Lesson video

Hello everyone, and welcome to lesson eight of our unit about our "Created Story." In this lesson we're going to be writing, "A middle that builds drama." Following on from the introduction that we wrote in the last lesson.

Now that our readers are hooked, we need to keep them hooked with suspense and exciting events.

We want our readers to be really shocked.

What does your shocked face look like? Mine looks like this.

Can you do yours for me now? Wow, that's a really shocked face.

We've got lots to do today.

So let's get started.

In today's lesson you're going to need your pen or pencil, a piece of paper, and your brain ready to create all sorts of drama for our readers.

If you do not have a pen or pencil or a piece of paper, pause the video now, and then press play when you have it.

Today we're going to start off with a spelling activity where we'll be going over our rule from earlier on in the unit.

But then going to recap our boxing plan.

And this time we're going to focus on the middle events of the story.

We're then going to generate ideas for creating suspense and looking at our middle's toolkit to help us.

Then we will write our middle, building drama for our readers to keep them really interested in our story.

Can you remember our spelling rule from earlier in the unit? We talked about a prefix, and a prefix is a letter or letters that you add to the beginning of a root word to change it's meaning.

Can you remember how the meaning changed when we added our prefix? And can you remember what our prefix was? That's right, our prefix was un, and it changed the meaning to the opposite of the meaning it had when it was just the root word by itself.

Let's practise adding the prefix un to these root words.

Happy would become? That's it, unhappy.

My turn, unhappy.

Your turn.

Fantastic.

The next one.

Fair becomes? Unfair.

My turn, unfair.

Your turn.

Fantastic.

The next one's a little bit longer.

Fortunately becomes? You've got this.

Unfortunately.

Your turn.

You managed that, well done.

The final one, kind would be? Unkind.

My turn.

Unkind.

Your turn.

Fantastic, well done.

Here are all the prefixes on the start of these words, they changed the meaning to the opposite.

So when it's happy by itself, we know that it's smiley.

Someone's feeling joy.

When we add un to it, it makes it sad and miserable.

And the same thing goes for all of those other words too.

Oh, a little bit of a challenge here.

I've got three pictures.

Can you think un words they might be representing? You've got three different un words represented here.

Some of them might a little bit easier than others.

Pause the video.

Have a think about which un words they are and then press play when you think you've got them and you want to see the answers.

Well done you're like little prefix detectives.

Did you get them? The first one was unzip.

Like we might unzip our jacket to take it off.

The next one was unwrap.

We might unwrap a present on a birthday.

And the final one is unpack.

When you might unpack a suitcase, if you've just been on holiday or come back from staying at someone's house.

As an extra challenge you can pause here and use each of these words in a sentence too.

Well done, let's carry on with our lesson.

We're going to have a look now at the boxing up we did in lesson six.

So that's a few lessons ago.

If you still got it, see if you can find it.

If not, you can have a look at mine.

Before we do our writing today, we're going to use our boxing up to help us remember exactly which events we are including in our middle.

So in our last lesson, we talked about the introduction and we introduced the character and the setting, and the main item that you are choosing to be precious, that gets stolen.

And then we wrote up to the point where Hades comes and steals the harp and takes it to the underworld.

So the next scene that we're going to have opening in our middle is going to be this second scene where the harp is in the underworld of Hades or for you it might be something different, the other item or the person, and he's demanding it to do something.

So you're going to choose whatever it is that your item might do.

He's trying to get it to do something, but the item or the person or the animal is not doing it, it refuses.

So in my case, he tries to get the harp to play it's music, and it stays silent.

We're then going to go on to look at the impact of this problem.

The impact on Apollo is that the, the impact on Apollo is that the sun beams from his head stop, he feels really sad.

Therefore, the sun goes away and there's darkness all over the earth and everything begins to wilt and die as it does not have the sun as a source of food.

Following on from that, we have Zeus coming along and saying to Apollo, please bring back the light because everything's going to die.

And Apollo saying, no absolutely I will not until I have my harp back, okay? So we're moving towards our solution.

If we're going to leave the solution.

And this final part are going to be in our ending.

So think about what are you going to do? And what are you going to use to create suspense in your middle? What do you want your reader to imagine in their head about these events and about these characters? What can they see in their head when we describe the setting and the events that are happening? What do you want the reader to feel in the middle? Quite often in the middle of the story, not all of the things you're feeling are positive and happy.

We quite often have a happy introduction and often also a happy ending, but in the middle there can be lots of mixed emotions and a bit of emotional roller coaster.

So we've got to think about what that emotional roller coaster is going to be and how we make our reader go onto it.

Pause here and have a go at finishing off those sentences for yourselves before we start.

We're going to have a look at our toolkit now to help us figure out how we can build drama.

We want to stretch out the middle of the story.

It's when the main events and main body of the story happens, and there's lots of ups and downs.

We want the audience to be really interested and to stay interested throughout our story and to constantly be wondering, what's going to happen next.

We can do this by adding lots of events and setbacks.

So it's not just, there's a problem and it's immediately solved.

There are some bumps in the road.

We can slow down time and make certain parts of the story feel like they're slow and this builds anticipation, which is when we're kind of excited and waiting for something to happen.

We can use vagueness.

That means not being specific.

I'm being quite general and not giving all of the information at once.

We can hint.

We can use empty words like it or something, that don't give us all of the information.

And we can use questions to build suspense and to make the reader think about what's happening.

We can use uncertainties and expectations of the characters so we could get inside the character's head.

So perhaps the Zeus's head and Apollo's head, and explore what they're feeling.

That they're not sure what's going to happen.

And this can create the same effect of drama within the readers as well.

Some of the sentence stems that I'm going to use and you could use too are here.

As soon as.

Apollo was.

Then we're going to do three short sentences to describe the impact on Earth.

So you might remember from the first story of Persephone, and when I read you my created story, it was things like, the sun disappeared, full-stop.

Darkness fell over earth, full-stop.

Everything began to die, full-stop.

And it creates this sense of foreboding and danger.

And it's a little bit scary.

It's time to write our middle.

Before I start writing, I am going to write that we are in unit, Sorry got caught there.

14, and on lesson, eight.

And our learning objective is to, write, a middle, that, builds drama, okay? So as we've just checked our boxing up, I know that I'm starting with this scene in the underworld, don't I? So our first sentence stem is going to be this.

As soon, as Hades returned back to the underworld, he placed Okay, now this then, I'm going to do in red because I'm going to be writing about the harp and you might be writing about something else.

Okay? So whatever you are writing about, whether it was a different instrument or item, or it was a person, you're going to write about here.

He placed, I'm going to say, the, golden harp down, on the, or what do you think the floor of the underworld is like? what adjectives could we use? Yeah, I think unpleasant, if they're about to say on the dirty, I'm going to say, a bit weird, but bubbling.

Like it's, molten lava.

Now he's going to demand it to do something.

So you need to think about what Hades is going to demand your item or person to do.

So remember in Persephone, he demanded Persephone either to marry him or to try and eat or drink something or speak to him.

And she wouldn't.

So yours could be something like that.

If it's an animal or a person, perhaps they refuse to eat or to do whatever, if it's an instrument, perhaps it refuses to play.

If it's a different item, what could it refuse to do? Okay? Hades, stared at it, with anticipation and demanded it to, okay, so what's your, you go, what's going to be demanded to do? To, play it's beautiful music.

Now, we're going to try now and create that drama by slowing down time.

Cause he's going to be waiting and waiting for it to play its music and it's not going to happen.

So how can we build that? Let's have a look.

I'm going to say, the seconds seemed to crawl by as the underworld feel, silent.

Everyone was listening.

No sound came.

Hades fiery hair.

Oh he's angry now isn't he? So what do you think might happen to his fiery hair? He's feeling quite angry.

Hades fiery hair, turned a deep shade of red and began to spark Okay, now remember, everyone was what? Listening, waiting.

What is it that your item is supposed to be doing? Okay, know what came.

? Okay and then that bit you can keep the same as mine.

So just think about whatever item or person or animal you have that Hades has stolen.

What is everyone waiting for it to do that it doesn't do, okay? Now we're going to, go back to what's happening on earth.

So Up on earth, Apollo, realised immediately that something was wrong.

So now I'm going to use my red pen, cause I'm talking specifically about my harp So you'll need to change this pen.

The music he was so used to hearing had vanished.

And what is he going to do? He's going to look everywhere for it.

Isn't he? Apollo searched every inch of the planet that he could think of but, most of us remember this is one of our setbacks.

He looks everywhere.

It'd be nice if he could just look in the underworld and find it, but he doesn't, we're having a setback, it's part of our emotional roller coaster for our main character, okay? That he could think of, but, it was nowhere to be found.

Okay.

Now we could use a question here to build suspense.

We're going to think about, we know right now everything is so uncertain in Apollo's head, isn't it? So what question might he think in his head? What do you think? Where could my beautiful instrument Apollo queried, just like asking a question with a furrowed brow, which means he was frowning.

Now we need to think about the impact.

This is going to have on him, okay? So a show, don't tell, he's really sad.

He can't find it.

So I'm going to say, Soon enough.

Apollo's tears, apostrophe with s which is for possession, began to tumble And the sunbeams from his head faded away.

Sunbeams from his head faded away.

Okay.

Now we're going to think about those three short sentences that we talked about.

They're going to create and slow down the story, but also create this sense of sadness and finality as if everything is being ruined.

Okay, so for me, I'm going to say, the sun, disappeared from the sky, did a full stop there.

Here's my next short sentence, Darkness coated the planet.

All of the life on earth began to wilt.

Okay, so that's the impact that we have.

Now for our next paragraph, we've done, our first box.

Haven't we? We've done in the underworld.

You've now done this box, Now the final part of our middle.

We've got this part here, okay? So Zeus realises what's happening and goes to speak to a Apollo.

So next paragraph, we start a new line.

Before, just make sure you can see where I'm writing.

Before long, Zeus The King of gods noticed the darkness that had, He quickly.

So now with speeding up again, jumping up slow, now we're speeding up again.

He quickly, searched for Apollo, so that he could fix this problem for it was too late, okay? So this idea of it being too long, I'm going to use this could ellipsis three dots in a row, and this kind of leaves this idea of suspense.

Is it going to be too late? Will he find him on time? Who knows? Okay? Now we know he is going to find Apollo.

And when he gets there, When Zeus finally, so we know some time has passed, slowing things down.

Finally found Apollo.

He was distraught.

So what's Zeus going to say to Apollo? Apollo, what does he want him to do? That's why Apollo, Please bring back the sun before all life is gone.

How might Zeus say that to Apollo? I think he would plead, pleaded Zeus.

I'm going to start a new line.

Cause Apollo is going to apply and he's a different character.

How do you, what does Apollo say back to him? No.

Short sentence really slows it down.

You can imagine that Apollo is going to be saying this slowly and sadly.

No.

I can't, you see my apostrophe for contraction.

I can't make the sun shine without my beloved.

Which basically means that you love something.

I'm going to write with some red, cause yours going to be different.

My beloved Harp.

Okay, so whatever it is that was stolen from Apollo in your story, you need to put here.

And then how might he say that? Sadly? Yep, slowly, whatever you think.

I can't make the sunshine without my beloved harp.

I'm going to actually say, wailed Apollo with his fists clenched.

Okay, so we have written our middle.

So we've done our three middle events.

We've created suspense by slowing it down, asking questions, and exploring the uncertainty within the character's head.

Whether that's for Zeus even with Hades, he's uncertain because he can't get their harp to do what he wants it to do.

And within Apollo not knowing where it is and we've left there are lots of different cliffhangers, I mean, especially this last one, okay.

We've tried.

It could be, if we were just going to solve the problem.

Zeus comes to Apollo and Apollo says, fine.

I'll bring the sunshine out, but he doesn't.

It's another setback.

So that's part of our emotional roller coaster yet.

There's a few times we thought it could have been resolved and it hasn't been.

And that's where they're going to leave our middle today.

Ready to go onto our ending in our final lesson in the unit where we will come up with a solution and learn the lesson of the story.

Fantastic.

Now it's your turn to have a go of writing your middle.

You can use these sentence stems that are here.

Go back and look at the toolkit to help you if you need.

And remember to be looking at your boxing up too, to help remind you about the different events in our middle press play.

When you have finished for your challenge task today, I want you to think about how you can use your voice to build drama, when you are reading a story, you have created amazing suspense with the words and the style of sentence that you've used.

And it's now time to think about how we can use our voice to show that when, we're reading a story out loud, I've given you a few suggestions for some different speaking styles that could be used to change the tone and pitch of your voice, as well as the pace to create some drama in the events that you're reading.

You could whisper.

You can leave long pauses, that create anticipation and suspense.

You can go from speaking slowly to speaking very quickly.

You can emphasise one or two words louder than the rest in a sentence, okay? So I'd like you to go through and have a look at all the things that you're said and think about which parts might I whisper, when might I pause, to leave effect? When might I speak slower or quicker? Are there any really important words I think I should emphasise and say louder than others, you might want to go through with a different coloured pencil and underline the bits that you're going to emphasise.

Then I would like you to have a go at performing it out loud, you can do this by yourself.

You can do it to someone you live with.

You could do it in front of a mirror or just to a Teddy, but make sure that you're standing up and really reading it powerfully and trying to create excitement and suspense in the way that you use your voice.

Press pause now and have a go and then press play.

When you have done that.

That was an incredible performance.

And I am hooked in your story on every moment, because of the way you used your voice and changed it to keep me interested.

Well done.

I would really love to see your middle full of drama.

So if you would like to share it with me, please get to parent or carer to take a picture and share it on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, tagging @OakNational and using the #learnwithoak.

In our next lesson, we're going to be really focusing on endings ahead of writing or ending in the last lesson in the unit lesson 10.

In the next lesson, we'll look at different ending from another story to help us think about, what makes an ending that satisfies a reader.

I hope to see you there.