(upbeat music) - Hey there learners!

It's Mrs.

Spear again.

Guess what?

Can you tell by my outfit what we're going to do today?

A mystery word, we're going to be detectives and solve a mystery word today.

And you know what?

The work that we're going to be doing in today's episode is linked back to an old mystery, where we did which was observations.

Do you remember that word?

You're going to be doing some observations today with Ms. Rodgers.

We're going out and about to do that.

You're also going to be connecting back to the work that we talked about: when we're thinking about frogs.

That was our topic, and we learned about how they survive and protect themselves.

We thought about how they were camouflaged to protect themselves.

And Ms. Rodgers is going to be be thinking about that with you later.

Right now, we're going to get started with a mystery word that's connected to our topic.

Grab a pencil, grab some paper, and be ready to make some words.

Here are the letters that you're going to need: Two A's, E, O, U, C, F, G, L, M. Okay!

Go grab your stuff, I'll meet you back here, and we'll get started building words.

- 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.

(cheerful music) (lion roar) - Check this out!

We got an envelope with words for the mystery word and it says a mystery word connected to your topic.

Hmm.

Our topic, we're learning about nature.

We've learned about frogs, we're learning about how animals survive.

So what we're going to build is going to lead to that.

Let's get started.

Double-check and hold up these letters for me.

Let's make sure you have yours.

Hold up your A, your other A, E, O, U, C, F, G, L, M. And we're focusing on two letter words, four letter words, and five letter words today.

So even though there's a lot of other words we can make with these letters, that's our focus.

You need three columns today with two, four and five in them.

Let's get started.

The first word: two letters, two sounds.

The word is: "Am."

Ah, Mm.

"Am."

A M. Can you make am at home?

A M spells: am.

Yeah.

Two sounds, two letters.

I'm going to put am right over here.

And you can write am where you are.

A M. If you don't have a pencil and pencil, sky write it.

Okay.

We're going to take the word am, ooh, and we're going to build a word.

We're going to build, the next word we're going to build, we're going to add the "Cuh" sounds at the beginning.

What letter would that be?

Yeah, letter C!

This says cam, but we're going to add an uppercase to the C, it could be a name.

But we're actually going to make the word camo, which is a short word for the longer word camouflage.

Hmm.

Let's see, what letter would we need here?

"Cuh," "am," "mm," "oh"... Yeah, letter O, it goes at the end.

So that's just a short way.

Camo is a short way to say camouflage and it has four letters.

C A M O.

Can you write camo, and put it in your four letter column.

Okay.

I'm going to be a little tricky with you now but I know you can handle it.

We're going to take the word camo and I want to change it into the word came.

My friend came over to walk.

Let's do the sounds, three sounds.

"Cuh," "ay," "mm."

Came.

Three sounds but four letters.

Hmm.

"Ch," "ay," "mm"... you don't need this O, but we need another letter.

Yes, we need a final E at the end.

C A M E spells came!

Four letters, three sounds.

Can you write came under four letters for me?

Okay.

So we spelled camo and then when we changed it and put this final E, the Ah changed to an Ay sound.

Okay.

Now we're going to change one letter to make the word came change into the word cage.

Cage.

Birds, you'll see in a special cage, if they are someone's pet.

What letter do we have to change?

Yes.

"Ch," "ay," "juh."

We don't want that "mm."

We're going to change that to the letter G. Cage has three sounds: "cuh," "ay," "juh," but there's a final E that helps A to say the "ay" sound.

Can you write cage?

C A G E, cage.

The next word has five letters.

Now.

We don't need to take away all the letters in flag.

I'm going to tell you what the word is.

The word is flame.

So, when you see something light when you're lighting a fire, you're making a campfire.

Or if you have a gas stove, there's a flame.

Let's do the sounds in flame.

Four sounds.

"F," "l," "ay," "mm."

Four sounds in flame.

So, what do I want to take away for sure?

Yeah.

I need to take away letter G. I don't need that.

"F," "l," "ay," hmm...

Yes!

I want to put letter M there.

But.. that would say flam.

How do I make it say flame?

Absolutely.

I need to add letter E at the end.

F L A M E spells flame!

With that final E at the end helping A stay the same.

Will you write that under five letter where you are?

Okay.

The next word that we're going to make, we get to keep most of flame up here.

We're going to change one letter to change the word flame into the word flume.

Let's do the sounds in flume.

"F," "l," "oo," "mm."

Flume.

Yeah.

The "F, L" is staying the same, but the, U, hmm, that's not going to be A, What letter might we put there?

Yes!

Letter U says, "oo," when it's making its own sound.

F L U M E spells flume.

Now flume is actually something connected to nature.

A flume would be like this deep stream that you'd see in a mountain side.

That would be one that would be occurring like naturally.

And they're deep, and the water moved down them really fast.

And this next word is connected to nature.

We read about it in the book Nuzzles.

The word is foal, which is an offspring of a...

Horse!

Good job remembering that foal.

"F," "oh," "oo."

There's three sounds, But there's four letters.

You try it.

What letters would you make to go "F," What others would you use to make foal?

"F," "oh," "oo."

Yes, letter F, the O sound, yeah, it's going to be the O do you know what letter you put here to help O say "Oh?"

Yes, letter A, "F," "oh..." Excellent, letter L at the end.

Foal.

F O A L. Can you write foal?

Put it down here, F O A L, under four letter words.

Now we're going to do something fun.

We're going to change foal into goal.

If you play soccer, you might try and score a goal.

"Guh," "oh," "o," what letter are we going to change?

Yes.

The first letter F we're going to change out and put a G there instead.

"Guh," "oh," "l." "Guh," "oh," "l." Goal.

G O A L. Can you write goal now?

Isn't it fun to see if you can spell foal, you can spell goal.

I'm going to add goal down here.

Our next word is clue.

"Cuh," "l," "oo."

It's three sounds, but there's four letters.

"Cuh," yes, that's letter C, and there, an L. Now, with the vowels we have left, how would we make the "oo" sound?

What patterns have you been working on for that?

You've got it.

U and E can make the "oo" sound.

C L U E spells clue.

I will tell you a clue for the mystery word today is again, it's related to our topic.

We talked about it with frogs and something they use for protection.

There's another clue.

Okay.

I want you to now take clue and change it into...

Glue!

What would we have to do?

"Guh," "l," "oo," three sounds or letters.

You got it.

If you can spell clue, then you can spell glue.

We just have to change the very first letter because that's the sound that's different, but the pattern is saying the same.

G L U E spells glue.

Well done!

Make sure that you write that at home or wherever you are.

This word is another word that we read about in the story, we read Nuzzles.

It's an offspring name.

The word is calf.

"Cuh," "ah," "f." Now here's what's interesting about calf.

Three sounds but four letters.

The first sound, "Cuh."

Yes.

That's letter C. "Ah," there's A.

Now the last sound you hear is what?

Calf.

Yeah.

It's letter F. But I'm going to tell you, before the letter F is there, we don't really hear the sound very much, "Cuh," "af."

We're not hearing the "L" sound, but this is how you spell calf.

Can you write calf down?

And I am going to put calf under four letter words here.

We'll put it under here.

C A L F. This is the last word remaining.

The word we're going to make is also connected back to what we've been doing before.

And with our topic of frogs.

The last word we're going to make has five letters.

And we talked about a lot.

The word is algae.

Now algae is not considered a plant or an animal, but it is a living organism, it just doesn't have the normal parts of plant would have.

But we know that tadpoles eat algae and small plants, right, by scraping rocks and pebbles.

Let's do the sounds we hear in algae.

Can you say algae?

Great.

"Ah," "l," "juh," "e." Four sounds, but there's five letters.

"Ah," yep.

"L," "Juh," "E." Now I'm going to show you how you spell the end of this word because it's tricky.

It's not a common spelling.

This is how you spell algae.

It's not something I would ever expect you to be able to know right now.

But you did good, good work hearing the sounds.

A L G A E Spells algae.

That's how you spell that word.

Can you write algae or sky write it, and put it down below.

Once you've done that.

I'm going to have you clear your board and make a word that we made before today.

It's going to help us with the mystery word.

I'll start clearing mine off.

Give you a moment to finish writing any words you haven't been able to write yet.

Okay.

I want you to make the word camo.

Can you make that word again?

That we've made already today?

"Cuh," "ah," "m," "oh."

Great.

And it has the word am in it.

Okay.

Now the word that is our mystery word is a word that we have talked about.

It's how animals can protect themselves.

Something they use that helps them to blend in.

Do you remember what that's called?

Camo...

Camouflage!

Well done!

You got it.

Give yourself a pat on the back.

Okay.

Here's what's tricky about camouflage.

And if you saw in the lesson, you saw that I had my time when I misspelled it and I had to look it up, which is okay.

We can't spell every word right all the time.

There is a U here, camo, "flage."

"Fl," yeah, that's for the F and L. And then the A kind of makes an "Ah" sound, "camo," "fl," "ah," "juh," it's kind of weird.

This is how you spell it.

So I'm just going to show you, because it's not one that you would really ever be expected to be spelling on your own in first grade.

But it's very connected to what we're doing, and we can use what we know, and I'm helping you spell it.

Let's spell camouflage.

Can you say camouflage?

Great.

Now let's spell it.

C A M O U F L A G E Spells camouflage!

And here it is, if didn't write it yet, you can write it at home.

Thank you word builders for being amazing mystery word solvers today.

(upbeat music starts) And how fun when you do some observing with Ms. Rogers later, and you're going to be learning more and thinking more about camouflage, and even talking about it.

Have a great time!

Until next time, keep reading, writing, and roaring.

(lion roar) - We're going to try a little experiment.

I'm outside, and I want us to take a close look at the grass and see what we can find.

Besides there being leaves and some dead grass, what do you notice?

I cut up pieces of construction paper in different colors and I placed them in the grass.

Do you see them?

Let's zoom in a little closer.

Now which color do you see?

Can I see pink?

I see white.

Let's zoom in a little closer.

Now, do you see the green one and the blue?

Now why were those two colors difficult to see?

Yes, because there are similar to the color of the grass.

They are also the shape and size of the blades of grass.

So the green and the blue were a little camouflaged just because of their shape, the size, and color.

I'm going to zoom back out and notice how it disappears.

Now that's pretty cool.

(upbeat riff plays) - We're going to write about the Arctic fox.

Take a look at this photograph.

What do you notice?

Yes.

The Arctic fox is white and it blends with the snow.

So let's start writing about our observations.

So first thing we notice is that the Arctic Fox is white and its fur is white.

So I think my first sentence can be the Arctic fox has white fur to blend in with the snow.

Does that sound like a good sentence?

All right, let's start.

Now.

I know my sentence should begin with a... uppercase letter.

So let's go ahead and write the word The.

The Arctic... "arc," "tic," the arctic fox, "F," "ahcks," has... White... fur.

Okay.

White... fur... to blend in... to blend... "bl," "end," to blend in, with... the... snow.

Sounds pretty good.

Snow.

And what should go at the end of my sentence?

Punctuation.

So I'm going to put a period there.

The Arctic fox has white fur to blend in with the snow.

I wonder why he has white fur.

What use could it be for him in the winter time?

He can hide from predators.

So how about our next sentence?

We should say something like he can hide in the snow from polar bears and wolves that are hunting him.

All right.

Let's go ahead and write that.

Upper case letter.

He... can... hide.

Oh, that's that long I sound.

"H," "ide," the I is telling the E, or the E is telling the I, to stay the same.

Hide, in... the... snow... from polar bears and wolves.

From... polar... bears... and... wolves.

Wolves.

So this has a V in it because there's more than one wolf.

Wolf, wolves.

So it can hide from polar bears and wolves that are hunting him.

"h," "un," "t," "ing."

Ing, ing.

I N G... are hunting him.

And we should put a period or an exclamation.

Let's put an exclamation mark at the end of this one.

So then that means I need to read this sentence with some excitement.

So let's see how it'll sound.

He can hide in the snow from polar bears and wolves that are hunting him!

I think that was a good choice.

Okay.

So what can our next sentence, let's try to come up with one more sentence.

What do you think could happen to its fur when it gets warmer?

Yes.

It'll change colors, right?

So maybe we can say something like when winter is over the fox will shed or lose its white fur, and then it'll turn brown, something like that.

So when winter is over, the fox will shed his white fur and use his brown fur to camouflage in the bushes and trees.

That's a long sentence, but we could do it.

Let's try it.

Uppercase letter.

When... "wuh," when, winter, "wuh," "in," "t," "er."

Er.

Two letters that make the "er" sound...

"er."

E R, E R. When winter is... over... E R, thank you, when winter is over... that little comma there tells me to pause.

So when winter is over, (inhale) I'll take a breath.

The fox, "f," "ah," "ks," will...

Shed.

"Sh," "ed," his... White... fur.

Another "er" is U R. His white fur and... Use... his... What color did we say it would change to?

Brown!

Yes, because it fits better with the trees, right?

Because the bark of the tree is usually brown.

Okay.

So he uses white fur, and uses his brown... "br," "oun."

Brown fur... to... camouflage.

Now we know that that's a huge word but we can spell it out together.

Cam.

Cam... ouflage... to camouflage in... the... bushes... and... trees.

"Tr," "ee."

A long E sound, double E. Period.

Okay.

So our final sentence says, when winter is over, the fox will shed his white fur and use his brown fur to camouflage in the bushes and trees.

Now that's amazing.

Now let's try to read this whole thing together.

Okay.

So read with me at home.

The Arctic fox has white fur to blend in with the snow.

He can hide in the snow from polar bears and wolves that are hunting him.

When winter is over, the fox will shed his white fur and use his brown fur to camouflage in the bushes and trees.

Now, I think those are pretty good sentences.

We had our uppercase letter, we have punctuation at the end.

We have subject, what the sentences are about.

And also we had our predicate, the action that was taking place.

So how about you draw a picture of an animal that uses camouflage, or either cut one out of your magazines that you may have at home and then include as many details as possible in your drawing.

Okay.

And then I want you to write a story about the animal.

What is the animal?

Where is it hiding?

Why is it hiding?

So again, we had a lot of fun with working on camouflage and also writing our sentences about our animals and the different things that we're learning about nature.

Thank you for learning with us today.

You did an awesome, super awesome job.

(upbeat music starts) I look forward to seeing you next time on Read, Write, and Roar!

- 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 guitar music) (piano riff)