- Hello readers.

Welcome to read, write, roar.

Do you know about our seasons?

Ah, winter, spring, summer, and fall, or we call it autumn.

Well, today we're going to be writing a story entitled the reason for the seasons.

It's about why we have our seasons.

After we're done reading our book, Mrs.

Spear, will revise, add to her story and put in some dialogue, which is the talk between characters.

Are you ready to get started?

Let's go.

- [Lady] This program is made possible in part by the Michigan Department of Education, the State of Michigan and the WK Kellogg Foundation, additional support by, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) (lion roars) (upbeat music) - Hello, amazing learners.

My name is Ms. Rogers.

Today, we're gonna be talking about a pattern or a cycle.

Now, a cycle is a circle of events that repeat in a regular pattern over and over and over again.

Well, the cycle that we're going to be talking about is the cycle of weather changes during the year.

And it's divided into four parts and those four parts are known as seasons.

Now our seasons are winter, spring, fall, and summer.

Have you ever wondered why we have our seasons?

Well, the book we're reading today, "The reason for the Seasons" by Ellie Peterson will answer that question.

We have permission to read this book by Boyds, Mills and Kane.

So let's get started.

The reason for the seasons.

the seasons, I'll bet you know all about them.

How many there are, what they're called, when they occur or happen.

You might even have a favorite, but do you know what causes the seasons in the first place?

What do you think?

Hmm, interesting.

Right?

I think I heard some people say the wind blowing, the sun shining.

Any other ideas?

Let's keep reading and see what we find out.

Perhaps you think it's that the earth is closer to the sun in the summer, and farther from the sun in winter.

After all, you're usually warmer when you're closer to a source of heat.

If we had summer because earth was closer to the sun, during those months, then our whole planet would have summer at the same time, but it doesn't.

When it's cold and snowy in the Northern Hemisphere, it's downright balmy in the Southern Hemisphere.

They have opposite seasons.

Now, balmy, that word balmy.

I'm wondering what could balmy mean.

I know they said that there's opposite seasons in the Northern Hemisphere versus the Southern Hemisphere.

So if it's cold in one place, the opposite of cold is hot.

So balmy must mean that it's hot.

Let's look at the illustrations.

Now, this little girl here, she's on the phone talking to her grandma.

She's in the Northern Hemisphere.

Her grandma's saying to her, hello, Julia, having a nice sunny day, sweetie?

Well, she responds to her grandma by saying, um, not exactly grandma.

So if we look in the Northern Hemisphere in this photo or illustration, we see that there's snow outside.

So that means it is cold, right?

And if we look at this illustration, grandma has on a bathing suit.

So it must be pretty warm.

Now, let's look at this caption over here.

It says the imaginary line around the middle of earth is called the equator.

The part of the planet North, which is a pier of it is called the Northern Hemisphere.

And the part South of it is the Southern Hemisphere.

In fact, the earth is slightly closer to the sun in January and slightly farther from the sun in July.

That means that in the Northern Hemisphere, earth is closest to the sun in winter.

Seems strange, but it's true.

Or maybe you think we have seasons because the earth rotates.

It would seem to make sense that the side that faces the sun has summer and the side that doesn't face the sun has winter.

We often connect light with warmth and dark with cold.

Nope, that's not it either.

Rotation is actually the cause of day and night.

The earth rotates once every 24 hours, the side of the earth that faces the sun has day, and the side that faces away from the sun has night.

If rotation were the cause of the seasons, we'd have all four seasons in a single day.

So what is the reason for the seasons you ask?

I think we're about to find out.

Our planet is tilted (laughs) so it's not straight up and down, but it's tilted.

All right.

So it says, imagine a pole that passes through the earth from North to South, this is called the Earth's axis.

Instead of being straight up and down, it's tipped 23.5 degrees.

If earth wasn't tilted, we would have no seasons at all.

Hmm, would that be fun not to have all the seasons?

Let's read on.

Earth's tilt affects how directly the light from the sun hits it.

For instance, a spotlight puts out a very strong, hot light when it shines on you.

As you change the angle of the spotlight, the light appears dimmer, or it's not as bright.

The light also feels cooler, this is because the same amount of light has to spread over a large area.

Earth's tilt is also why shadows are different lengths throughout the seasons.

They're shortest in summer because the sun is higher in the sky.

Just like that hot spotlight overhead that we saw earlier, the shadow grows a little longer in the fall.

Your shadow is a longest in winter because the sun is so low.

Then your shadow shortens again in the spring.

Now, if you notice on this page, the seasons are changing.

However, the time of the illustration is the same, it's 3:00 p.m in all of these seasons, but the shadow is different.

Have you ever noticed your shadow in the summer and the spring and the fall or in the winter?

I want you to start noticing that if you haven't so far.

Wondering what Earth's tilt looks like from space?

Woo, the Northern Hemisphere has summer when it is tilted toward the sun and the sun's light is most direct.

At the same time, the Southern Hemisphere has winter when the sun's light is least direct.

When the Southern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, it has summer, and the Northern Hemisphere experiences winter.

Imagine a world where the sun never sets.

The Arctic circle is known as the land of the midnight sun for this very reason.

When the Northern Hemisphere has summer, the area near the North pole is tilted so much toward the sun that on certain days, it never gets dark.

So if it never gets dark, it's always sunny and bright.

Wow.

The opposite happens in winter.

Hmm.

So just like the Northern Hemisphere is the opposite of the Southern Hemisphere, when they say the opposite happens in the winter, the opposite of always being light outside would be, you are right.

It's always dark or it's dark for a long time.

So it says on certain days, the Arctic circle gets no light at all.

It's in 24 hours of darkness.

The North and South poles experience seasons as well, but they still stay pretty cold because the sun's rays are too indirect to make them much warmer.

So direct means it's focused in, indirect means it's spread across a certain amount of areas.

All right, we're learning a lot in this book.

In another region closer to the equator, the light from the sun is very direct and there is little change in the amount of light energy all year long.

This area is called the tropics, and these countries don't experience big changes in temperature from season to season like the rest of the world.

If we look at this weather report, we see that the season is still warm all throughout.

So we have 83, 84, 86, 83, 85 and 84.

So those numbers are still pretty much in the same ballpark.

So that means the temperature is pretty consistent.

Throughout our whole history, people have relied on the seasons to mark time and the passing of each year.

However, the way they define them is based on where they live and can vary greatly.

Many islands and coastal areas have extra seasons like pre spring and high summer.

Areas around the equator have a rainy season, and a dry season.

There are many ways to think of the seasons, but only one thing that causes them.

Do you remember what it is?

I'll give you a hint.

(laughs) Yes, you are correct.

The tilt of the earth, believing that earth is closer to the sun in the summer is logical, it makes sense, but that doesn't make it right.

A good scientist always questions what she thinks she knows.

Great job, amazing learners.

See you next time.

(upbeat music) - Who's ready for a brain break?

We've been working really hard.

Now it's time to give our brains a break.

Today for our brain break, we're gonna do something that I love to do in the snow.

We're gonna build a snowman.

Are you ready?

Stand up with me.

Great.

The first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna push, push, push our snowballs.

Do that with me.

Push, push, push your snowball through the snow.

Now, let's get ready to stack them.

We've got three snowballs to build our snowman.

Ready?

Take the big one and stack it.

Let's do the middle.

Ready?

Stack.

What do we need on top?

A head.

That's right.

Get the smallest snowball and stack it.

1, 2, 3.

Now, we need to give our snowman some arms, stick in the arms.

Great.

What else does it snow need?

A face.

Let's put on two coal eyes.

Now, we need a carrot nose.

Get your carrot and stick it on.

Great.

Finally, let's do a smile.

Smile, smile, smile, smile.

Your snowman needs a scarf.

Grab a scarf and wrap it around.

And the last thing we need on our snowman is a hat.

Find a hat and put it on top.

That's a great snowman.

Thanks for brain breaking with me today, friends and for building a snowman.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back, writers.

It's Mrs.

Spear again.

Have you been working on your story about a time when the date or the nighttime sky's important?

We're finding out it's a lot of work and time to plan and organize a story.

Aren't we?

Hopefully, you're at least jotting down some ideas, doing some thinking about what you might write about.

You might even start to do some drawing.

It's okay if you wanna draw the pictures out to your story first, and then add words later.

Don't forget, you can always rewatch this episode when you're ready to do some writing.

We have a few things we're going to do today.

The first thing is, I wrote some new parts to my story that I'll be sharing with you.

And that will wrap up at the beginning of my story.

Then I'm going to be doing some revising with you, we'll think and talk about what revising is and practice some of that today.

Finally, we're going to continue to use our story map so that we can continue on and write the middle of the story.

Are you ready?

Let's go.

Grab some paper and a pencil if you don't have it.

So now let's look at what I added to my story.

I added both words and illustrations, illustrations are what we draw.

They match our story.

I added this illustration because I had just written about putting on goggles and sunscreen.

So in this picture, you'll see us putting sunscreen on the kids and grabbing their goggles.

When you're writing your story, make a picture that highlights what you want to show when readers are looking at your story.

Let's reread story from the beginning, and then we'll read the part that I added on.

It was a hot summer afternoon at our family's favorite beach in town.

We grabbed all our things and headed to the beach.

It was hard to lug it all.

We looked for a spot on the crowded beach.

It was time to find goggles, put on sunscreen and head down to the cold water.

That's the part you've already seen that we wrote together.

Now, I'm going to read that next part that's going to finish up this green part here, and that's the beginning of my story.

We all went into the water, waiting out.

The kids jumped and went under.

They came up fast.

We laughed seeing their faces.

Then Matt went out for a swim.

The kids, and I looked at shiny rocks.

They wanted to go out by Matt, so I had to go under.

It was cold.

We swam and played Red Rover.

What a great time we were having.

Remember we're using our story map, where I had all of these ideas written about sunscreen and goggles, heading to water and laughing and playing, waiting out and playing Red Rover.

And I made sure I added those into the beginning of my story.

So now let's talk about revising.

Writers have to read their work over and over again.

When you're writing, if you're working to make your work more clear or better organized or more interesting, you are revising.

Can you say revising?

Great job.

When you're revising, you might add details in, change a word, change some sentences, or you might decide you need to take some details out or take some sentences out.

Either way, when we are revising, we're trying to make our work really clear so the audience can read it, enjoy it and understand it.

My audience is you and Ms. Rodgers.

Remember she's going to read and give you some feedback and then I'll do even more revising later.

I'm going to show you a spot where I read and thought, Hmm, that's a little bit confusing.

I thought to add some details to my story.

The part that I thought about adding to my story was when we got to the part where we're thinking about grabbing our things.

So it says here, we grabbed all our things and headed to the beach.

I thought it might make it more clear, where are we grabbing her things from?

I didn't tell you.

So I thought about adding the words from the car.

We grabbed all our things, right here, from the car and headed to the beach.

So I'm going to put something called a caret, not like the carrot you chew and eat from the garden, this caret is spelled differently and it means something totally different.

It's something you put in when you're adding.

So what I'm gonna do is put a little it looks like the root part of the hair, right?

I put this little upside down beginning of a triangle and I'm going to write again, we grabbed all our things from the car, from the car and it's okay if it looks a little bit messy because this is not my final version of the story.

We grabbed all our things from the car and headed to the beach.

I feel that's more clear.

Do you feel that's more clear to you as the person who is listening?

I sure hope so.

The other part I thought would be helpful to fix is this part here, we talked about, we looked for a spot on the crowded beach, but then all of a sudden it says, it was time to find goggles.

I feel like I need a little bit more information there.

We looked for a spot, well, what happened?

Finally, we found it.

I thought it would be helpful to put that here.

Finally, we found it.

I'm going to add that sentence right now.

It's the beginning of a sentence, so I'm going to use an upper case F. Finally, we, finger space, you don't want bridge to your finger spaces with your words, found it.

And I'm kind of excited about it, so I could just put a period to stop.

Do you know what I put when you're kind of like excited about something at the end of the sentence?

Yes, an exclamation point.

Finally, we found it.

Yes.

So now you've seen me add two things into my story.

So hopefully it's more clear to you.

Let's read it from the top.

It was a hot summer afternoon at our family's favorite beach in town.

We grabbed all our things from the car and headed to the beach.

It was hard to lug it all.

We had looked for a spot on the crowded beach.

Finally, we found it.

It was time to find goggles, put on sunscreen and head down to the cold water.

I'm feeling like my work is more clear because I revised it.

You try some revising in your story.

Thank you writers for joining me today.

We did so many different things, We looked at a story and saw how illustrations can make it more interesting, especially if we wanna make sure they match the words in the story.

We also talked about revising to make a story more clear and exciting and interesting for our audience.

Finally, we, again, looked at how important a story map is to help keep us organized so we can keep adding on to our story.

I'm hear in my story, I've just started that next part.

I'm going to keep writing so that I can finish up my story and bring it back and share the rest of it with you, and then be able to send it off to Ms. Rodgers to give me feedback.

Keep writing, do your best and have fun.

(upbeat music) I'll look forward to see you next time.

Only great work.

- [Lady] This program is made possible in part by the Michigan Department of Education, the State of Michigan and the WK Kellogg Foundation, additional support by, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music)