♪ 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, third graders, my name is Mrs. Nix and I am so excited to be here with you today to support you as you become amazing thinkers, readers, and writers.

I was reading some of my favorite poetry.

This one, it's just a collection of all sorts of poets, but this one, it says kids pick the funniest poems.

It's "Miles of Smiles" and it's put together by Bruce Lansky.

I love it, it makes me laugh all the time.

Here's one just to kick us off, 'cause it's Monday and we're gonna study poetry all week long.

So this one is called "Cockroach Sandwich".

Cockroach sandwich for my lunch.

Hate the taste, but love the crunch.

Ew, isn't that disgusting?

But you got to love it.

So poetry can always provide lots of feelings about things, even when it's disgusting, right, third grade?

Okay, now, how can you find some of those books?

Well, it's really easy.

You can look up any type of book in your county library, you can even check out "Miles of Smiles" if you're interested.

The second place that I would recommend looking is on Sora, it's an app that's free here in Fresno Unified, and you can search up, there are several different types of poetry books, but there's loads of books, so if you're looking for a fun adventure, it's a great place to start.

Now, here in Fresno Unified, we love to celebrate our top checkout schools.

So this week, we're gonna start, it's Monday, we're gonna count down the top five schools, so let's look and see who is in fifth place for our top schools.

It's Turner Elementary, so great job Turner Elementary, you guys did a fantastic job checking out those books.

So how do you get your school up here on our chart?

It's super easy, just check out your books through Sora and invite a classmate or two or three or four, right?

And then you can see your school's name up on our chart.

Okay, the second thing I want to talk to you real quick about, 'cause I'm gonna, I want to make sure that you know that these are for free.

Now, how do you get a free activity book if you're into puzzles and word searches?

Okay, it's super easy, there's gonna be an address that's gonna pop up here on our screen.

Just jot it down.

Now, you can send a letter in the mail or, really easy, send me an email and I'll make sure that one of these activity books gets put in the mail, but don't forget your return address.

If I don't have an address, I can't send it to you, and it's absolutely free.

All right, boys and girls, I have two things that I'm gonna get through today.

We're gonna talk about, like I said earlier, poems, and then we're gonna finish off with some grammar, so all week we're gonna be practicing poetry and then like I said we'll review the last several weeks with our grammar.

Now, in regards to review, I have up here a whole lot of words, and I know that you're looking at me, thinking, man, Mrs. Nix, we don't ever do that many words in one day, that's not normal.

Guess what?

Okay, third grade, you've been working really hard.

These are our 50 words that we have practiced over the last five weeks, so every day this week we're gonna warm up by just simply reviewing two rows.

Are you ready to start?

Okay, let's get going, let's warm up those brains and let's read just these top two rows, ready?

Okay, here we go.

Much, must, my, myself, not, no, number, now, never, and new.

Nicely done.

Okay, we've warmed up those brains.

Let's dig in and let's start talking about some poetry.

As we're thinking about it, we need to think about what are some features in a poem?

So let's talk about it.

Number one, it's gonna express some feelings or some ideas.

Now, thinking about feelings, think of all the different types of feelings.

You can have happy feelings and silly feelings and sad feelings and lonely feelings, there's lots and lots of feelings.

So a poem is an easy way to share those feelings.

It's often organized into lines or stanzas, I'm gonna show you what that looks like.

It may use rhyme or rhythm.

I'm gonna show you that today, too.

Now, we've talked about similes and metaphors, that's something we've worked on the last few weeks, so in a poem, you're gonna see that figurative language and I'm gonna show you some of that.

And then finally, this is that part where it's really kind of fun and you can get kind of gross like the crunch of a cockroach.

Okay, it's using those descriptive words, so thinking about your senses, things that you can see, hear, smell, taste, touch, so think about your five senses.

Okay.

I want to start out, 'cause I always think to myself, it's really nice to see an example.

This is what we like to call an exemplar, and that just simply means that it's the final product, because we always want to know where do we want to end up, so where are we gonna start?

So let's start with kind of that end product.

This one's called "The Contest", it's by Maggie D. Let me get my pointer over here, all right, and I'm gonna just read it.

You read it with me, are you ready?

Okay.

My sister and I share a room to ourselves.

It's a hideous work of art.

Her books were falling off the shelves.

Her posters were crumbling apart.

My things were scattered across the floor.

They sat in a monstrous mound.

Her socks were tangled and leaked from her drawer.

My clothes lounged all around.

My mother was exhausted with seeing the mess, so we put together our master plan.

We had a contest to see who could clean the best, and on the count of three we began.

We rushed around and picked up a ton of clothes, books, and art supplies.

I finished first, but we both really won when we learned a clean room is the prize.

Okay, so as we were talking or as I was going through and I was reading this, one of the things that we talked about as far as a feature on our poster was that it's organized in lines and stanzas, so I want to talk about that.

Do you notice here that there are kind of some paragraphs it's almost like they look like, and so these are what are called stanzas.

So I'm just gonna write stanza so that we remember that.

So these are stanzas, how many stanzas do you see?

Yes, we have two of them, so here's one and here's two.

Now, within those stanzas, do you notice that everything is written across like it's a line?

We don't necessarily have a sentence every line, sometimes the sentence is broken apart, but what do you see about the end?

Let's talk about it.

So we have the word ourselves and shelves, and they rhyme, do you see it?

And then, I'm gonna grab another color so we can see it in this, we've got art at the end and apart, and they rhyme.

And then, I'm gonna get two more colors, we have floor and drawer that rhyme, and we have mound and around that rhyme.

So what we could say with this is we could say we have an A, B, A, B, and then a C, D, C, D pattern.

Okay, so that's gonna be kind of our rhyme and our rhythm as we're going through.

Now, third grade, you know what, this isn't something that you could just simply put together on a first try, right?

Remember, I said this is an exemplar, this is what we're working towards, so how did Maggie organize herself?

Well the first thing that she had to do was she had to come up with a plan, so she put together a graphic organizer, something similar to this, and in the middle she has her main idea.

And her main idea is that she's gonna write about a messy room, and then from there she started putting some details, here's three of them.

So crumbling posters, clothes all around, books falling off shelves, so all of these things go together to help organize and make a plan.

Okay, speaking of making a plan, here's what we're gonna talk about today.

So when we look on here, this is what a good writing process is filled with.

So you've got your plan, draft, revise, edit, and publish.

Today we're gonna talk about just the plan.

So that pre-write, this is the part that I'm gonna have you guys work on at home together, so I want you to think about what information or what are your ideas that you might write about for your poem, and then you're gonna organize it just like Maggie did and put it on a graphic organizer, start writing your ideas, put a detail down, and think of some other things that support it.

Consider your purpose, you know, are you trying to tell a story, are you trying to entertain, or maybe you want to express an idea, an emotion, or a feeling.

And then, who's your audience?

Who are you writing this for and how do you want them to feel?

Do want it to be silly?

Do you want it to be sad?

Do you want it to be serious?

So start thinking that.

And then think of those details, think about those five senses, and I notice I left out over here about sound, but I put looks, tastes, feels, smells, or even how does it make someone feel.

Think about what you want to include.

Remember, you're wanting to make a mental picture for your readers.

And then choose your topic, something that you feel strongly about.

And then plan your poem, start putting your details into that graphic organizer.

So tonight, that's what I would love to see that you start to do.

Gather those ideas and start putting them together.

Now I have a little bit of time, and so I'm gonna just quickly go over a little bit of grammar, maybe just one or two of them as we're closing out today, because I think this is important.

You would've been practicing this a few weeks ago, these are linking verbs.

There's a difference between an action verb and a linking verb.

Action verbs do that, they have action, whereas linking verbs just link it, so let's talk about them today.

So Lee is my older brother.

Is is a linking verb, so I'm gonna circle it and I'm gonna say it's a linking verb, because it's not actual action.

He plays for the Comets.

Well, plays is our verb, and does it tell us an action?

Or is it just linking it to the idea?

Yeah, it's gonna us some action.

And then we go to every game.

Well, who is that sentence about?

It's we, and what are we doing?

We're going, okay, so that's gonna be action again.

And last one, we are so proud of him.

This is gonna be another one of our linking verbs right here, excellent job, all right.

Third grade, I am so excited that you got to hang out, or that I got to hang out with you this morning as you're getting ready for school.

So thanks so much for being here, I hope that you have a fantastic afternoon, learn a lot, ask those questions, and together we can do so much more.

I look forward to seeing you back here tomorrow, bye bye.

(upbeat 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 ♪