♪ 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.

♪ (lively music) - [Speaker] Zigzag through people's feet in the busy hallway.

- Hey, welcome back to Discovery Ranch.

I'm Mr. Dawson, and I'm here to take you on discovery so you can learn how to read and write.

Join me here each day so we can go on discoveries together.

Remember, if you will write to me and send it right here to Valley PBS, I will send you an activity book.

I look forward to your letter so I can read them to see what you've been learning.

Well, let's get started with our learning.

In fact, let's start right away with some sight words.

Are you ready for some sight words?

Here we go.

Does, D-O-E-S spells does.

C-O-M-E spells come.

W-H-O spells who.

H-A-S spells has.

W-H-A-T spells what.

S-O-M-E spells some.

P-U-T spells put.

G-O-O-D spells good.

T-O-O spells too, and H-E-L-P spells help.

Remember when you have these words in your brain, when you see them in a book, you'll know them, you'll say, "Oh, I know that word."

Or when you're writing, you'll go, "Oh, I know how to write that word because it's in my brain."

Right, these are the sight words, these are all the ones that we've been learning all year.

Practice them every day so that they can get in your brain forever.

Let's take a look and remember our essential question.

"What ideas can you suggest to protect the environment?"

We've been talking about that all week and then I gave you a challenge.

The challenge was, "I want you to write a paragraph," remember a paragraph, it has a topic and details and a conclusion.

I want you to write a paragraph and send it to me on how you can protect the environment, and maybe you can get some ideas by our reading today, and here is our selection.

It is an informational text, it means that it has good, true information.

Did you hear that?

Wait a minute.

I said the word, true information, a clue, a clue.

Is it fiction or nonfiction.

Right away yes, I know it's nonfiction right away.

Why?

Because I said that this is true information.

This election is true information.

Let's look at the title, "Save Big Blue".

Now, in informational text, a lot of times there'll be text features that are helping you with a story, and this time they have pictures and they have captions.

Before we start reading, I want to read the captions.

Are you ready?

Let's look at this first caption right here.

It says, "The blue whale is about a hundred feet long."

Wow, oh wow.

That's a long, long ways, and then, "It can weigh almost 200 tons."

I was thinking, what does 200 tons look like?

And then a friend of mine said that one ton is like a VW Bug.

Just one.

So a whale weighs as much as 200 VW Bug cars.

Wow, and look at this, right here it says, "Each part of a whale's blue tail is called a fluke."

So when you see a whale's tail, what is it called?

A fluke.

This one says, "Blue whales may get caught in fishing nets."

Ooh, that don't sound like it's going to be good.

That don't sound good, no way.

Okay, let's look at the caption on this page.

Is there one?

Oh there's pictures and captions.

Okay, it says, "Clean beaches help keep blue whales safe."

Clean beaches help keep blue whales safe.

Okay, let's read our selection.

Here we go.

"The blue whale is the biggest creature on Earth!

Blue whales live in oceans all around the world.

Today, however, blue whales are in danger."

Oh no, oh no.

"Hunters have caught too many blue whales.

Sometimes whales eat harmful trash from dirty or polluted ocean waters."

Oh, that's not good, is it?

Oh, it just makes me think of our essential question.

What ideas can we suggest to say to help those whales?

Let's keep reading.

"We can help to protect blue whales."

Here we go.

"We can help keep beaches, streams and rivers clean.

This will keep ocean waters clean for Big Blue."

Oh, that was a great selection, I learned a lot about blue whales.

We need to do something to protect the blue whales.

Like always, I have some questions for you, I wonder what they might be?

Here we go.

I wanted to come back here because this is where we're going to ask our first questions.

My first question is, "What is this selection about?"

If you were gonna tell me, "What is this selection about?"

What would you tell me?

Right, it's about blue whales.

Blue whales, yes.

Remember how long they are?

They're a hundred feet long and 200 tons.

How do I know that?

Because the caption gave me those extra clues that I can use.

All right, here's my next question, are you ready for my next question?

My next question is, "What problems do blue whales have?"

What is the problem with the blue whales?

That's right, that's right.

It says right here, "Today, however, blue whales are in danger."

Oh, danger.

What does that mean?

That means there's not many blue whales left and we should protect them because if we don't, pretty soon they'll all be gone.

It says, the first thing, "Hunters have caught too many blue whales."

Ah, hunters are catching too many blue whales.

What was the other problem?

"Sometimes whales eat harmful trash from dirty or polluted ocean water."

Oh my goodness!

Yes.

So what should we do about that?

Oh my goodness, we're gonna have to investigate that a little bit further.

Now as we go to this next page, I want to talk to you about a reading strategy.

Sometimes teachers will ask you questions or you have a paper that has a question on it and you go, "Oh, I don't remember."

Well, it's good to have a strategy.

One strategy is to reread the text.

You know, you can reread it, it's okay.

So here's the question.

The question is, "What can we do to help the blue whale?"

And right here, it tells us on this page, and if I don't remember, "What can I do?"

I can use that strategy of rereading.

So let's reread.

"We can help to protect blue whales."

There it is.

My question is, "What can we do?"

What can we do?

And it says we can do something, let's see what it says.

It says, "We can help keep beaches, streams, and rivers clean.

This will keep ocean waters clean for Big Blue."

So what can we do?

We can keep the beaches, streams and rivers clean.

We can do that.

Can you do that?

Yes.

So when you see trash, what can you do?

You pick it up and put it away in the trashcan or if it can be recycled, you recycle it and doing that, you know that you're helping Big Blue.

Let's move over to the other side so we can take a look at our writing.

Are you guys ready to write?

Let me get this down and put it here and get our writing ready, and this is what it says, "Saving Big Blue".

What clues does the author give you to help you figure out what a fluke is?

All right.

It says, "Circle the clues."

Let me get my trusty dusty pen.

Here we go.

I'm looking at the picture, and I remember from the story that it's a tail and then I have the caption.

The caption helps me.

So, and here's the starter.

It says the fluke is, what is the fluke?

"The fluke is part of the whale's tail."

So I have to put that, "The fluke is a part of the whale's tail."

Are you ready?

A fluke is A, that's a sight word, A, part, part, is for P, par is A-R, part, is for T, a part.

A fluke is a part of, Oh, a sight word, a sight word of, O-F, O-F, a fluke is part of, of what?

A-a right a, how do you spell, oh, a is a sight word.

A fluke is part of a whale's, whale's, whale's, Wh, Wh, that's a diagraph, W-H, do you hear the A, ooh.

Now there's gotta be a clue somewhere that says, it tells the A to say its name and I'll show you.

See if you can pick it up, Whale, L and then there's an E and S, whale's.

Did you see the clue?

You did?

What's the clue?

Right, the E at the end of the word is telling the A to say its name.

So, our sentence is, "A fluke is a part of a whale's tail."

Ooh, now we have to spell tail.

Are you ready?

What's the first sound?

T, t, and did you hear the A sound again, a, a, a, yes, look at the clue this time.

It's an A and an I, the I is telling the A to say its name.

Tail, L right.

Okay, so our sentence is, "A fluke is a part of a whale's tail."

What?

Oh, right, right, I forgot, if we're gonna have a sentence, it has to have that upper case letter but it also has to have a period.

So there we have it.

"A fluke is a part of a whale's tail."

And that's what we just, we saw in the picture, and in the caption, "Each part of a blue whale's tail is called a fluke."

Isn't that a great?

I had so much time this week with you.

Now, remember, it's really important for you to help me.

How are you gonna do that?

I want you to write a paragraph and send it to me.

Remember it has to have a topic, it has to have the details, and it has to have the conclusion.

Then I want you to send it right here to Valley PBS, so I can read your paragraph on what?

"How we can help protect the environment."

So make sure you're writing, right, you get your idea, then you put your details and you'll do your rough draft, and then you edit, and then you do your final writing, and then you send it to me.

I had so much fun this week and I hope to see you next week.

We'll see you later.

Bye-bye (lively 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.

♪ (music continues)