It,s National Punctuation' Day?

 Hello? It;s National Punctuation Day>

Today: we will honor  Punctuation Day> by not using it correctly/

Mrs, Yollis! shared a book called: 

Punctuation Takes a Vacation

By Robin! Pulver;

Did you like the book!

Tell us what it was about:

We can:t wait to read your comment?

*Badger Claws* Clauses

A tip of the hat to retired teacher, Mrs. Ranney for this repost!

Mrs. Yollis' students have been reading about a Chumash boy named Badger Claws. It's been a great way to learn about the Chumash culture! We've also started learning how to improve our writing using dependent clauses. 

What are dependent clauses?

Dependent clauses start with special words:

After, Before, Since, While, When, If, During.

A dependent clause ends with a comma and cannot stand alone as a sentence. It must be followed by an independent clause, which is a sentence that can stand alone!

Here are some excellent examples of sentences with dependent clauses from our story about Badger Claws. 

1. If mischievous Badger Claws had not gone into the hot sweathouse, he would not have been caught by the Shaman!



2. After the Shaman left the brave Badger Claws in the high mountains, Badger Claws took a nap.



3. If Badger Claws shoots the fluffy, furry rabbit, he will have to skin it, clean it, and cook it before he eats it.



4. Since Badger Claws couldn't shoot a furry rabbit, he practiced shooting down the bumpy trail.



5. After Badger Claws shot a furry, little rabbit, he needed to skin the rabbit's soft fur.



6. When Badger Claws woke up in the freezing night,
he saw two monstrous "grizzly bears!"


7. Since brave Badger Claws found out the tracks were littleraccoon tracks, he was laughing like crazy!


8. Before Aged One got home, he devoured several acorn cakes and then lied about it. 

9. During the first two moons, Badger Claws was able to construct an ap, make acorn cakes, and adopt an orphaned raccoon. 


10. While Badger Claws slept, the little raccoon escaped and ate several acorn cakes.  

How did you like our dependent clauses?

If you have a sentence with a dependent clause that you'd like to share, we'd love to read it! (Hey, that was a dependent clause sentence!)

Maybe you can leave a sentence with a dependent clause about your biography subject! 

Again, dependent clauses start with special words: After, Before, Since, While, When, If, During.

An Array of Compound Words

Today we reviewed compound words. 

First, we watched the BrainPop Jr. video.

Something new to students was the idea of different types of compound words. For this, we stopped by the teacher resources from Spelling City. 

There are THREE different types of compound words, closed, hyphenated, and open compound words! 

Next, Mrs. Yollis got out some compound word cards. Each student was given half of a compound word. The object was to find a student with the other half. Together two students made ONE compound word. 

Once all the compound words were formed, we started making an array to figure out how many compound words we had in all. An array is a multiplication word we recently learned. When you line up objects in equal rows and columns, it makes it easy to get the total, or product. 

The first attempt is shown below. Students thought they had eight rows of four. So, 8 x 4 = 32 compound words.

Students soon realized that we had eight rows. However, some rows had four compound words and some rows had three compound words.  

We did some figuring, and realized we had 30 words.

Once we realized we had 30 words, we started building real arrays. 

6 rows of 5

15 rows of  2

2 rows of 15

3 rows of 10

What arrays did we miss? 

Leave a comment using at least FOUR compound words! 

Super Subjects and Plentiful Predicates!

Mrs. Yollis' class has been working on learning about 

what it takes to create a 

SENTENCE!

Photo by Mrs. Yollis 

We have learned that it takes two parts: 

a SUBJECT 

and 

a PREDICATE.

The subject tells the person or thing the sentence is about.

The predicate tells what the subject is or does.
The predicate always includes a verb!

Why don't you try creating a special sentence or two of your own?

Here are some possible subjects:

Buck...
Mrs. Yollis' students...
Panda and Beverly...

On her first day at school, Ramona...

Last Tuesday, our buddies...

Here are some possible predicates:

...took a tour of our classroom. 

...chased a duck across the pond.

...are positive people who persevere!

...worked together to learn how to create compatible numbers

...thought Mrs. Binney would give her a present.

After creating your sentence and typing it into your comment, tell us what the subject is and what the predicate is, or if you want to give us a challenge...Ask us to tell you what the subject and predicate are!

This grammar task is due by Friday! 

subject: This grammar task

predicate: is due by Friday! 

Verbs, Today and Yesterday

We have been learning about verbs. 

According to the dictionary:

verb

vərb/

noun

GRAMMAR

plural noun: verbs

1. 1.

   a word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence, and forming the main part of the predicate of a sentence, such as hear, become, happen.

Although we have done some worksheets with verbs, we've also collected verbs and placed them on our Daily 5 Word Work board. Notice the past tense verbs are in categories! Can you name each past tense category? 

For homework last night, everyone left a blog comment using at least three past tense verbs. Today we looked the the verbs in the comment section. We thought about the present tense of the verb and the past tense of the verb. 

Here are some examples of our verbs. 

Some past tense verbs did not follow any of the patterns. 

Those verbs are called irregular past tense verbs. 

Sawyer used the verb dive. Then he used the past tense dived. 

We were not sure if that was correct. So, we used the dictionary!

Is it dived or dove? Which is correct?

Leave a comment using at least two past tense verbs. Which category are your verbs from?

What is your favorite verb pattern?

What are some irregular verbs?

Marvelous Masterpieces With Mrs. Ranney

Today we had a special visitor, Mrs. Ranney! She is a good friend and colleague of Mrs. Yollis. 

We were talking about the two parts of a sentence, the subject and the predicate.

A subject tells WHO or WHAT the sentence is about.

A predicate tells what the subject did or does.

____________________________________________

Mrs.  Ranney introduced the class to a masterpiece sentence. 

A masterpiece sentence is a descriptive sentence with a lot of detail.

Mrs. Ranney finish the following sentence for us:

The bear _______________________________________.

Here is her masterpiece sentence:

The enormous brown grizzly bear waded into the freezing water to catch a delicious salmon swimming upstream. 

WOW! 

Can you make any of these subjects into masterpiece sentences?

The tunnel  ___________________________________.

Stan ________________________________________.

My camera ___________________________________.

Snoopy _______________________________________.

Thanksgiving __________________________________.

Mrs. Ranney and Mrs. Yollis _______________________.

Leave the class a your masterpiece sentence in a comment!

White to Brown :: (Summer Writing)

My former third graders are choosing to write summer vacation stories in their Google Drives! They share the Google Doc with me and leave a Google Doc comment asking to be published. I love having a connected learning community! Here is a great story written by Shayna highlighting adverbs! 

White to Brown

By Shayna

One day, a white pug named Eddy Wrinkleface walked happily down the Muddy Hill St. He tried as much as he could to avoid mud puddles. Eddy just got a bath, and he didn’t want to get another when he got home.  To Eddy, taking a bath was like eating jelly beans that were flavored like barf. He hated them more then being fed spoiled food. It was almost 9:00 and Eddy just wanted to get home and eat his dinner. 

Suddenly a big dark shadowy figure moved towards him. As scared as a baby pup, he tumbled into a big pile of mud. Then two big lights came on the enormous figure, blinding poor little Eddy. Then the figure hit Eddy making him very dizzy. Weakly, dirty Eddy tried to stand up. But he was hopeless. He flopped down on the floor again. Eddy barked as loud as he could, trying to yell for help, “Help! Help!” But his voice was as wimpy as a noodle. Then he heard a siren coming towards him quickly. To the rescue, came the animal control truck. They picked up Eddy carefully and put him in the truck.

But then, one eye came open, and then another. Eddy woke up finding him in a vet’s office. Still covered in brown mud, Eddy barked. Hooray! His voice was back. He stared over at the big desk in the room next to him. He saw a lady with a big phone.

The lady said, “Mr. Wrinkleface, is this you. We would like to tell you that your poor dog is in the recovery station after a delivery truck hit him. He was put under anesthesia and should wake up soon. If you can come get him tomorrow, that would be great.” Then the lady hung up the phone. This time, Eddy actually wanted a bath. The mud was spreading all over him. After two minutes, he was totally brown. From the tip of his nose, to the end of his tail was a full coat of brown mud. Eddy soon fell back asleep.

The next morning, the bell rang loudly at the veterinarian's office. It was Eddy’s family there to pick him up and take him home. Eddy was tired and dirty. He couldn’t wait to get home. Eddy jumped up excitedly and barked. The vet took the family to the room Eddy was in.

“Here he is. As good as new!” The vet said pointing at Eddy.

“I’m sorry, Miss, but this isn’t our dog.” explained Mr. Wrickleface. Our dog was silky white, not brown.”

“Oh dear. My mistake. Let’s look at room four.” Said the lady. Then they all walked away.

Eddy sat down with a frown on his face. What was he going to do? He got up and ran out the door of the pet care building and slowly walked off into the middle of nowhere. With no clue of where to go, Eddy stumbled off in disappointment.

Eddy decided to write a letter to his family and leave it at the front door of his old house.

_______________________________

Dear Family,

I see you no longer have interest in me. I could tell by the way walked away from me. I am off to find a family that wants me. But don’t worry. I will surely never come back.

Yours Truly,

Eddy

_______________________________

Eddy left the note at the front door and hurried off. Eddy had no luck of finding an owner. He had to sleep in the dumpster too.

The next day, Mr. Wrinkleface stepped outside to pick up the morning paper. To his surprise, he found a note. It read:

fjsghpa rhf apijhg pairhfpasrihg pajht pariuthp9q ytiaerhg iuhasrigha srgj as hkgjajgaos hfoasjhgfiasjgfiasjjhf  aosjfhdjfnakjfh asjhfkljs dhfkjs dhgk ljsdhjhsg kjjfk kadhf djh

ejfhk jjdhglk sj

rkfkjs (Eddy never new how to spell)

But then, Mr. Wrinkleface realized something. “That’s Eddy’s signature. Everybody get out here! Eddy left a note! We have to find him.”

The family went out looking for Eddy, but they didn’t find one pawprint.

Farther into town, poor Eddy found himself walking alone in an empty village. A car drove by and over a big puddle of rainwater, splashing all over Eddy. The mud disappeared. He was clean at last. Then he turned around and saw his family. They all ran towards Eddy and gave him the biggest hug ever given to a dog. Then they took Eddy home and lived happily ever after.

What do you think of Shayna's story?

What a great way to showcase adverbs!

Positively Perfect Plurals!

Mrs. Yollis' class has been working 

recently on learning to spell 

plural nouns correctly!

There are so many rules about plurals to follow!

When making a plural noun, never use apostrophe s!

Did you know that not all plurals have an s added to them? 

Hoppy has some plural spelling rules to share with you:

1. When a singular noun ends with x, ch, sh, or s, add es. 

Examples: box - boxes              bush - bushes

2. When a singular noun ends in a consonant and y, change the y to an i and add es.  

                 Examples: penny - pennies         fly - flies

3. To some nouns ending in f, simply add s.

                 Examples: chief - chiefs             bluff - bluffs

4. To other nouns ending in f or fe, change the f or fe to v and add  

     es. (Hoppy thinks this is the silliest plural rule of all!)

                 Examples: wolf - wolves            leaf - leaves

5. Some singular nouns form their plurals in special ways. There is no rule for these, so you just have to memorize them!

                 Examples: tooth - teeth               mouse - mice

*     *     *     *     *

Hoppy challenges you to use five different plurals in a comment!

Here is Hoppy's example:

Dear Class,

Yesterday three flies landed on my lilypad. I tried so hard to eat them, but they got away!  I wonder how many of you children would want to eat flies instead of candies on Halloween? 

After missing the flies, I hopped off my lilypad into the water where I saw some geese paddling by. They were carrying some leavesback to their nests. I swam along, so I could say hello to their babies!

I'm looking forward to reading your comments full of positively perfect plurals!

Ribbit and regards,

Hoppy

P. S. Be sure to use html code to make your plurals bold!

Super Subjects With Plenty of Predicate! :-)

Mrs. Yollis' class has been working on learning about 

what it takes to create a 

SENTENCE!

We have learned that it takes two parts: 

a SUBJECT 

and 

a PREDICATE.

The subject tells the person or thing the sentence is about.
The predicate tells what the subject is or does.
The predicate always includes a verb!

  

Here are some examples

Here are some more spectacular sentences we created with 
super subjects and perfect predicates!

(Click to enlarge.)

********

Why don't you try creating a special sentence or two of your own?
It can be about any topic you like.


After creating your sentence and typing it into your comment, tell us what the subject is and what the predicate is, or
if you want to give us a challenge...
Ask us to tell you what the subject and predicate are!