on the floor.

Ooh do you have an idea which one would go in there?

I'm thinking too, how about this one?

I (mumbles) you are great.

Oh, we have to do this one first, right?

Because guess what?

I do think you are great, you are great.

All right, you have many things on the floor.

Do you ever hear the adults in your house tell you sometimes that you have things on the floor?

Yeah I get told that, I remember being told that.

All right, let's get started.

I wanna start by talking about some R controlled syllables.

Now remember, syllables are those small chunks of a word.

When we're trying to sound out words it's helpful to break them down into syllables, and so then there are some rules on how to do that.

And the first thing that we have to remember is that every syllable has one vowel sound.

Now this can be a little bit tricky when we start talking mean about R controlled vowels because we wanna make sure that that R stays with the vowel.

They kind of become a team.

Okay, what do I mean by that?

So A-R, E-R, I-R, O-R, U-R, those are our R controlled vowels and we're gonna keep them together.

So let's look at this word "report".

Okay, so the "o-r" is the R controlled vowel that's there.

So we know that this is going to stick together.

Now here's our other vowel and we've got "re-port."

So we have two syllables re-port, nice.

So looking for our vowels again in "restore" and now remember the "e" on the end, that silent "e", doesn't really count as an extra vowel, we really have our two vowels right here and re-store, this is our R controlled vowel, It still counts as one syllable.

So we have the word re-store and we can split it up like that, excellent job.

Okay, the next piece that we have are homophones.

Now remember homophones put up your finger like a banana and you're gonna think about a phone, because we're thinking about the sounds.

Homophones are words that sound alike but they're spelled differently and have different meanings.

Okay, so here's an example, ate.

Now there are two different ways that you can spell the word eight, and they have two different meanings.

Ate as in A-T-E is just the past tense for the word eat.

So I want you to eat, and once you're finished eating, we would say you ate your dinner, right?

All right, then we've got eight, E-I-G-H-T and that just simply means like the number, you're eight years old or you have eight goldfish.

Okay, so John ate supper at eight o'clock.

So which one goes where?

So would we say John eight, no that's talking about the number.

Okay, so John ate supper at-- this is the number eight o'clock, eight o'clock.

What did he do at eight o'clock?

Well he ate, remember this is eating, he ate his dinner at eight o'clock.

Okay, excellent job.

Let's go over and do a little bit of practice.

So up here in our box we have a bunch of homophobes that are inside this box and we're gonna use these homophones in our sentences.

Now we're not gonna necessarily use all of them but we'll use a few of them today.

All right, so help me out.

Let's read a couple of these sentences.

Are you sure mmh my turn to wash the dishes?

Okay, let's look at some choices.

We have wait, piece, scene, they're, weight, seen, it's, peace, there, its.

Okay, so I've got its.

I'm thinking it must be it's.

Are you sure it's my turn to wash the dishes.

Now remember, when we have that contraction let's practice it with both words so it is.

So are you sure it is my turn to wash the dishes?

That is an excellent strategy because now I know it's as a contraction is the one that belongs here because I used it is, I read it with both words.

Are you sure it's my turn to wash the dishes?

It is my turn.

That makes sense.

Okay, how about this one?

My favorite actor is in the first mmmh of the movie.

Okay, now I know that we're talking about scenes.

So when I look up here I see two different scenes.

I see S-C-E-N-E and S-E-E-N. Now S-E-E-N has that word see.

That means to look.

And this scene is when we're talking about like a play or a movie.

It's the first section of a movie or a play.

It's the scene.

So my favorite actor is in the first scene of the play.

All right.

Let's do one last one.

So she checked the mmmh of the grapes before paying for them.

Okay.

Before you go and you purchase grapes it's always helpful to weigh them.

So I've got, wait, we've got this kind of wait or this kind of weight.

Do you know which spelling we wanna use?

She checked the weight.

Okay.

This wait, W-A-I-T just simply means time like I'm waiting my turn.

This weight, W-E-I-G-H-T is talking about how much, how heavy something might be.

Okay.

I wanna make sure that we have plenty of time.

So I'm gonna jump down below and we're gonna talk about some R controlled vowels.

So it says, underline the words that have the R controlled vowel syllable and circle the R controlled vowel syllable.

So here we go.

Let's look and see, in October the cornstalks are dried and stacked.

Okay.

I see two words here that have R controlled vowels.

So October has this E-R so we've got oc-to-ber.

Ooh, we've got three vowels.

So oc-to-ber, just like that oc-to-ber.

Nice.

And then cornstalks also has that O-R so that R controlled vowel.

So cornstalks.

So we've got right here, corn stalks, two syllables.

Okay.

Let's do one more.

The thunder was really loud this morning.

Okay.

Do you see some R controlled right here.

So the thun-der two vowels, thun-der was really loud this morning.

do you see that O-R so keep that together.

Morn-ing.

We've got a vowel here and a vowel here.

So I'm gonna split it morn ing.

Two syllables.

Excellent job.

Okay, I want a finish off today by talking about multiple meaning words and a multiple meaning word is simply a word that can mean something entirely different even if it's spelled the same and it's pronounced the same.

So today's example is gonna be the word tail.

Now, tail has a couple of different meanings.

You could say that to tail someone is to follow and observe them.

So often times cops and robbers will talk about that we're tailing the robbers, right?

We're following them.

Or you can say it's the part at the end of an airplane.

The tail of an airplane.

So looking here, help me decide, what does this tail in this sentence mean?

George Cayley wanted to make the glider more stable so, he added a tail.

So what's a glider?

Is it like an airplane?

Yes.

So in actuality, this particular tail that we're talking about has to do with a tail at the end of an airplane so that it made sense for this glider.

So boys and girls, as you are going through and you are reading your stories, it's super important that you are thinking about what it is that you're reading because these multiple meaning words can come across at any time.

So think about those homophones, those R controlled valves, and those multiple meaning words.

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

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

Can't wait to see you tomorrow, until tomorrow, bye-bye.

(guitar strumming) ♪ Good morning to a brand new day ♪ ♪ time to learn and games to play ♪ ♪ Learning things is so much fun ♪ ♪ learning is good for every one ♪ (guitar strumming)