♪ 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 guitar music) (happy upbeat music) - Good morning, third graders.

My name is Mrs. Nix.

And I am so excited to be here with you this morning to support you as you become amazing thinkers, readers and writers.

This morning, I was looking through, it's a new book for me.

This one's called "Baseball Saved Us".

And it's actually a kind of a dark time in our American history, where Japanese were put into camps during World War II.

However, even though it was a dark time, there was some joy and these folks went through and found that baseball brought them joy.

And so I'm always thinking to myself, what are some things that when you're not feeling so good and when things are not going so well, that you can do to bring joy.

It's all about that overcoming adversity.

And so this one, "Baseball Saved Us" is a fantastic read.

Now, where can you get it?

You can check it out through your County library or check to see if it's on Sora.

It's an app that we use here in Fresno Unified.

And we love to celebrate our schools that are checking out books on Sora.

And speaking of that, which always like to do a countdown of the top five schools that have been checking out books.

So let's see who's in that fourth place and it's Turner Elementary.

So great job Turner.

If you are interested in having your school up on our top five countdown, it's super easy to do.

Just make sure that you're checking out your books on Sora and encouraging your classmates to do the same.

I have one other thing that I wanna just kind of put a plug in for.

We have these activity books, they are free.

All you need to do is send me a note to the address that's popping up on your screen right there.

And let me know what your return address is.

It is a super fun activity, buckets full of word searches and crossword puzzles.

Everything that you need to get your brain thinking and reading and writing.

Let's get started today.

I have three things that we're gonna go through and practice today.

I have common roots, closed syllables and context clues at the very end.

To help get us started today, let's warm up those brains, those super smart muscles we've got.

And let's look at those high-frequency words.

Remember, these are words you come across often in your reading and writing.

So it's important that you're able to not only read them but to write them.

So to spell them.

If there's something that you see here today, make sure you jot it down and practice it throughout the week.

All right, let's do it together.

Let's read them.

Should, would, yellow, years, your, you're, write, right, laugh and does.

Excellent job.

So I have two words we're gonna practice today.

I have yellow, Y-E-L-L-O and years.

Y-E-A-R-S. Let's use these in a couple of sentences.

Help me out.

So my cat has, hm, eyes.

Hmm, okay.

And I went to visit her several, hm, ago.

Well, it doesn't make sense to say, I went to visit her several yellow ago, right?

No, so we must be talking about years.

I went to visit her several years ago and my cat has yellow eyes.

What color eyes does your cat have?

All right, great job.

So let's dive right in today.

Let's talk about some common roots.

Now, common roots when we know what those common roots mean, it helps us to understand what some related words can also mean.

So I'm looking here and I see that tele means far off, afar, or at a distance.

Well, that's gonna help me when I look at words like telephone and television.

Because when I think about tele being far off, well when I'm on the telephone, I'm not talking to someone in the room with me, I'm on the phone, I'm talking to them and they're far away.

Just like television, the people are not there in my living room but I can see them on a box.

So they're coming from far away.

Here's another very common root word.

And so num, N-U-M means number.

So when we see words that have that in N-U-M, we know that it has something to do with numbers.

Let's look at some examples.

So renumber, numeral and number.

And I even have this little guy right here 'cause we can kind of cover it up so we can see it.

See that N-U-M right there.

Oops, numeral.

We know that that's just a fancy way of saying digit and number.

So, those are gonna help us as we are seeing new words.

Okay, I'm gonna switch gears just a little bit and I wanna talk about closed syllables.

Now, I have this poster that we talked about at the beginning of the year, and I just kind of wanna visually show you so that you can see.

There are actually six different syllable types.

This week, we're focusing on that closed syllable type.

And that simply means that our vowel is going to be short and following that vowel to make it be closed, it needs a consonant.

I'm gonna show you what that looks like.

So when I look here, let me get that out of my way.

When I look here, I've got this word trumpet.

Oops, I'm gonna lose my pen.

And the first thing that I wanna do is I wanna find the vowels.

So think to yourself, what are the vowels?

A-E-I-O and U, perfect.

So I'm looking for those vowels here, and do you see them?

All right, I see, here's a U and here's an E. So when I see these two vowels, I know that this word has two syllables because each syllable has one vowel sound.

So where do I split my syllables?

Well, I'm gonna put a V for a vowel and I'm gonna put a V for a vowel.

And in between I have two letters and these are, if they're not vowels, they're consonants.

So I'm gonna put C's for consonants.

And any time I have this pattern, vowel, consonant, consonant, vowel.

I know that I can split my consonants right down the middle and I've got two syllables.

So here's my first syllable, trum and then pet.

And my vowels are short vowels.

Let's try it again.

So I've got, here's my word.

Now, I know what it is but I'm not gonna say it out loud yet.

Let's look for our vowels.

So you could be doing this too.

You can practice finding your vowels, there's two of them, E and O. I'm gonna put a V for vowel.

And then I've got two S's, those are both consonants.

Vowel, consonant, consonant, vowel.

So I'm gonna split right between my two consonants.

Short vowel 'cause it's a closed syllable, has a consonant after my vowel sound.

So I've got les, son.

They both have short vowel sounds, so lesson.

Okay, last one.

Find it here, looking for the vowels.

I've got two of them.

Vowel, vowel.

I've got two consonants right there.

I'm gonna split them right down the middle.

Short vowel sounds, prob, lem, problem.

Two syllables.

Great.

Let's look how to practice some of these as we go through and we look at a worksheet.

So when we're thinking about dividing up our syllables, 'cause this is something that is pretty common that you're gonna be asked how to do, especially on an assessment.

So you might see something just like this.

So here's a strategy that you can do, think to yourself, where are the vowels?

So let's look at the word butter.

I've got a, U and an E. I'm gonna make it, put little V's above it.

I've got two T's, those are two consonants.

And when I've got those two consonants, I know I can split right between my two consonants.

So looking over here, which one follows that pattern.

You got it, it's A, good job.

So let's go through, let's do another one.

These are kind of fun because when I've got these double consonant like this, I know that very quickly, I've got two O's, that's the same thing.

And I've got two L's, vowel, consonant, consonant, vowel.

I'm gonna split it down those consonants.

Fol, low and where do we go?

Oh, all the way over here.

Nicely done.

So I think that you're starting to see how to do this, this is a great thing for you to practice at home.

What I'd like to do is I wanna talk a little bit about those related words, those common roots that we were practicing earlier.

And so looking at our list here, I've got two words and we're gonna find what is that common root.

Help me do it.

So looking here, I've got some roots up here.

I've got vita, auto, act, gram and num.

So in diagram and hologram, what do we see?

What do we hear that's the same?

Ah, gram, do you see it?

It's right here, gram and gram.

So I can just grab this guy and I'm gonna stick it right here so we can see it.

All right, how about this one?

Autograph, automobile.

What do you see that's the same?

Yes, auto and auto.

So, I know that those have to do, those words are related.

How about this one?

Vitamin and vital.

What do we see?

That's right, vita, right there.

So I can just quickly put it over here.

Do you see how easy it is?

We're looking for those root word parts that are the same.

How about active and react?

Yes, it's just gonna be act.

And then our last one, renumber and numeral, we kind of talked about that at the very beginning.

It just has that N-U-M, num.

And what did it mean?

It meant, that's right, number.

Let's finish out today talking about context clues because essentially, in third grade we're always looking and trying to practice and make sense of what is that we're reading, and authors will give us clues, oftentimes just in the sentence itself.

And so let's look for those clues so that we can figure out some of these unknown words.

So in this example, a tragedy like a flood or a fire can change the lives of people forever.

So the word tragedy, if I don't know what that is, the author gave me a clue.

And the author did that because they were able to put or did that by putting this word, I'm gonna put this little sparkly piece right here, so it just kind of draws my eye to it.

The word like a tragedy, like, and then I know what's gonna help.

Like a flood or a fire.

So is a tragedy a good thing?

Probably not.

I definitely would say it's not a movie, but look right here, a terrible event.

Do you agree that a flood or a fire is a terrible event?

Yes.

So use those context clues to make sure that it makes sense as you are reading your story.

All right.

Third grade, I just wanna say, thanks for hanging out with me today.

We went through, we practiced those closed syllables, those common roots and then we finished up a little bit with those context clues.

And I know you can do that with your reading tonight.

So, remember you are responsible for your learning success.

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

I can't wait to see you back here tomorrow.

Take care, 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 ♪ (upbeat guitar music)