(cheerful music) - Hi everyone and welcome back to room nine.

Our region's largest classroom.

My name is Mrs. St. Louis and I'm a teacher at Rogers Elementary School in the Melville school district.

And we are located in South St. Louis County.

Today, I'm here to teach a reading lesson that's geared toward students who were in the third grade but all learners are more than welcome to join and explore along with us.

So let's get started.

Now this week, we have been talking all about vocabulary words.

Specifically, focusing on phrases that don't always mean exactly what they say.

So these past two days, Monday and Tuesday, we've talked about two different forms of figurative language, similes and metaphors, and looked at how they were used in some sentences to figure out the meaning of those words.

Now, today, we're gonna focus on literal and non-literal meanings of phrases.

Sometimes they don't always come in similes and metaphors.

So before we dive in, let's talk about what literal and non-literal actually means.

Literal is when the words mean exactly what they say, right?

I could say that my hair is brown.

My eyes are blue.

That's saying exactly what I mean, right?

My hair is brown.

And my eyes are blue, okay?

Now, if I'm being non-literal right.

it's the words mean something other than what they say.

And so today the focus really is gonna be to look at some non-literal phrases and figure out what do they truly mean?

Because they should not be taken literally.

They can be kind of silly if you do, all right?

Are you ready?

All right.

We're gonna need those handy dandy detective hats again because we're really gonna have to dive in deep to really think what has the author really trying to say to me?

Because it's probably not exactly what I think.

All right.

You ready?

Here's our first one.

It's raining cats and dogs out there.

Have you ever seen it rain cats and dogs?

Yeah.

I haven't either.

So what do you think that this might mean?

Yeah, it might be a really crazy rain, or a really big rain.

a strong rain, maybe a thunder storm, right?

Yeah, so it means that we're getting a heavy rain when it rains cats and dogs.

So the literal meaning of this would be that cats and dogs were falling out of the sky but we know that's something that doesn't happen.

So we have to look at the non-literal meaning, right?

This is trying to say something else.

And so this is one of the common phrases that people use.

You may have heard of being said before too when talking about rain, right?

It's raining cats and dogs out there.

That's a phrase that people use to describe the type or amount of rain that we're getting.

Something you could use now too if you ever have rain.

All right, let's see another one.

Ooh.

I felt like a fish out of water.

Hm.

No, I'm not a fish.

So I can't feel like a fish out of water.

So I can't take this literally, right?

But think about a fish out of water.

Have you ever seen a fish who isn't in water?

What do they do?

Yeah, they kind of like flop around right and act all, you know, kind of silly.

because fish need water, right?

They can't survive out of water.

So they don't feel like themselves.

They feel a little crazy and a little different.

So if I feel like a fish out of water, what do you think that might mean?

Absolutely.

It means that I feel kind of crazy.

I feel different.

I feel strange or weird, right?

I don't feel like myself, because if I'm a fish out of water, I'm not where I'm supposed to be.

Fish should be in water.

But if I'm out of the water, I'm not comfortable.

I'm not in my own home element.

I feel a little bit strange.

So some situations where you might feel like a fish out of water, well, if I ever went to hmm, where can I go that I feel like a fish out of water?

Well, if someone ever forced me to play football, I probably'd feel like a fish out of water because I don't know how to play football.

I don't know the rules of football and I wouldn't feel comfortable.

That's not my space.

It's not where I want to be.

So I definitely wouldn't feel like I belonged.

Oh, this one.

My friend was green with envy.

Did she really turn green?

No, no.

She didn't turn green.

Now what do you think that means?

What is envy?

What does it mean if someone has envy or they're envious at someone else?

Right, they're jealous.

So if I have envy, I'm jealous of someone else, right?

So if my friend is envious of me might mean she's jealous of me.

Maybe I got something that she wanted, right.

So she doesn't really turn green, right.

She just becomes jealous.

And so green is a color that we tend to associate with jealousy.

Is there a character that you could think of who might be green?

Yes.

So if any of you out there have ever heard about the Wizard of Oz, right?

We say that the Wicked Witch of the West is green because she can be at some times a little bit jealous, right?

And so that's kind of maybe some where some a little bit of that green with envy comes from.

All right, what's next?

Whew.

This is one you may have said before.

Probably heard of.

He says he has butterflies in his stomach.

Uh oh, did he swallow some caterpillars and now they turned into butterflies?

Yeah, probably not, right.

So what do you think happened here?

Yeah.

Think about a butterfly, right?

Butterflies have their wings and their wings beat back and forth.

So if I have butterflies in my stomach, I may be feeling right, some of those wings going back and forth it symbolizes nerves, right.

So if I have butterflies in my stomach, I'm nervous.

I have this uneasy feeling, right.

And so it's a way to describe how I'm feeling, right.

Rather than just saying nervous, right?

I have these butterflies in my stomach.

Sometimes people say this before they go off and they give a performance, right.

So we might see the actor say this before they go on stage, right.

Or people might say this before they give a speech because they're nervous.

They're a little worried.

And it explains that feeling that sometimes we get in our stomach when we feel those nerves.

All right.

My brother told me I was barking up the wrong tree.

I don't bark, so what do you think this could mean?

Yeah, I'm looking in the wrong place, right.

If I think about my Winnifred, she's here at my feet, my dog, she loves squirrels.

And so when we go on walks, she is always out looking for squirrels, always.

And well, she likes to bark at squirrels.

And so what do they do?

They run up the trees.

Sometimes she doesn't quite see where they're going.

Maybe there's too many.

So she barks at the wrong tree, right?

So if we're barking up the wrong tree, we're not going in the right direction, right.

So if my brother says you're barking up the wrong tree, he's telling me I'm not looking in the right spot.

I'm not going in the right direction.

What I'm doing is wrong, and I need to try and maybe start over, right.

Got the wrong idea.

I need to rethink it.

Barking up the wrong tree.

All right.

Let's look at another one.

Hold your horses, I yelled to my mom.

If you ever heard that phrase before?

Hold your horses?

Yeah.

It's pretty common one that's used.

So am I really shouting at my mom to hold some horses?

Yeah, probably not.

I don't think my mom's ever really been around some horses.

So what do you think I'm telling her to do?

What might be a reason I have to hold horses?

Oh, maybe to stop them?

Oh, you had to bring them to a stop to slow them down, right.

So if I'm telling someone to hold their horses, I'm telling them to stop slow down, right.

It might be something that someone says if I'm really ahead of the game, right.

Maybe you are getting ready to go on a trip and so you are all excited, you got all your stuff and you're ready to go, but mom's still drinking her coffee and she's like, hold your horses.

We are not ready yet.

Sometimes that might happen to you on your way to school, right.

So maybe mom's really ready to go, and you're not ready.

You might be like, hold your horses.

I'm not ready yet, right?

Does it actually mean to probably hold some horses, just means to slow down, stop, take a minute.

We'll get there.

All right.

Let's look at another one.

Her hair is a smooth as silk.

Hmm, my hair doesn't quite feel like silk.

Hm.

If you think about silk, it is something that's really smooth and soft.

Really nice.

Hmm.

So what am I saying about someone's hair if I say it's as smooth as silk?

Yeah, I'm saying that their hair is really nice.

It's soft, really silky.

She has some really great hair.

I think a lot of people really want to have really soft, smooth hair.

Just like silk.

Alright.

Ooh.

I was so tired, I was ready to throw in the towel.

I don't always have a towel with me to throw in, so what do you think this could mean?

When do we throw towels in?

Right, if I'm at the gym and I have this towel, when might I throw it in?

Yeah, when I'm done, right?

So if I'm throwing the towel in, I'm showing that I am done, right, so I'm so tired, I was ready to throw in the towel.

I'm done, right?

So sometimes people might say this if they've been working at something really, really hard for a really long time and they get frustrated and they may be like, I'm throwing in the towel, right?

Sometimes I, you know, I might say this if I'm doing a puzzle.

My sister loves puzzles, but I can get frustrated at them, and if I can't find all these pieces sometimes it makes me so mad.

I might say, ha, I'm throwing in the towel.

I'm done.

I'm done today, right?

So throwing in the towel really symbolizes that I'm done, right?

Done and over with.

All right.

So you guys did an awesome job with this detective hats today.

We have been looking at some of these phrases, right.

And talking about literal definitions and non-literal definitions.

Remember literal is when we take the words, and ah, when the words mean exactly what they say, right?

But non-literal is when the words mean something other than what they say.

And sometimes authors choose to use non-literal words and phrases to add to the meaning of words.

Really add to the description, make you think a little bit in different ways.

It's definitely something that like have you pause to think, require that detective hat to really think what is the author trying to tell me, but it really adds great description to our book, and it's a really cool tool that writers and authors use.

So you might be trying a little bit of your own in some of your writing or even in some of your daily communication with others.

But now that we've had a chance to dive into some reading, let's dive into a little bit of math.

Off you go!

- Thank you so much, Ms. St. Louis, what an amazing reading lesson.

I really learned a lot.

How about you boys and girls?

Well, as you know, my name is Mrs.

Brewer.

I am a third grade teacher at Gordon Bush Elementary School in the East St. Louis school district.

And now Ms. St. Louis had just handed off to me, so we can take over with our math lesson for the day.

So as you know, we've been having so much fun here in room nine.

We've been talking about snow, all the fun things that we can do in snow, if you were with me the other day, I was outside, it was actually finally snowing here on my house, okay.

So one thing we haven't talked about yet that's fun to do on the snow are snow angels!

Who knows how to make a snow angel?

Well, a snow angel in case you don't know, is when you lay on your back in the snow you kick your arms and legs in this type of motion.

And when you get up, you look back down on the snow and it looks like an angel.

So today we're gonna do five snow angel kind of jumping jacks.

So can I have everybody get up?

All right.

So we're just gonna do five quick just to do a quick brain break.

And so we can jump, get it?

Right on back into our math lesson, okay?

So to jump, you're gonna kick your legs way out and your arms way up.

So pretend like you're making a snow angel as we jump.

Ready?

One, two, three, four, and five.

How does your snow angel look?

When you look back in the air, does it look like an angel?

Of course, it always should, right?

Ah, good job.

So now we should be ready to rock and roll and do some math, okay.

So today is kind of an exciting day for me, because I get to share some things that have been shared with me.

So out in the snow, I have had a lot of friends build snowmen with their kids, and a lot of kids built snowmans by themselves.

So I'm gonna start out by showing you just around the area, mostly here on the Illinois side, some snowmen that had been built.

You want to see some snowman, boys and girls?

Course, who doesn't, right?

All right.

So today we are gonna start off looking at a snowman that was built by Aiden.

And Aiden lives in O'Fallon, Illinois.

What a cool snowman you built Aiden!

I love that scarf, okay?

Great job.

Our next snowman comes to us from Kailee, from East St. Louis, Illinois, and poor Kailee didn't have any snow when we were building these snowmen, so she did the best that she could but it's still a snowman, isn't it?

Great job and great creativity, Kailee.

I love seeing your snowman.

Ah, and look at this little fella.

Kind of looks like Olaf, doesn't it?

In fact, that's what the Mueller family in Valmeyer, Illinois named their snowman.

This is Olaf!

What a cute little snowman they made.

And here we're gonna go to Olney, Illinois and the Franklin family built these three little cute snowmen.

How awesome are they?

Finally, we're gonna go to Edwardsville, Illinois where we have Joe and Charlie built this cute little snowman.

And look, they both wanted to put a snow or a nose on their snowman and their silly snowman has how many noses now?

There's two noses!

So boys and girls, what's one major difference you notice about the snowmen?

Okay, somebody mentioned their nose.

Some had arms, some didn't have arms, right?

But are they all the same size?

No, they're not, are they?

They are all different shapes and sizes.

Some are tall, some are short, right?

So if we look at the Mueller family's compared to Joe and Charlie, there's a big difference in height, aren't there?

Absolutely.

So after, their families sent in pictures, I had a lot more pictures, boys and girls, those were just a few I wanted to highlight for you guys, but they measured their snowman for me, okay?

So if you notice behind me on my blue paper, I have different snowman heights.

So now once again, I have all of this data, okay.

And to try to figure out what the tallest snowman was, what the smallest snowman was, I don't know what to do with all this.

So I've been thinking about our graphs we've been doing and our different charts to help organize this data.

So today I think I'm gonna use a line plot to help us determine which snowman was the highest, what was the average height, what did most of them look like, okay.

So back here we're gonna go to my paper that I have.

And what are we measuring today?

We're measuring snowmen's heights, right?

Sorry, boys and girls My chair just wants to slide around today.

All right.

So we have snowman height.

So we know that we always have to have a good title for any organization of data, any of our graphs, any of our tables that we do.

So we have snowman heights And today, they measured all of these in feet.

So I'm always gonna put, in my parentheses here, feet, so we know what we measured, okay?

So to make a line plot, first I have to draw my line, right?

What am I gonna put here at the bottom?

I'm gonna put their what?

Their height.

And once again, what are we measuring in?

Measuring in feet.

I am not having luck drawing that parentheses today, am I?

No.

So to figure out what my scale is gonna be here, boys and girls, so let me move to this side, so you can see a little bit better.

I'm looking at just some of the numbers to figure out what would be best, and some of the numbers I have, I have a one, two, three, four, and a five.

So what are we counting by?

We're just counting by ones, aren't we?

Okay.

So that's all I'm gonna do from my scale.

So here only have one, two, three, four, and five.

I don't have any zeros, I didn't have anybody not build one, we didn't have anybody build one bigger than five, so I'm just gonna use these numbers as my scale here on the bottom, okay.

So now, all we're gonna so is through my data that was sent to me from all these different people around our area, okay?

So Aiden measured his snowman, and he said his snowman was three feet.

I'm sure his mom, Corey, probably helped him a little bit with that.

She's also a math teacher.

And Corey said that it was three feet.

So to do a line plot, I'm just gonna find my three and I'm gonna put one X above the three.

So that counts for one snowman measured at three feet.

Kailee's snowman, remember she didn't have snow, her little styrofoam snowman was one foot.

Now I'm gonna find one on of my chart.

Do you see one?

Absolutely.

Right here.

And I'm gonna put it an X.

So this X represents Kailee's snowman.

The Mueller family that had like cute small one, their's measured two feet.

So I'm gonna find two, I'm sure their mom, Rebecca, helped them too.

And I'm gonna put an X right here, that represents the Mueller family.

So now the Franklin family that had the three cute little snowman, their mom Erin measured, and so that there's snowmen were one foot.

So I'm gonna find one and oh, what am I gonna do here?

Well, if there's more than one that measured one, okay, I'll put another X right above it, okay.

So this first one represented Kailee's, now the second X is gonna represent the Franklin family's, okay.

So Joe and Charlie, their mom measured that.

She said that their snowman was five feet, okay.

That's good measuring their Ms. Lauren, all right.

So I'm gonna put an X here at five, right?

Eleanor's snowman measured three feet.

Where am I gonna have to go for hers?

Right.

I'm gonna find three and do what?

Put one more?

One more X above.

Good job.

Ashlyn snowman measured four feet.

So for Ashlyn, I got to find four feet, right?

And what am I gonna do right above my four?

You are exactly right.

I am gonna go ahead and put another X right here above four.

Addison's measured two feet.

What am I gonna do for Addison?

Find two again, right?

I put an X above the two.

Violet measured three feet.

Point to me.

Where should I mark Violet's snowman height?

Yes.

I should put it right here at the three, but where should I put it at?

Right.

I need to put it right here at the top.

All right.

Beth's snowman measured four feet.

Where should I put Beth's?

Go ahead and point to me.

Where do you think I should mark it for Beth?

Beth's was four, so I need to find my four, I already got one, so right here, this would represent Beth's, okay.

Josie's snowman was one foot.

Where should I put Josie's?

Point to it for me.

Ah, I heard someone say, go to the one!

Okay!

Now I'm at the one.

Where do I go?

Right, we're gonna put another one right here.

Mark's snowman was five feet.

Where would I mark Mark's snowman?

Point for me.

Someone said, find the five!

Exactly right.

Good job out there.

Find the five.

Now where?

Right.

And then finally Jamison was one foot.

Where do I need to go now for Jamison?

Find the one and my X should go where?

Up here at the top.

So now looking at this line plot, how many snow men did we measure in all?

How could I find that out?

I could just count up all my Xes, right?

So how many Xes did I make?

One, two, three, four five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13.

So we measured 13 different snowmen from across the area, okay.

This was our range of heights that we had measuring, and what unit do we use the measure?

Right, we use feet to measure, okay.

So this is just another way that we can use to organize our data is by using this line plot, right.

Tomorrow, we're gonna look at our line plots from the week, and we're gonna try to analyze some of this data that we were given, okay.

We're gonna see what does it really mean?

It was a great day being here with you, boys and girls.

I will see you back here tomorrow.

(cheery music) - [Announcer] Teaching in room nine is made possible with support of Bank of America, Dana Brown Charitable trust, Emerson, and viewers like you.