Lesson video

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to Lesson One out of 10 lessons in our new unit.

Today we're going to be exploring a brand new story called Persephone.

We're going to find out loads about that in a little bit.

Just before we get started, I just wanted to see how you are.

The sun is shining outside my window today, which is really cheering me up.

And another thing that's cheering me up is that all of that sun is giving energy to my new plant that's growing taller and taller every day.

Its still quite small though, can you see? How are you feeling today? Is there anything in your life, in your room that's making you feel really happy? For today's lesson, you're going to need these things.

Something to write on, something to write with, and your brain, hopefully you've got your brain with you already and its ready to do some learning.

If you haven't got a pencil or a pen or something to write on, pause the video now and go and get those things, and then press play when you're ready to go.

Lets go through what we're going to be doing today.

We're going to start our lesson today with a spelling activity.

We've got a brand new spelling rule to look at, how exciting! We're then going to go onto our strategy check.

That means were going to think about how we read and listen really well, so that we can understand a new story.

Linking to that, we're then going to listen to a brand new story called Persephone.

I love this story, I think its really exciting and the ending, I found really satisfying and I think you'll find out why.

We're finally, going to check our understanding of the story.

We're going to do something called a plot matrix which you might have already done in a previous unit.

If you haven't, don't worry.

I'm going to explain how to do it.

Its a nice way to help us understand the story a little bit better.

Lets get started with our spellings.

Can you think of any words that have a /j/ sound in them? Have a little think.

Can you think of any words that have the /j/ sound in them? Pause the video here if you like, you could write some of those words down.

Great, hopefully we've thought of some words.

Now, the sound /j/ can be spelt in different ways.

It can just be spelt with a 'j'.

There are some different rules that I'm going to teach you today about how we can spell the /j/ in different ways.

When we have the /j/ sound at the end of the word, and it comes after the vowel sounds pronounced like this, /a/,/e/,/i/,/o/,/u/, then we use the spelling 'dge' to spell the /j/ sound.

An example is 'bridge'.

Its got a /i/ sound and its got a /j/ sound at the end.

And because it comes after the /i/ sound, we spell the /j/, 'dge'.

That's the same rule for the next two words that are on there.

'Fridge', it has an /i/ sound so we spell the /j/, 'dge'.

Then sledge has a /e/ sound, so we spell the /j/ sound 'dge' as well.

So just remember, if you've got a /j/ sound at the end of a word, and before it comes an /a/,/e/,/i/,/o/,/u/, you know that /j/ is going to be spelt 'dge'.

Now, if that /j/ sound comes at the end of the word and it has any other sound before it, there isn't /a/,/e/,/i/,/o/,/u/, then you spell it 'ge'.

So, we've got some examples here.

'Huge'.

That doesn't have any of the sounds I just talked about, it has a 'u' before it which is different to an /u/.

Therefore, I spell the /j/ sound 'ge'.

Same with orange and same with challenge.

They both end in 'ge' for the /j/ sound.

There are lots of other examples of both this spelling and this spelling for the /j/ sound.

Can you think of any others? We're going to play a little game now to help us remember.

I had a go at spelling lots of words that had the /j/ sound at the end.

Some of these we've covered already.

I think I might have made a few mistakes unfortunately.

Which is okay, hopefully they'll help me to learn! But I'm hoping that you will be able to help me find my mistakes and correct them.

What I'd like you to do is to pause the video here and look through these words really carefully.

Can you write them all down on your piece of paper? Especially those that you think are wrong, it would be great if you could correct them and spell them correctly for me with the right spelling for the /j/ sound for that word.

Pause the video now, and press play when you've done that.

Fantastic, thank you so much for helping me.

Sometimes spelling can be a bit tricky, can't it? But if we help each other out and we're ready to learn from our mistakes, then there's nothing to be worried about, is there? Lets see if you spotted the same mistakes as I did.

Did you spot these mistakes? These were the ones that I got a little bit confused with, but thank you for helping me to find the ones that were incorrect.

A little challenge for you to do now.

Can you write a sentence with each of these words in them? Sometimes when we write out words and we use them in our writing, it helps us to remember how to spell them next time.

So pause the video here and once you've written your six sentences, you can press play again.

Before I tell you our story today, I wanted to give you a little bit more information about it.

We're going to talk about the characters but also what type of story it is.

So the story of Persephone is a Greek myth.

This means it was from a really long time ago and back then these stories were all about Greek Gods.

Now these Greek Gods were really powerful and they controlled all sorts of things on Earth.

Some of them were good Gods and did good things and some of them were not so good.

We're going to see that really clearly in our story.

Lets have a think about the characters we have in our story.

The first person we have is Demeter.

Demeter.

Demeter.

Well done.

Demeter is in control of things like the weather, and the warmth and the seasons and you're going to see that a little bit more in our story.

She has a daughter called Persephone.

Persephone.

Persephone.

Well done, that's a little bit trickier, isn't it.

Persephone is Demeter's daughter and they have a very close relationship.

Then we have Hades.

We'll find out a little bit more in our story about him but he controls the Underworld which is not a very nice place.

We can decide later whether we like the character of Hades or not.

Lets practise saying his name too.

Hades.

Hades.

Finally, we have the character of Zeus.

So Zeus is King of all the Gods, so he is very powerful.

He also controls lightning and thunder and things like that and you can see in his hand in that picture that he holds a lightning bolt that he can throw down and strike on Earth.

He's a very powerful character and he plays a really important role in our story.

I think it has a really exciting story and I can't wait for us to explore it together.

Now we're going to think about the strategy we can use when we are listening to a new story.

Firstly, I want you to be looking at me whilst I'm telling the story.

I'm going to try use my facial expressions and my gestures to help tell the story with even more detail.

On top of that you need to be listening really carefully.

What words jump out at you that you really like? Which bits do I change my voice for and how do I create mood and emotion? Those are things that I want you to remember when we're listening to our new story.

Now it's time for us to listen to our new story.

When you're going through it, think about what does it make you think, what does it make you feel? What do you think about the ending of the story? Does it make you feel happy and satisfied or does it make you unhappy for some reason? Have a think and a listen as we go through.

Demeter was the Goddess of life.

Everything grew and lived on Earth because of her.

Demeter had a daughter called Persephone who she loved more than anything.

One day, Persephone was picking poppies in a field of corn when Hades, the God of death, appeared in his chariot.

He picked her up and took her down under the earth to his home.

When Demeter couldn't find her daughter, she was really sad.

She looked everywhere but couldn't find Persephone and became so sad that she stopped smiling, stopped speaking and stopped making life on Earth.

The world became cold.

Nothing would grow.

Nothing could be born and everything began to die.

Down under the earth, Persephone was sad too and missed her mother.

Hades wanted her to stay and marry him but she said no and refused to eat or drink anything.

But after a few days, she was so hungry that she ate just six pomegranate seeds.

Up above on Earth, Zeus, the King of Gods, was worried.

The Earth grew colder and colder and nothing would grow.

He asked Demeter to make life again but she shook her head.

'Not without my daughter' she said.

So Zeus went to talk to Hades.

'You must let her go' he said.

'Or everything on Earth will die' 'You can not make her stay unless she has eaten some food from this place' Hades smiled.

'She has eaten six seeds from a pomegranate so now she will stay' Zeus thought about it for a while.

'If she has eaten six seeds, then she will stay with you for six months of the year and for six months of the year she will live life on Earth with her mother' So, from that time to this, Persephone spends half of the year under the Earth.

During this time, Demeter is sad and the world grows cold and nothing will grow.

This is the time we call Winter.

For the other half of the year, Persephone returns to her mother who happily makes new life on Earth.

The world grows warm and everything can grow again.

This is the time we call Summer.

Now it's time to check our understanding of the story and to do that we're going to use something called a story matrix.

Hopefully you've used one of these before in a previous unit if you've seen any of those lessons.

If you haven't, don't worry.

We're going to go through it together now.

So, for our story matrix, we have to create a grid with six boxes for this one.

And in each box is a little heading with a little question to prompt us for a picture we're going to draw inside it about our story.

So for this one, we've got where, who, problem, solution, ending and learning.

And in each one, we'll draw a picture to match from our story.

To get ready, I need you to have a piece of paper.

Now for my piece of paper, I folded it into three and then I folded it in half and then when I opened it up again I had six boxes.

You can do it like that or if you'd rather just draw lines on the page to divide it up into six that's absolutely fine.

At the top of each square, I'd like you to put those headings that are on the slide.

So, where, who, problem, solution, ending, learning.

I'd like you to pause now and go and do that and get your piece of paper ready and then we're going to go through together, what we're going to draw in each box for our story.

We're going to start with our 'where' box.

Can you think about where this story takes place? What is the setting or the settings? You might not remember there were two different settings in this story.

What were they? That's it.

One of them was when Demeter was up on Earth with Persephone and it was nice and sunny and warm and there were trees and flowers.

So that's the first picture we're going to draw in this box.

Can you remember the second? Absolutely, so when Hades took Persephone down to the underworld, below the normal earth, it was probably dark and fiery and really unpleasant down there.

So that's our second.

So for this first box, I would like you to have a go at drawing a nice picture of the Earth, nice and sunny and summery and then a picture of what the Underworld might look like.

It doesn't need to be complicated, it can just be really simple.

Pause the video here and have a go.

Fantastic, lets have a look at what I did.

In mine, I've just drawn a really simple drawing as I said, of a tree above Earth and then I've drawn an arrow down to the Underworld, to show Hades home underneath the Earth as well.

So yours might have been much more beautiful than mine but remember we can just keep this nice and simple.

It just needs to act as a clue for us about the story.

Lets try the next bit.

This time, we're thinking about who.

We know that we have our Greek Gods as the main characters in this story.

If you can't quite remember all of them, you can go back a little bit in the video to the slide where I introduced them and that might help you with the spellings of the names too because some of them were a little tricky.

So in this box I would like you to draw some simple pictures for Demeter, Persephone, Hades and Zeus.

It would be great if you could include their names as well.

Pause here and have a go.

Fantastic.

Well done.

Lets have a look at how I did it.

As I said, I did some nice simple drawings of our main characters.

See if there's anything you want to add or change to yours, if not, we'll move on to the next box.

Now were going to think about the problem in our story.

Now there are quite a few problems in our story but for our story matrix, we want to think about the main problem that causes all the other events in the story.

Now at the beginning, everything was quite nice, wasn't it? Persephone and Demeter were together.

Persephone was picking poppies in the corn field.

Can you remember what happened just after that that made everything start to go wrong? Yeah, you're right.

It's when Hades came and took Persephone away and took her down to the underworld.

If that hadn't have happened, then Demeter wouldn't have been sad and then life on Earth would have continued to grow.

So that's going to be our main problem.

So in this box, I'd like you to draw a picture, perhaps of Persephone picking her flowers but then Hades coming to get her.

Remember, it can be nice and simple.

So pause the video here and have a go and then when you're ready, you can press play and see mine.

So, here's mine.

I've got Persephone picking her flowers, Hades coming to get her and then I drew a tree with a cross through underneath just to show that all life on Earth started to die when Demeter was sad about losing Persephone to Hades.

Okay, so, our solution.

How was this fixed? Now, I know that there was one character who helped to find the solution by talking to Hades.

Can you remember who it was? It was Zeus, wasn't it? He saw that Demeter was sad.

Demeter said she refused to do anything until she had Persephone back so he knew he had to get Persephone from the Underworld.

So he spoke to Hades, tried to get her back but the problem was, can you remember? The problem was that she had eaten those six pomegranate seeds, wasn't it? But he convinced Hades that that meant she should spend half the year in the Underworld and half the year on Earth with her mother.

So the solution to this was the agreement between Hades and Zeus about where she would spend her time.

So, perhaps in here we could have a drawing of Zeus and a drawing of Hades coming to an agreement, perhaps with smiles on their faces or they could be shaking hands.

You could have a little speech bubble that had 'six months' in it because that's the agreement they came to.

So pause the video and have a go at that.

Fantastic, well done.

Here's my little simple drawing of them shaking hands and looking quite happy that they've come to an agreement.

For our ending, we talked about it a little bit then.

We know that the ending was that Persephone spent six months above Earth with her mum and then six months below Earth with Hades.

So perhaps we could have a nice little picture of the mother and daughter together looking happy with trees and flowers because its summer.

And then perhaps, Demeter looking sad or Persephone looking sad with Hades in the Underworld too.

So, doesn't need to be as complex as that, you can do it really simply.

Pause here, have a go at drawing that and then I will show you mine.

Great job, here's mine.

So I did it really really simply.

I just drew a tree on Earth to represent Earth and I put times six to show that that's six months she spent there and then I put the downwards arrow to show the Underworld and I put times six there.

I'm sure yours is much more beautiful than mine.

Our final box is learning.

So this is about what did we learn from this story.

I think the lesson in this story really came in the ending.

It was really satisfying because it taught me something new about what the Greeks believed about the seasons.

So they believed that the seasons came about because of Demeter and her emotions and her control over the seasons.

So when she was happy it would be summer and when she was sad it would be winter.

So in this box, perhaps we could draw a nice smiley face and an arrow to summer, some things about summer, a sun, a flower.

And then perhaps a sad face and an arrow to winter, so perhaps a tree with no leaves on or some snow or something like that.

Have a go at that one, pause it here and then press play when you're ready to see mine.

Here's mine.

So just as I described, I did it like this.

If yours looks differently, that's absolutely fine.

But if you want to edit anything at anytime, you can do.

Well done on creating an amazing story matrix.

For our last thing, we're just going to do a little challenge task.

It says here 'Which character did you feel the most sympathy for and why?'.

When we feel sympathy for someone or a character, you might feel a little bit sorry for them.

Perhaps something bad had happened, or they're feeling upset and that makes us feel a little bit sad for them too.

Are there any characters in this story that you feel a bit sad for, that you feel sympathy for? Why is that? I would like you to use the sentence stem and write down your sentence as an answer.

So, I felt sympathy for ____ so it might be Persephone or Demeter or even Hades for some reason and explain why using 'because'.

So pause the video here and press play when you're done.

Well done on completing another amazing lesson.

I am so impressed at your work today.

You've read a whole new story.

We've done an entire story matrix together, finding out all the key information and getting to know our story a little bit better.

In the rest of the lessons in this unit, we're going to be working with the story of Persephone and deepening all the interesting parts, especially the ending which is the part I like the best.