- Hello, amazing readers.

Welcome back to Read, Write, Roar.

Today we will learn about the letter O and the long O vowel sound.

We will do this story about plants and animals that live in a pond, learn about research and collecting animal facts.

You'll need paper to write on and something to write with, so go ahead and gather your materials.

I'll see you soon.

Let's get started for Read, Write, Roar.

- [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by Michigan Department of Education, the state of Michigan, and the Kresge Foundation.

Additional support for educational programming provided by and by viewers like you.

(upbeat music) (roaring) (roaring) - Hello, amazing learners.

Welcome back to Read, Write, Roar.

My name is Ms. Rogers, and today we're going to review the long O and a short O sound.

I have two words that will help us to remember what those sound like.

I have been word hop, h-op, and it has a short O sound as an ah.

I also have the word toad, which makes a long O sound.

T-oad, toad, and it has the OA spelling pattern.

Now we also remember that there are different spelling patterns that make the long O sound, and I have a couple more words for you.

So remember toad?

And I said it has the OA spelling pattern?

We also have toe, like your big toe or your little toe or your middle toe.

(laughs) We have the word toe, and it has the OE spelling pattern, and it makes the O sound just like grow.

Now the spelling pattern with this one is OW.

Grow.

Next spelling pattern is just the O by itself.

Cold.

Now let's review all of them.

We have OA, which says O. OE, it says O.

And OW, it says O.

And all by itself, right here, whoa, whoa, whoa, right here.

(laughs) It says O.

All right, so let's go ahead and look at some other things.

We also know that vowel consonant E makes the vowel says its name.

And I have two words as an example.

I have the word home and the word nose.

So the E is telling the O to say its name.

So I'm going to add these words to our chart a little later.

Now let's look at our book.

Our book is entitled "Over and Under the Pond".

It's by Kate Messner.

It's about a boy and his mom who take a ride in a boat to explore a pond.

They see all the different plants and animals that live at the pond.

We're going to take a look at a few pages inside this book and we're going to explore just like the family did.

We're gonna look for the long O sound and also some words we're gonna add to our chart.

Let's look at this page.

I'm going to read it first, and then after I'm done reading it, I want you to read it with me.

That's called choral reading.

Under the pond is a whole hidden world of minnows and crayfish, turtles and bullfrogs.

We're paddling over them now.

Now let's read together.

Under the pond is a whole hidden world of minnows and crayfish, turtles and bullfrogs.

We're paddling over them now.

Did you hear any words that had the long O sound?

I heard a few.

One of the words I heard is whole.

Whole has the vowel consonant E pattern, which makes the O sound, and it says its name.

Another one is minnows.

Now minnows are small fish, okay?

And this spelling pattern has the OW sound, which says O. I also noticed that there's an S at the end of minnows.

So minnow means one fish, minnows means more than one fish, okay?

Now the final one I saw on his page is the word over, just like in our title, and we already know that the spelling pattern is just an O.

Very good.

Now, great job, and thank you so much for helping me to look through this book to find words that make the long O sound.

(soft music) I want us to take another look at our book "Over and Under the Pond" by Kate Messner.

This book is about plants and animals that live in a pond.

We also know that a pond is a body of water.

It's smaller than a lake, but there are some amazing plants and animals that live over, meaning above the water, and under the water.

And some of those animals that live over the water include like moose or birds, and some that live under the water are like the fish and the otter that we saw when we read the book before.

We're going to take a look in the back of the book and read the author's note, something that the author really wanted us to pay attention to or have information about.

So let's take a look.

Ponds and other wetlands provide homes for plants and animals around the world.

A pond is one kind of ecosystem, an interconnected community of organisms that interact with one another and with their environment.

If you look back through the story, you'll find many examples of those interactions from the blackbird gathering grass for her nest, to the many animals eating plants and other animals as part of a food chain.

Now, a food chain is the way that some animals eat.

So for instance, if we have larger animals, they eat smaller animals.

And those smaller animals eat other animals that are smaller than them, and those tiny animals may eat like little plants or things that are found in the water, okay?

So it's just a way of eating different items or things that are part of the food chain.

In a pond ecosystem, producers like plants and plankton make their own food using sunlight, water, carbon dioxide from the air and nutrients from the soil or water.

Herbivores like fish, birds, beavers, and moose in the story, get their energy from eating plants.

Carnivores like the great blue heron, otter and raccoon eat both plants and animals.

At the bottom of the pond are decomposers, bacteria and fungi the break down dead and decayed plants and animals to return nutrients to the soil so the cycle can start all over again.

A cycle is something that repeats itself, kind of like an echo, right?

Sometimes ecosystems are threatened by pollution or loss of habitat, but when things are going well, every organism has a job to do, and together they keep their pond healthy.

This story was inspired by a canoe trip on Barnum Pond at the Paul Smith's College Visitor Interpretive Center in the Adirondack Mountains.

Remember we talked about an ecosystem and how all things work together for the plants and the animals that are involved?

Well on this page, we have a redwing blackbird.

And what do you think this is right here?

This right here.

This is the nest.

And where do you think the blackbird gets those things from?

Home Depot?

(laughs) No, no, of course not.

A blackbird uses all of the things in nature in order to build its nest.

So different twigs from trees, different things that he or she may find on the ground that will cause the nest to be insulated, nice and warm and soft and cozy, for the babies.

Okay, so that's using the ecosystem in order to have a very good place for them to live, like a shelter, like you have, whether it's an apartment, whether it's a condo, whether it's a house, okay?

Now let's take a look at our beaver right here.

Now, what is he doing?

He's having some dinner or breakfast, or maybe even lunch.

Now, as a reminder, I'm gonna read this part at the top just so we can see, Under the pond, beavers dive deep.

They pump with powerful tails and rise to the surface with the delectable roots from the mud.

So this is telling us that these are roots, but what do you think this beaver is going to do with these roots?

It said delectable.

Delectable roots, which means that they're tasty, they're delicious.

Not to us, but to this beaver.

So if something is delicious, and he has it in his mouth, what do you think he's going to do with it?

Probably eat it, yes.

So we saw the blackbird using different things to build a nest for shelter.

Now we see that the beaver is using another part of the ecosystem in order to eat and survive, okay?

So let's take another look.

Remember this page?

The heron was taking a great look, right?

At the surface of the pond.

And not only was he looking at the surface of the pond, but he was looking underneath the pond, staring.

And we know that when we turned the page, it says strikes!

So strikes me to go through something really fast and hard.

So what is he trying to do?

Eat, eat the fish.

So he's using all of these animals, which are our fish down here, the minnows, in order to survive.

So he's eating those things that are found within the pond.

So in an ecosystem, we have several different things that work together.

Now, as you know, we read through the book and we saw different animals and also what the family was exploring.

But we have something called producers.

Producers are plants that make their own food.

We have something called herbivores.

Herbivores are animals that survive just by eating plants.

Another thing we have is something called carnivores.

Now, if we know that herbivores eat plants, what do you think carnivores eat?

You got it.

They eat animals and other plants.

So are you a carnivore or are you an herbivore?

Now we have something else, and it's called decomposers.

Decompose.

Hmm.

Compose means to put something together, but de- means to take something apart.

So what do you think decompose could mean?

Yes, to take something apart or break down something.

So plants and animals that break down things that are dead or decaying are called decomposers.

And it helps to keep the ecosystem healthy.

Now in the summer or in the fall, you may see people using like dead leaves and chopping them up, and they use that as fertilizer, and it helps the ground to become even more strong and nutrient-rich so that different things can grow and survive.

Amazing learners, we learned so much today.

And one of the tools that helped us was this book, "Over and Under the Pond".

We explored with this family what happens over the pond, and things that happened under the pond.

We saw how animals interacted with other animals.

We talked about the ecosystem.

We also found words that began with so many different sounds, and we found words that had a long O sound and the long O spelling patterns.

So I want you to continue to explore not only books, but your entire world.

So I'll see you next time on Read, Write, Roar.

Happy reading.

(soft music) - Hello learners.

It's Mrs.

Spear.

Thanks for coming back today.

We're going to continue doing more work, some great researching, and then putting all the ideas we're learning from your research onto paper to write our own informational text.

Today's topic that we're going to talk about is movement.

Here's the word movement.

Can you say movement?

Great job.

Movement.

How does a frog move and how does that help a frog to be able to survive?

When I was doing my research after reading my books, I was discovering there's a little bit of a difference between a tadpole and a frog, which kind of gets at that second question.

How are animals the same and different?

So tadpoles have a tail, and they have a fin which helps them to swim.

So if you remember, we have our lifecycle here where we were learning about how frogs grow and change over time.

When they're a tadpole, they have this strong tail.

As they grow, we learned that they get their legs, right?

And they get both front and hind legs.

So a frog, an adult frog has strong legs.

They can jump, hop and leap, and they also have webbed feet so they can swim too.

So both can swim, but they have different ways that they move that helps them to survive and to grow.

Okay, so we're thinking about movement and now we're going to do our writing.

So in my notes, I talked about a tadpole and it has a tail and a fin that helps it swim.

So I think that should be my first sentence, writing about a tadpole.

Here's what I'm thinking I would write is something like this.

Tadpoles swim with their long strong tails.

That sound okay to you?

All right.

Let's put that idea onto the paper.

Let's talk it out and mark it out first.

Ready?

Tadpoles swim with their long strong tails.

Good?

Okay, let's write it.

Tadpoles.

That's like a compound word.

Tad poles.

And I remembered to start with an uppercase letter.

First word in my sentence, right?

Tadpoles swim.

Sw-im.

Let's do that.

Sw-im.

With, I bet that's like a speed word for you now that you just know how to write.

Tadpoles swim with their.

Now I'm gonna show you the their that I'm writing.

This their, there's three different theirs, this one means it belongs to them.

Tadpoles swim with their long, comma, strong.

If we can spell long, we can spell strong.

Long str - ong.

There's that same -ong sound.

What do they swim with?

Their long, strong tails, that's right.

T-ails.

This tail means that part that's coming off the end of their body.

T-A-I-L-S.

So we know that tadpoles swim with their long, strong tails.

Now we want to think about a frog, and we remember that frogs have strong legs to help them jump, hop, and leap, and they have webbed feet to help them swim.

For what we're writing about today, I really want to focus on the two ideas about their strong legs and their webbed feet.

What about if we did a sentence that says they have strong, powerful legs?

Would that work?

Let's mark that out.

Ready?

They have strong, powerful legs.

Let's do it.

They, I bet that's a speed word for you.

They have.

Hey, strong, we already know how to spell that.

They have strong.

I'm gonna put a comma because it's another word to describe their strong, powerful.

Pow er ful legs.

Okay, let's read that sentence.

They have strong, powerful legs, period.

I'm telling you something, right?

Stop with a period.

Last thing I want to talk about is that they have webbed feet for, yeah, they have the webbed feet so they can swim.

How about this sentence?

They have webbed feet to swim.

Sound good?

Let's write that.

We already know how to write they and have.

I just can't fit that here this time, it's a little too squeezed if I do that.

So I'm just gonna put they right to the beginning of the next line.

Have.

And we're going to say again, that they have webbed feet to swim.

W-ebbed.

F-eet.

My two E's are saying the E sound here.

They have webbed feet to, I bet you know that word.

The last word we're writing is swim.

Sw-im.

Okay, let's read that last sentence.

They have webbed feet to swim.

Well done.

And here is my illustration showing, here's my frog, he's getting ready, he's getting those powerful legs ready, he's going to leap, and then he's going to land.

And that is the illustration I have to show about movement for frogs.

Now we're gonna think about their diet.

So here's some notes that I have about what I learned when I did my research.

The frog.

Here's things we know about a frog.

A frog can eat worms, snails, insects or bugs, and has a sticky tongue.

Also I learned that frogs drink water to help them survive by absorbing it through their skin.

That was kind of a cool fact I didn't know.

Let's think about tadpoles and how they're a little bit different from frogs.

They eat plants and algae, and they have a really hard mouth that helps them to scrape rocks and tiny pebbles so they can get those plants and that algae.

So we know the tadpoles have hard mouths to scrape soft plants from pebbles and rocks.

Let's write that.

Tadpoles have hard mouths to help them scrape plants from pebbles and rocks.

Whew, we can write that.

Tadpoles.

I bet you are probably getting better at spelling words like tadpoles and frogs, because we've written them a few times.

Tadpoles, there's that word have again.

We've written that word a lot in our informational text.

Tadpoles have hard.

There's that ar sound.

H-ard.

Mouths.

Do you remember what we said?

Those hard mounds were for?

To scrape soft plants.

Okay.

Oh, guess what?

I reread, I'm missing an S. Tadpoles have hard mouths to scrape.

Tadpoles have hard mouths to scrape.

Soft, we're gonna describe those plants.

Soft plants.

Or they could eat algae from pebbles, which are gonna be really, really small little stones.

Pebbles and rocks.

R-ocks.

All right, let's read this whole sentence everybody.

Did you notice I put a period at the end to make sure that I stopped?

Tadpoles have hard mouths to scrape soft plants from pebbles and rocks.

Great.

So we know that that's really important, and we got all these ideas about the things that tadpoles do.

On the other hand, now we have to think about frogs.

So we have to talk about how frogs, what do they use to catch insects?

Yeah, they use the long sticky tongue.

So let's write about that, that frogs have a long sticky tongue.

Frogs have a long sticky tongue.

Let's just start there, 'cause that's a lot to write so far.

Frogs, we're getting good at that word, frogs.

Have.

A long.

I can't put sticky there, so I'm gonna go down to the next line.

St-icky tongue.

Tongue's kind of spelled a little bit different than you would imagine.

They have a long sticky tongue.

What do they use that tongue for?

To catch and eat a lot of different things.

To catch and eat.

What types of things, do you remember?

They eat worms, they eat snails, they eat bugs.

So let's write that down.

Frogs have long sticky tongues.

Oh, no.

Frogs have a long sticky tongue to catch and eat bugs.

What else did we say?

Worms.

Remember how we talked about using a comma to separate worms and snails?

Snails.

So frogs have a long sticky tongue and to catch eat bugs, worms and snails.

That's the end of my sentence.

What do I need to do?

Put a period, thank you for remembering that.

Otherwise my reader would be very confused.

The last thing I want to talk about.

Remember we talked about water?

How do frogs drink water?

Do you remember that?

Yeah, through their skin.

They absorb it through their skin.

So we want to write that, because they need that to survive.

Frogs drink.

What do they drink?

Water.

Remember to put a space.

Water through their, remember we talked about which there to write?

The one that shows belonging.

Their sk-in.

And what do I do at the end of the sentence?

Period, well done.

Let's read it together.

Diet, remember that's what they eat.

Tadpoles have hard mouths to scrape soft plants from pebbles and rocks.

Frogs have a long sticky tongue to catch and eat bugs, worms, and snails.

Frogs drink water through their skin.

Excellent job today, learners.

Thanks for coming back.

Can't wait to see you next time when we write more informational text pieces for our book on the topic of frogs.

Until then, have a great day, and I'll see you soon on Read, Write, Roar.

- [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by Michigan Department of Education, the state of Michigan, and the Kresge Foundation.

Additional support for educational programming provided by and by viewers like you.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)