Lesson video

Hi, there, I'm Mr. Buckingham and it's so good to see you here for today's lesson.

Today we're going to continue writing our fantastic narratives, so this is another chance to show off our writing skills and hopefully produce a first draught that we're really proud of.

I think we're gonna do some great work today.

So let's make a start.

Today's lesson is called Writing the Second Half of the Build-up of 'A Kind of Spark' where it comes for unit called A Kind of Spark Narrative Writing.

By the end of today's lesson, we will have written the second half of a section of the build-up in A Kind of Spark, switching between a third person perspective and internal monologue.

For this lesson, you may want to have access to the model narrative you can find in the additional materials to this lesson.

Although I will be reading you the relevant section in this lesson if you aren't able to obtain it.

You will definitely want to have access to the plan that you wrote in a previous lesson as well.

If you're ready, let's make a start.

Here are our keywords for today's lesson.

The build-up is the part of a narrative where problems are introduced and tension rises.

The third person perspective is the he, she, it or they perspective.

Internal monologue is the inner voice of a character, their thoughts to themselves, which are not spoken out loud and figurative language is the use of metaphors, similes, personification and other literary devices to create imaginative meanings.

Here's our lesson outline for today.

We're gonna start off by preparing to write in a number of ways and then we'll move on to writing the second half of our build-up.

So in this lesson, we're going to finish our first draught of our retailing of part of the build-up in A Kind of Spark.

And we know it's going to follow this structure.

We've ticked off the first two, because we've already done those.

We've written a third person perspective on event one and Addie's internal monologue just after event one.

Today, we're going to do the last two sections.

We're going to write a third person perspective on a second event and then Addie's internal monologue reflecting on that event.

And that could be as the event happens or it could be just after.

That's up to you and what you've planned.

So we've written those paragraphs for event one.

One in the third person past tense, one in the first person present tense.

And we've planned how we're going to describe event two from a third person perspective.

And we've planned what Addie's internal monologue might be in response to that event two.

So it's gonna be those two sections we write today.

So Izzy's got her order of events wrong here.

Can you put them back in the correct order, going from one to four to show the four sections of Izzy's event and have a think which two will she have written already? Pause the video and have a go.

Well done, good job.

So you're right, Izzy's already written this section, a description of what happens as Emily taunts Addie and provokes her.

She'll already have written this section in the first person, her internal monologue, an internal monologue showing her thoughts as she feels overcome with emotion and attacks Emily.

So here are the two Izzy's going to be writing today.

She's going to do a third person description of what's happening in the classroom as Addie sits alone after the incident.

And then a first person internal monologue showing Addie's thoughts as she sits in the classroom.

So it's gonna be Section 3 and four that Izzy writes today and you'll be writing your sections three and four as well.

So we're going to write those last two sections using our plans.

We know we've got Section 3, a third person perspective and Section 4, an internal monologue.

Now your event two, of course, we'll have to follow on from what you wrote in event one.

It should be something that comes after that.

And you've already planned that out.

For Izzy, she chose to have event two.

That's the moment when Addie is sitting isolated in the classroom after she's being punished by Ms. Murphy.

And that follows on from event one, because her event one was where Addie is attacking Emily.

So let's check you're really sure what you're going to write today.

Pause the video and tell your partner what your event two is and have a look over your plans for both Section 3, the third person perspective, and Section 4, the internal monologue, just to recap in your mind and refresh your memory of what you plan to include in those sections.

Pause the video and chat it through with your partner.

Fantastic job, well done.

That's gonna make sure you're really prepared when we come to write later on the lesson.

So let's have a look now at the last two sections of the model text to see what you're aiming for.

You could pause the video here and have a look at the model text for yourself or you can stick with the video and I will read it to you.

"Sit there," Ms. Murphy barked, pointing to a low padded chair.

Addie sat, she felt claustrophobic.

The room was small and Ms. Murphy's presence seemed huge and all-encompassing.

Addie looked up at the clock and she watched the seconds tick slowly by.

"I knew you were a nasty piece of work, just like your sister," Ms. Murphy hissed, shaking her head.

"I'm, I'm sorry," Addie stammered.

"I didn't mean, I didn't want to hurt her." Ms. Murphy sneered, curling her lip in disdain.

Her eyes glittered dangerously.

Her face was contorted with disgust.

She paced the tiny room like a caged animal and her rage seemed to fill the whole space, pressing against Addie like a dark cloud.

"Don't lie to me girl," she snarled.

Ms. Murphy, who was smirking, seemed almost to be enjoying herself.

"You were like a wild animal." Maybe she's right.

Maybe I am a wild animal, a demon, a devil.

Maybe everything she says about me is true.

I did something terrible.

I attacked Emily when she hadn't even touched me at all.

But then I think of Maggie.

I think about the way they tried to tell her what she was, the devil's wife, a witch, a sorceress.

This is the same thing.

It's hundreds of years later, but it's the same thing.

And I think about my thesaurus and I think about that word that Emily wrote.

She didn't touch me but she hurt me all the same and she'll never understand how much.

I open my mouth to explain all this to Ms. Murphy, but no words come out.

There's no point.

She would never, never understand.

She doesn't want to understand.

Well done, good luck.

What was the mood of these two sections that we just read and how was it created? Pause the video and have a chat with your partner.

Well done, good job.

So you might have noticed that these sections have quite tense and anxious mood and that's appropriate because remember, we're writing part of the build-up in the story and we're trying to show the tension is rising for Addie, because that's what happens during the build-up.

So how is this tense, anxious mood being created? Well, it's partly in how we describe things, isn't it? For instance, the way Ms. Murphy is described using negative vocabulary like glittered dangerously and hissed really builds that tension, because it's adding negativity and threat and danger to our writing.

And the way Addie's really panicked thoughts are shown, using those short informal sentences or phrases in her internal monologue really adds to the mood as well, because it suggests that her thoughts are racing and going really fast as she sits there, which suggests to us a panicked, tense mood.

So we can do lots with our language to build our mood into our writing.

So here's Izzy's plan for the last two sections of her text.

You can see on the left, she's got her plan for Section 3, from a third person perspective.

It says, "Addie sat alone." So that's third person and past tense, sat.

We've got lots of descriptions there of what's happening to Addie.

Her face is buried in her arms, her face is stained with tears and we see other people involved as well.

Emily is smirking, Ms. Murphy is snapping.

With a little bit of direct speech there as well.

And then on the right-hand side, we see her plan for the first person, present tense internal monologue.

We can see rhetorical questions there.

We can see Addie's perception of senses.

She's got the light, she's feeling trapped, she's hearing those whispers.

So lots of senses being used there to make Addie feel hemmed in and tense and threatened in this section.

So we've got a clear plan from Izzy here.

Hopefully you've got yours in front of you as well with just as much detail to help you to write.

So based on the language that's been used here, would each of the sentences below be found in the third person Section 3 or the first person Section 4 of Izzy's text? Decide if each sentence belongs in Section 3 or Section 4.

Pause the video and have a go.

Well done, good job.

So A says, "Addie sat alone." That's third person, past tense, so it's Section 3.

"The bright lights glare down at me," is the first person, so this is Section 4.

"What have I done? Why didn't I just stop?" First person, it's Section 4.

And then, "'What is it?' Ms. Murphy snapped as Addie." So that's third person, would be Section 3.

Really well done.

Hopefully that's helping you to understand the difference between your two sections that you're going to be writing soon.

So we know that we're going to have to use a range of sentence types and language features to keep our readers engaged and ingested while we write here.

So we can see some of these in the model text.

Let's look at this section: "'Sit there,' Ms. Murphy barked, pointing to a low, padded chair.

Addie sat.

She felt claustrophobic.

The room was small and Ms. Murphy's presence seemed huge and all-encompassing.

'I knew you were a nasty piece of work, just like your sister,' she hissed, shaking her head." What language features did we include there? Well, you might have seen, we've got a direct speech there, using inverted commas.

We've got a non-finite -ing complex sentence there.

We've got pointing as our -ing verb to start that non-finite -ing clause.

We've got a colon to introduce an explanation.

It says why the room felt claustrophobic to Addie.

We've got a compound sentence with and.

We've got hyphen to create a compound adjective there, all-encompassing, those two words together make a compound adjective, we need to join them with a hyphen.

So loads of language features there, which keep our writing coherent and engaging.

So what language features can you see in these examples from Izzy's writing? Pause the video and have a look.

Well done, good job.

For A, we've got a semi-colon there, haven't we? To connect two closely related sentences.

Some children were doing this; others were doing this.

So they're very closely related.

So we can connect them with a semi-colon.

"Burying her face in her arms," is a non-finite -ing clause with that verb, burying in its -ing form.

So this is a non-finite (-ing) complex sentence.

For C, we've got a colon to introduce an explanation.

We're saying why Addie was rubbing eyes, they were sore.

And then for D, we've got a hyphen to create that compound adjective, tear-stained.

We couldn't have those two words separate.

We need to join them to make a compound adjective so they need to have that hyphen in the middle to make the compound adjective.

Really well done if you spotted those language features.

Now internal monologue could include lots of those language features as well, but we will also have a range of features which add to the informality we need to use, because we're showing some of the internal thoughts.

We know we can use contractions, ellipsis, informal sentence openers like but or and that we wouldn't normally prefer to start sentences.

We can use repetition like of the word sorry.

And we can use rhetorical questions for the characters, asking themselves in their own head.

And we know that our internal monologue will also contain some figurative language, which we could also use in our third person perspective, too.

For instance, simile like, "She felt like a boat freed from its moorings." Or a metaphor, "Miss Murphy's glare was pure ice." Or personification, "The walls pressed in on Addie with all their weight." So we've got lots more language features here we can use as well.

So can you find an example of each of these in the last two sections of the model text? You can either pause the video and have a look or you might need to look back in the video if you don't have the model text with you.

Pause the video and have a go.

Well done, good job.

So you might have seen a semicolon used to connect two close related sentences like this one.

"Her eyes closed dangerously," semicolon, "her face was contorted with disgust." Maybe you found a relative complex sentence like this one.

"Ms. Murphy, who was smirking, seemed almost to be enjoying herself." Maybe you found a colon to introduce an explanation like this one.

"She felt claustrophobic: the room was small and Ms. Murphy's presence seemed huge and all-encompassing." Maybe you saw a compound sentence.

"Addie looked up at the clock and she watched the seconds stick slowly by." So notice how we've got both different sentence types and different punctuation and all of those build towards the variety and engagement to our writing and make sure we're showing the connections between ideas to make it really coherent.

So we're aiming to do the same here.

Well done for spotting this.

So now let's check, we've got good ideas for figurative language in our plans.

Using your plan for these two sections, Section 3 and four, can you identify where you've used each type of figurative language and say it aloud.

And if you don't have one, now's the chance to try and think of one.

Pause the video and have a go.

Well done, good job.

So here are some of Izzy's ideas she's going to include in her writing.

For a simile, she's got, "Emily smirked like a well-fed cat as Ms. Murphy comforted her with an expression she'd never use when talking to Addie." For a metaphor, she's got, "Addie was curled up in her chair at the back of the classroom.

She was a hard, smooth stone." So we're saying she is a stone, not that she's like a stone, that makes it into a metaphor.

For personification, Izzy's got, "The whispers of the other children scratched and scraped against her.

She covered her ears to drown them out." We know whispers can't really scratch, we're giving them a human quality for a dramatic effect there.

Really well done for your ideas there, too.

Hopefully you've got some extra ones you can use as well.

So let's do our first task this lesson.

Before you write, we know it's really useful to already rehearse our writing, because that gives us really clear ideas about what to write.

To do that, we're going to look carefully at our plan and think about the language features we've discussed before and that you've used all the way through this year.

You're going to try saying the last few sections of your plan out loud as sentences using a range of those language features, trying to make sure you show the switch in tense and perspective for the internal monologue section of your text in Section 4.

Now don't worry if you're not perfect, of course, you'll have much more time to think when you're writing.

The purpose of an oral rehearsal isn't to say exactly what we're going to write, because when we write, we have much more time to get things really, really good.

This is to get our first ideas ready so that when we come to write, our brains feel much more prepared and we feel much more confident and ready to go.

So pause the video here and have a go orally rehearsing sections three and four of your text.

Well done, great job.

Now I'm not gonna show you all of Izzy's oral rehearsal.

I'll just show you two short sections, one from Section 3 and one from Section 4.

Here's an example from Section 3.

"Addie sat alone in the far corner of the classroom, chewing on her ragged ponytail.

She wiped her tear-stained face with her hands.

Her eyes were red and sore from crying.

Next to her, a pile of crumpled tissues lay." And then for Section 4.

"What have I done? What will my mom and dad say? Even though it's been hours, I still feel breathless and dizzy.

All around me, the other children's whispers are like shouts in my ears.

The bright lights of the classroom are glaring down on me." So we can see on Izzy's ideas here loads of examples of the language features and techniques we've discussed.

If we take our Section 3 example, we can see a non-finite -ing clause, "Chewing on her ragged ponytail." We can see that compound adjective, "Tear-stained" as an adjective to describe face.

We can see the semicolon to join two closely related sentences and we can see a fronted adverbial.

Next to her is a fronted adverbial of place.

If you look at the second example, we can see lots of those features that contribute to the informality we're aiming for in our internal monologue.

For instance, we can see rhetorical questions.

"What have I done? What will my mom and dad say?" We can see contractions like it's.

And we can see still some of those language features like fronted adverbials of place, all around me.

And we've got a semicolon as well.

So we can still use those language features in our internal monologue.

You might see here also, we've got a simile like, "Children's whispers are like shouts in my ears." And we've got some personification there, "Bright lights glaring down." So we've got a good mixture of different language features, different types of figurative language and in the internal monologue, those informal language features that give it the correct tone to describe someone's internal thoughts.

Now again, you might not have got these exactly as perfect as Izzy has, because obviously, I had time to write these out and you haven't done that yet.

So hopefully you feel more confident now to go away and write, because you've got your first ideas in your brain ready to go from your rehearsal.

Well done.

So we spent lots of time preparing to write now and we've got our plans ready in front of us.

Let's get writing the second half of our build-up.

So we're now ready to write the second half.

And when we write, we know, we always do the following things.

We make sure we plan and say each sentence before we write it.

So we think it through and say it out loud or in our own heads.

We use punctuation where we know the rules and we know the rules for lots and lots of punctuation now.

And we showcase each sentence type that we know as much as possible and lots of other language features as well.

And we write our letters neatly on the line in joined handwriting, of course.

And we're going to use any spelling strategies we know to try and spell words accurately.

Remember, you're going to try and check and improve your writing when you think you're finished by reading back your sentences.

And here's the success criteria we're going to use to guide our writing today.

Let's read it through.

It says, "I've written from a third person perspective using a range of sentence structures and language features." That's for Section 3.

Then it says, "I've written an internal monologue using a range of sentence structures and language features." That's Section 4.

And then it says, "I have used figurative language to add to the mood of my writing." And that will be Section 3 and four where I can use those.

And of course, we can tick these off as we go.

So let's write the last two sections of our text now.

First of all, make sure that that model text is no longer visible to you.

You want to set it to one side to make sure this is your independent writing now.

You're going to refer back to your plan throughout, of course and to the success criteria for ideas.

And make sure when you've written your sentences, you read them back to make sure you're happy with what you've written.

So pause the video here and have a go at writing the rest of your text, have a go.

Well done, really good job.

Now I'm not going to show you another example here.

I'm going to instead talk you through how you can feedback with your partner.

First of all, you want to read your work aloud to yourself or to your partner.

And as you do that, make any small changes you can see that need to be made.

So this isn't a thorough edit, but just a careful first check to see if you can spot any glaring errors that you might have made.

And then I'd like you to point out to your partner the places where you've met the success criteria we see here.

So pause the video here and have a go reading your work, checking for any small mistakes and feeding back with your partner.

Have a go.

Well done, really good job.

Hopefully you've been able to show your partner where you've met all three success criteria.

Great job.

Really well done so far.

Let's review our learning in this lesson.

We know that narrative writing, like we've written, can include switches in perspective.

And in this case, we switched from a third person perspective to a first person perspective using internal monologue to show Addie's inner thoughts and feelings.

We know that referring to a plan and orally rehearsing our ideas prior to writing helps us to do our best work.

And we know that we should aim to use a full range of language features in our writing, including figurative language that helps us to set a particular mood.

Well done, you've completed your first piece of narrative writing in this unit and we've got a brilliant piece of writing that shows these switches in perspective really well.

Fantastic effort and I'd love to see you again in a future lesson, goodbye.