♪ 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 strumming) (whistling) - Good morning fabulous first grade.

Welcome back to our PBS classroom.

I'm Mrs. Hammock, and I'm here to help you practice and learn all the skills you need to be excellent readers and writers.

And this week we are working on the writing part of it.

We're writing an opinion about a yurt.

I know it's a funny sounding word, isn't it?

Hey, I was just reading this story waiting for you.

And I was wondering, you know who Humpty Dumpty is, right?

Right.

He is the egg that climbed, was sitting on the wall and fell out all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again.

Do you remember that?

Well, he, this story is so great.

What a creative way to write.

This story is called After the Fall by Dan Santat, How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again.

This is a great idea.

You might think about doing this too.

You take a familiar story and you add on to the end of the story, changing the story completely.

So Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall but this book is all about how he got back up.

Have you ever done something that didn't go really well?

We call those setbacks.

Like you had a setback, like it didn't go the way you planned.

Well that's what happened to him.

Right?

He fell off the wall, but he didn't stay off the wall.

He didn't lay there and give up.

No, he got back up and did it again.

And this time successfully.

And that's what we have to do, boys and girls when we try hard things and it doesn't go our way and we have a setback, we don't just quit.

Quitters don't ever get anywhere.

We pull ourselves back up and we try again because that's what great readers and writers do.

And that's what great smart people do.

And I know how smart you are.

So you might enjoy reading about Humpty Dumpty getting back up again after the fall, check for it at the County Public Library or on Sora or at your school library.

This one came from Pyle Elementary.

Thank you, Ms. Parker.

All right my friends.

Hey, I have not gotten very many letters.

Hmm.

Would you like to write to me?

I would love to know anything you want to tell me so you can maybe draw me picture or tell me a story idea that you want to write in your journal.

I would love to hear about it.

Send your letter here to me at our PBS studio.

And the address is right there.

You can send me an email or a regular letter and I will send you a free activity book.

I know you'll really enjoy it.

If you get one.

So ask a grownup if you need some help and tell them, "Hey mom I want one of those free activity books".

Or "Hey Auntie or Hey Grandma or Hey Dad, or Hey Uncle help me write to PBS so I can get an activity book."

I know they would love to help you write.

And I can't wait to read your letter.

All right, this week we are working on grammar.

Those are lots of adjectives we've been working on and we've been working on mechanics.

That's uppercase letters at the beginning of sentences and also for proper nouns.

And we've also been talking about ending punctuation: periods, exclamation, good, question marks.

Very nice.

So telling, yelling and asking marks, right?

If you forget.

All right, and we've been writing about yurts, whether or not a yurt makes a good home.

It's an opinion.

So today we're going to start with our grammar on adjectives.

Today I have some special adjectives.

They actually are adjectives but there's another name for them that you'll learn later.

It's called an article but you don't have to worry about that.

You'll hear more about that as you get older, but a special adjective.

We're going to decide when we use the word a in front of a noun or an.

Have you ever heard somebody say, I would like an apple?

Have you heard somebody say that?

So we're going to learn, why would you say an apple instead of a apple?

Okay.

And today we're going to learn that so that when you're writing or speaking you'll know which one to say.

Here we go.

Use a with nouns that start with a consonant.

Okay.

I'm going to underline that word, consonant.

Remember a consonant is any letter that is not a vowel.

And let's look at this one.

Use an with nouns that start with a vowel.

So remember the vowels, ♪ there are five vowels, A E I O U.

♪ There they are.

If the noun starts with a vowel you're going to use the word an.

We're also going to learn about this and that use this for a noun that is close.

This paper.

Use that for a noun that is far away, that paper.

All right, let's give it a try.

First we're going to start with a and an.

Write a or an correctly before each noun.

So would we say a table or an table?

Which one sounds right?

Right, a table.

Because T is not a vowel.

So we're going to say a table.

Good job.

All right let's go to number two.

Ape.

Would we say a ape or an ape?

Look right here.

There's that vowel.

So we're going to use the word an, an ape was at the zoo.

All right, here's pencil.

Let's look at that first letter.

Is it a consonant or a vowel?

It's a P. Oh yeah that's not a vowel.

So we're going to use the word a, okay.

And then let's look here.

This is an ox, an ox.

It's a type of, kind of cow.

That's how I think about it.

Ox.

Is that first letter?

Yes.

It's an O and that's one of our vowels.

So we're going to use an, an ox.

Good job.

All right, let's take a look.

Write this or that to complete the sentences.

This book is over in the corner or that book is over in the corner.

Now, remember, this is for when it's close.

And that is when it's far away.

So if it's over in the corner, that means it's far away.

So we would say that, and I'm going to use an uppercase T because it's the beginning of my sentence.

That book is over in the corner.

How about this one?

This boy is petting his dog, or that boy is petting his dog.

It could be either one, right?

Let's use this since we already used that.

We'll use this.

This boy is petting his dog.

All right, how about this?

Can you hand me this cup on the table or that cup?

Right.

If I need you to hand it to me that means it's far away from me, right?

So I'm going to say that.

This shelf is too high to reach or that shelf is too high to reach?

Right if it's too high to reach, it's far away.

So we're going to say that shelf is too high to reach.

Great job.

All right, let's take a look at some more capitalization.

That basically means capitalization.

Did you hear the word capital in there?

That means are we, when do we use capital letters?

I know you like them but you can't just use them any old time you want to.

There's some rules about it.

So let's see.

All important words in book titles begin with a capital letter.

Underline book titles.

Okay.

So we have two jobs.

We have to find the title of the book and make sure all the important words have uppercase letters, and then we need to underline them.

So let's take a look.

The Cat in the Hat is a funny book.

Oh, I know that book.

Do you, right?

So the cat, that should be an uppercase in the, those are not really important words, but hat is and then that's the name of the book.

So it needs an underline.

And let's try this one.

I just read The Big Snow.

Okay.

So here's our title, even though the was not an important word here in this title, in this one it is because it's the very first word, The Big Snow.

And we underline it because it tells us, "Oh yeah, that's a book."

Great job.

All right.

It's time for us to talk about our opinion writing.

Let's see what we have so far.

Remember our question is, do you think yurts make a good home?

And I wrote, in my opinion, a yurt makes a good home.

It can be taken apart and moved.

That's one reason.

Yurts are cool in the hot summer and warm in the cold winter.

That's reason two.

Today, we're going to find one more reason for our opinion about them making good homes.

So I brought another book page for us to look cause we're going to go back to this informational text so we can really think about what details they gave us about yurts that I might like.

People can also build their own yurt.

They can buy a yurt kit, a kit doesn't cost too much money.

Would you like to live in a yurt?

All right, so let's think about what it says here.

What did you notice?

Right.

They can, you can build your own.

That's cool.

What else?

Huh?

Oh, yes!

I like that.

I like that reason because houses are expensive, right?

Is a yurt, is a yurt expensive?

No, it says right here look.

You can buy a yurt kit.

A kit doesn't cost too much money.

That's a great reason that a yurt would make a good home.

All right, so we're going to take the idea and make it into a sentence.

Now, remember we cannot, No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Cannot copy that sentence.

That's someone else's words.

We would be stealing their words and that's never okay.

We need to take those, that idea and make it our own.

So let's see.

They can buy a yurt kit.

A kit doesn't cost too much money.

Okay.

Let's say this.

We already said it can be taken apart.

Yurts are cool in the hot summer and warm in the cold winter.

They, and the word they means yurts.

They are not expensive.

Are you ready?

Ex, ex pen pen, sive.

Look at that.

They are not expensive.

That might be the best reason of all, that a yurt makes a good home.

All right, now tomorrow, we're going to finish our opinion writing with our closing sentence.

So I want you to make sure you come back and help me think of how to close out our story our opinion paper about yurts.

And until then I need you to sing with me.

♪ Good bye now.

♪ ♪ Good bye now.

♪ ♪ The clock says we're done.

♪ ♪ I'll see you tomorrow.

♪ ♪ Goodbye everyone.

♪ Hey, don't forget.

Write me a letter.

Tell me about a book that you're reading or that you'd like me to share on TV.

And I hope you're writing some opinion papers about some fun things that you're looking at in books.

Come back tomorrow so we can practice some more grammar, some more capitalization and punctuation.

And we'll finish up our opinion writing.

Until then, I want you to have a great day, and I definitely want you to read a good book.

Okay.

Bye-bye, see you tomorrow.

(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 everyone.

♪