(bright 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're located in South St. Louis County.

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

So let's get started.

This week, we are talking all about how to figure out the definition of brand new words in books by using context clues.

So context clues are clues that help readers to determine the definition of unknown words.

There are these little pieces and clues, this is Winnie, that are added into books by authors that help us to figure out what some of these brand new words mean.

Now, yesterday, we talked about some of the different ways in which authors embed these context clues.

So let's review those really fast.

Authors can use the definition, right?

They can tell us what those words mean.

Authors can also give examples, right, of meanings of those words.

They can, hello, Winnie really loves to talk about new vocabulary words.

They can also give us synonyms, right, telling us other words that mean the exact same thing.

And they can give us antonyms, telling us words that mean the opposite.

And then they can give us a reason to infer, right?

Maybe the way in which they say it.

We can infer the meaning based on what the sentence says.

So today we're gonna look at some sentences with some new vocabulary words and try and infer the meaning of what those words are, or use synonyms, antonyms, definitions, or examples.

Are you ready to put your brain to the test and figure out some words using context clues?

I know Winnie is.

Let's do this.

All right, here's our first one.

Bears are stagnant during the winter as they are hibernating in their dens.

Stagnant.

That's a new word, huh?

Well, let's think about the rest of the sentence.

So bears in the winter are hibernating.

What are they doing when they hibernate?

Yeah, usually they're sleeping, right?

So maybe it means that they're sleeping.

Not quite sleeping.

Yeah, they're staying in one place.

They're not moving, right?

So they might be sleeping while they're there, but they may not be sleeping the whole time.

That's right.

So stagnant means that it's not moving.

Sometimes you might hear this word when we talk about stagnant water.

That's water that's staying in one place and not moving compared to a river that's not stagnant because it's flowing.

Good job figuring that one out.

Let's see if we can do another one.

We, we're elated when we spotted the Norwhal.

We jumped for joy and clapped.

So they spotted this Norwhal and they were feeling elated.

Maybe they were feeling scared, happy, mad?

Let's see if the rest of the sentence helps us.

We jumped for joy and clapped.

Well, jumping for joy and clapping.

What does that usually mean someone's feeling?

That's right, it usually means that they're feeling happy and excited.

So if we're elated, we're really excited and happy, right?

I would be elated if I spotted a Norwhal, wouldn't you?

Absolutely.

All right, here's what we've got next.

Penguin chicks are docile.

Docile.

I don't know what that means, do you?

Let's keep going.

Let's see if we can figure it out.

They are laid back and gentle.

Any ideas?

That's right, the definition was kind of almost given to given to us in this one, right?

Docile means that you're laid back.

You're gentle.

You're very calm, right?

Just like Winnie right now.

She's being very docile and calm.

Very good.

Good job figuring that one out.

Let's see, what else do we have?

The arctic fox thrives in the winter.

Thrives.

You know, I feel like I've heard that word before.

I'm not quite sure what it means.

Let's keep going and see if we can figure it out.

They have adapted to survive in the cold environment.

So if I can survive in this environment, I'm adapting, right?

Living and surviving.

If I'm thriving... That's right, thriving means that like I'm doing really, really well.

I'm surviving and getting along great.

This is something that's really good for me, right?

So if I'm thriving in an environment, I'm surviving and I'm getting along really, really well.

Excellent.

Okay.

Caribou are herbivores.

(murmurs) I always get these mixed up, herbivores, omnivores, carnivores.

Carnivores.

I always get mixed up which one's which.

See if we can keep going.

See if that helps.

They never eat meat.

Well, so an herbivore is an animal that never eats meat.

So what do they eat if they don't eat meat?

That's right, they usually eat like plants and things.

So an herbivore eats plants.

Very good.

You've got that one.

All right, let's see what we've got next.

This is a good word.

The child was petrified by the polar bear at the zoo who lunged at him.

Okay.

Well, if I put myself in the child's shoes, right?

I'm at the zoo.

The polar bear lunges at you.

How would you probably be feeling?

Yeah, you'd probably be a little scared, right?

So if the child was petrified, what do you think that means?

That's right, he was scared, right?

He was afraid of what had happened.

So petrified means scared.

Good job guys.

This is a good one.

Are you ready?

You're going good so far.

Let's keep going.

The penguin was lethargic after catching fish, so he took a nap.

Lethargic.

Making me feel lethargic.

Huh.

That's right, tired.

See, it even made me yawn, and yawning is something you do when you're tired.

Very good.

So you would take a nap if you were feeling really, really tired.

So this penguin went out.

He exerted all sorts of energy trying to catch all these fish, which made him feel really lethargic or tired.

So he needed a nap to get his energy back up.

Good job.

All right.

Here's another penguin one.

It's a good word, but it's not my favorite word.

And you'll see why.

Penguins feed their chicks by regurgitating their food they ate earlier.

Regurgitating their food that they ate earlier.

Well, they already ate the food.

How do you think they feed it to their babies?

If they've already eaten it, how do they get it to their babies?

You know what I could use?

Last week we talked about prefixes, and this word regurgitate has a prefix, right?

Re.

And I know that the word re means to do it again.

So if this food I ate earlier, I'm gonna do something again.

I'm going to, what do you think?

Yeah, they're throwing it up.

They're regurgitating it.

Yikes.

That's how they feed their chicks, by regurgitating their food, by throwing it back up, by bringing it back.

Probably not the best way that we would want to eat food, right?

Yeah.

But for baby chicks, it works.

All right, what else we got here?

Oh, moose.

All right.

I love moose.

Let's see what we can learn about moose.

Moose shed their antlers and grow a new set every year.

Well, I know what the word shed means.

There's people have sheds in their backyard that they keep tools in.

But that doesn't make sense.

Okay, well, not the right shed, huh?

What do you think this shed means?

Moose shed their antlers and grow a new set every year.

That's right, shed means that we get rid of them, right?

They fall off, right?

If you think of dogs, many dogs are shedding dogs, right?

They get rid of this extra hair and then it grows in.

So moose shed their antlers.

They fall off and then they grow a new set every single year.

Pretty cool fact, don't you think?

Yeah.

All right, last one.

Are you ready?

Can you put these context clues to the test?

Many birds migrate during the winter.

They fly South to warmer weather.

Migrate.

Well, during the winter, they fly South to the warmer weather.

So migrating, they're flying South.

What you think that means?

Right, it means moving, right?

They're changing locations.

They're going somewhere else for the new weather trying to avoid all that cold and snow.

Smart birds.

Very good.

So boys and girls, today, we were able to figure out the definitions of some brand new scientific words by using context clues, right?

We were looking at definitions, examples, synonyms, antonyms, and even doing some inferring to help us figure out what these words meant.

The important thing to remember that with context clues, it's not just looking at the word.

It's looking at the words around it, maybe the sentence before, the sentence after, which is what we did here, right?

When it comes to context clues, you have to use them to help you figure out those words, right?

The word itself usually isn't gonna tell you what it means.

We have to look around it and figure out what those clues are trying to tell us.

So now that you guys have done this, are you ready to dive into a little bit more math for this week?

All right, off you go.

- Thank you so much, Ms. St. Louis, for an awesome reading lesson.

And thanks for handing it over to me to teach math.

My name is Mrs.

Brewer.

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

And of course, I'm here to teach you a third grade math lesson.

All right, so we have been having snow much fun and that's not gonna get old to me while we keep teaching these winter theme weeks.

And yesterday we talked about sledding, right?

And we watched some videos and some pictures of people going up and down hills and different places and different hills and things like that.

And boys and girls, this is one of my favorite things to do.

Okay, but one thing that we saw yesterday, are there a lot of different sled types, aren't there?

All right, we saw a lot of different types yesterday.

So today I had several friends test these sleds out, and one friend in particular, that way we kept it the same, I sent him out to Art Hill and he reported back to me some data of the different times it took for him to start at the top of the hill and hit the same point at the bottom of the hill.

Okay, and so we've been trying to figure out what's the better sled for different reasons?

So that's why we sent him out here to do this.

So to be able to compare the different sleds and the time it takes for him to get from the top to the bottom, we decided we're gonna create another bar graph.

We created a bar graph last week, if you remember.

Okay, and so we're gonna create another one today, and we're talking about the different types of sleds and their times, okay?

So if you can see right here behind me, I already started setting up a graph, so we're not sitting here watching me write.

Okay, and so we have the type of sled times.

Okay, so on the bottom here, what am I listing?

I have toboggan, boogie, snowboard, plastic, saucer.

Those are different what?

Someone out there has it.

These are my types of sled.

All right.

Now, what do you think we're measuring over here on the side?

These are our times.

So over here, this is the time.

And what am I measuring time in?

Can you see over here?

S-E-C stands for what?

Seconds.

This is how many seconds it took him to get from the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill, all right?

So remember boys and girls, important parts with our graph, I have to have a title, type of sled, times, right?

Then at the bottom I have to label, what do I have here, what's this telling me?

Here's tell me the type of sled, and what am I measuring here on the side?

I'm measuring the time, right?

And how am I measuring the time?

We can time it an hour.

That would be a really slow, let it ride, boys and girls.

We can time it seconds.

We can time it minutes, right?

Basically even be months or years.

Those are different types of time that we can have.

All right.

So we have to make sure we label everything.

So if you look over here, boys and girls, I looked at the data that we had, and it made the most sense to graph this using what scale?

What am I counting by here on the side?

We're counting by tens, aren't we?

Okay, so our first type of slide we had was the toboggan.

Remember the toboggan, the big old sled, right?

How many seconds did it take my friends to get from the top of the hill to the bottom of the toboggan?

Do you see?

It took 93 seconds.

93.

Okay, so now let me come over, find toboggan.

Toboggan's here on the right, and I'm gonna go up to 93.

So I might try a different way today.

So I know these blue lines here are kind of hard for you to see.

Let me move you a little bit closer here.

You can kind of see I've got these little blue lines in here.

All right, I didn't want to draw them, 'cause I thought it would throw you guys off a little bit here.

All right, but here's 90, and then here's the 10 or 100, one more 10 would be 100, right?

So 93, I'm gonna put that, this would be about halfway.

I'm gonna go just a little bit lower to right here.

And this is where I'm gonna plot my 93.

And I'm gonna start my bar here for my toboggan.

Remember it's a bar graph, because I'm drawing what?

Bars, right, to represent my data.

Okay, our next type of sled we have is the boogie sled, boys and girls.

This is a snow boogie sled.

You see this?

This is a foam type sled.

It's very light, easy to carry up the hill.

Okay, so we talked about a snow boogie.

This is their boogie right here.

Okay, and the snow boogie sled took my friend 35 seconds.

Where do you think I'm gonna plot that here on my graph?

I heard someone say find the 30.

Okay, I found my 30.

I know the next line here is 40, so 35 would be where?

Right, right here in the middle.

Okay, so it's right between 30 and 40.

And this is my boogie sled here.

Okay, our next type of sled we looked at, well not necessarily a sled, but this is a way to get down the hill, right, is our snowboard, right?

It's totally like a sled.

All right, so how fast do you think the snowboard was?

The snowboard took 51 seconds with your feet strapped in here to get down to the bottom of the hill.

All right, so how would I find 51?

Oh, find 50, right?

It just go up a hair, just a hair, right here.

So right here above sled, 51.

So the snowboard took 51 seconds.

Okay, our next type of sled is our plastic sled.

And this is what we mean, boys and girls, by our plastic sled.

Can you see that?

Looks like a little boat, right?

We're gonna put on the snow.

So this is what we mean by the plastic sled, boys and girls.

So the plastic sled, how fast do you think that went?

How did you know it was 65 seconds?

Oh, you looked over at my (murmurs).

Okay, so the plastic sled took 65 seconds.

What do you think I would plot 65 seconds?

What do you think I'm gonna have to look first?

First find the 60, right?

And then is it quite to 70?

No, we know the five is where?

Right in the middle, right?

So here I got my 60.

I put the plastic right there in the middle, okay?

I'm doing my best to draw these as straight as I can, but I am not as successful as I had hoped.

Okay, so there is our plastic sled.

Now, do you have a guess what our last sled type is?

I just heard somebody say saucer.

How did you figure that out?

You must've remembered from the other day when we talk a bit talked about sleds, huh?

What do you mean it's right here and right here?

Oh, you just read from my sheet.

Oh, okay, well, I'll give you that one.

All right, but what do we mean by saucer sled?

Oh, boys and girls, this is a saucer sled.

If you have never ridden in one of these deathtraps before, you are missing out.

I'll have to tell you someday about a funny story, boys and girls, when I was probably about your age ridding in one of these saucer sleds.

Needless to say, it went extremely fast.

So how many seconds did it take for the saucer sled?

Right, I see some of you looking back here saying, oh, saucer sled, 15 what?

What are we measuring this in again?

Second, so where do you think I would put 15?

I'm counting by tens.

I don't see a 15.

Where should I go?

Oh, find 10.

Found 10.

Then you draw a line here at 10, draw line.

You don't have to yell, "No!"

What do I need to do?

Oh, look between 10 and 20.

And what would be between 10 and 20?

15.

Okay, so right here, I'm gonna draw my line.

Connect it all.

And here, boys and girls, you will see my bars, right?

Remember this is called a bar graph, because it looks like we are using bars to plot our data, right?

You don't have to color in.

A lot of times, we see these colored in, hoping maybe it'll make my bars a little happier, a little more even and uniform.

Okay, boys and girls, so I'm gonna get to color in these a little bit better before we talk about what all these times mean and what sled you would like to try.

Is there a sled you're looking from this, boys and girls, you would like to try?

And why would you like to try that type of sled?

Okay.

All right, well, hopefully, boys and girls, we get a lot of snow, and you're able to get out on Art Hill or whatever hill you decide to go sledding on, and maybe, you know what, if you haven't tried a saucer sled, I bet you if you ask one of your parents, they probably have been on one before.

Yeah, they'd probably have some good stories for you too boys and girls.

So don't forget a bar graph is just another way that we can take information and organize it into a way that's easier for us to use and to look at different data, right?

So boys and girls, I want you to come back tomorrow.

We're gonna have some more snow fun.

You thought I was gonna say some more snow much fun, right?

Nope, nope, nope, not this time.

All right, but I will see you back here tomorrow.

Have a good night.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Teaching in Room Nine is made possible with support of Bank of America, Dana Brown Charitable Trust, Emerson, and viewers like you.