Lesson video

Hello, everybody, it is me, Miss McCartney, and I'm really looking forward to our lesson today because we are going to be reading as a writer.

And what that means is we are going to read some passages, and we are going to think about how the writer has created problems that matter.

For our lesson today, you will need a piece of paper or something to write on, a pencil or something to write with and your wonderful storytelling creative brain.

If you need to go and collect anything, pause your video now.

Excellent.

Shall we have a look at what we are going to be learning today.

We are going to start by thinking about some consequences, thinking about, what if I'm really looking forward to our question, then we are going to have a little look at our problem toolkit.

We are going to then read as a writer and hunt in the text or examples from our toolkit.

And then we are going to play a little rhyming couplet game at the end.

Let's get started with thinking about consequences.

So, why does our problem matter? Well, let's look at this question and then have a little think about it.

What if the chick never found out he was an eagle? So what if the owl did not come and start laughing and tell him that he was an eagle? I would like you to use the sentence stems either.

It would, or wouldn't make a difference because, and if you would like you could use the sentence stems on the one hand, on the other hand.

I'm going to give you an example.

On the one hand, perhaps it wouldn't make a difference because the eagle is accepted by his chicken family.

On the other hand, maybe he would always feel a little bit worried and a little bit unsure because he would wonder why he was different.

Pause the video now and answer the question yourself.

Excellent.

I would like to hear some of your answers now.

So can you whisper your answer to the question.

What if the chick never found out that he was an eagle? Whisper your answer to the screen now.

Ah, interesting.

So I had one of our learners say, "It would make a really big difference because perhaps, he would never meet some other eagles, and he wouldn't realise that he had all these other friends that he could make and they would have knots in common." What a great idea.

But somebody else said, "It wouldn't really matter if likes being a chicken, and he likes living with his chicken family, then why does it matter if he's an eagle? He doesn't need to be labelled." Both of those, are really, really important opinions and help us to answer our bigger question, of why does our problem matter? Well it really matters because we need to understand the chick's feelings and that can help us to understand our feelings or other people's feelings that we know in real life.

So that is why problems really matter.

Let's move on now and have a little look at our problem toolkit.

Now our problem toolkit has four things on it.

And when we are doing our writing, we are going to use these four techniques.

And today we are going to be looking for them when we are reading.

Now, the first thing is difficulty.

We need to understand what the difficulty is.

We need to understand the big difficulties and the small difficulties.

We also need to think about the consequences and we've already started that just a moment ago.

We need to ask ourselves what if? And we need to think about the chick and the chick's family and ask lots of what if questions.

We also need to really think about the chicks, thoughts, and feelings, and also his family's thoughts and feelings.

And my favourite part of the toolkit, is learning for the world.

So, when we are reading or when we are listening, or when we are telling stories, we can think about the learning for the world.

Though I wonder, what learning for the world is from our story.

I would like you to have a little think about that now.

Pause your video.

What can the world learn from our story? Excellent.

I was listening then and I heard lots of really great ideas.

One of our learners said, "That actually the learning from the story is it doesn't matter who you are, but you need to be comfortable with it." That's a great idea.

And somebody else said that, "It's really, really important to find out who you are." I think that is a really, really great idea.

We are now going to read as a writer.

So, we are going to be using the story of Cinderella to help us.

So remember Cinderella leaves with her evil stepmother and her evil stepsisters, who make her work really hard all day long.

And then she wants to go to the ball, but she can't because her stepmother won't let her.

Luckily, her fairy godmother comes along and creates her a wonderful dress that she can wear to the ball and a carriage to get her there.

And actually Cinderella is able to solve her problem because she steps out into the world and she is able to use her voice.

Let's read the first extract.

Cinderella has always felt like her stepmother did not have time for her, but now she felt as though she did not even like her at all.

She definitely did not love her.

"You go to the ball? Shrieked her stepmother.

She laughed at Cinderella and looked her up and down.

"Do you really think that a prince would ever want to talk to you? Just look at the state of your clothes." Snarled her stepmother.

Cinderella looked down at herself and felt ashamed.

If only she had other clothes, she wouldn't have to look like this, oh, poor Cinderella.

She has a really big problem.

And I want you to have a look in the text and find if you.

And see if you can find the difficulty.

If you can think about any consequences, if you can find any of her thoughts and feelings, and if you can think about the really big question.

What is the learning for the world from this story? I would like you to use the sentence stem in the text I can find evidence of and then choose something from the toolkit.

Well, Miss McCartney's example is in the text, I can find evidence of Cinderella's feelings when she looks down at herself and she feels ashamed.

That helps me to understand and empathise with Cinderella, to understand her situation.

Pause your video now to complete the task.

Fantastic.

Let's start with difficulty.

Now I had some of our learners think about the small difficulty that actually Cinderella's clothes are not very nice and she can't go to the ball in them.

And also her stepmother is really horrible, but I heard somebody else talking about a bigger difficulty of injustice of unfairness.

They think that this problem matters because it is unfair, and I think that is a wonderful contribution.

Well done.

Somebody else thought about the consequences and said, "What if it doesn't matter what your plates look like? Why does it matter? It matters to the stepmother.

Hmm, I wonder if what clothes look like matters to you?" Somebody else said, "The learning for the world here is that actually, Cinderella doesn't have a voice at the moment.

She feels like she can't be herself and hopefully that will be a solution where she can share her voice." I am so impressed with everybody.

Let's have a look at our next extract.

Cinderella walked back to the kitchen, swallowing back the tears and trying to wipe some of the dirt from her apron.

She couldn't help but think about what the rest of her life might be like.

Would she always just work in the kitchen? Would she ever get the chance to show the world her true personality? It was not fair, but there was no use complaining.

Her friends in the kitchen were relying on her anyway, she must get back to work.

Cinderella walks back into the kitchen and forced herself to smile.

Okay.

So our problem matters and it has actually progressed a little bit more we found out a little bit more.

So I would like you to hunt for the difficulty to think about the consequences, to hunt for her thoughts and feelings, and to think about our learning for the world.

You can use the sentence stem, in the text I can find evidence of, hmm, when.

Pause your video now.

Fantastic everybody.

I heard somebody say, "That we learn a little bit more about our problem and the consequences, because we have some rhetorical questions.

We have some questions in our reading that don't require an answer, but they make us think about what might happen, would she always work in the kitchen? Would she ever get the chance to show her true personality?" And another learner noticed the difficulty that Cinderella does want to show her true personality, but she also wants to be there for her friends in the kitchen and make sure that she's really happy for them even though she's not that happy on the inside.

I am so impressed with your reading.

Let's just take a moment to give ourselves some shine, to make ourselves feel all warm and happy because we are working really hard and actually you are making the problem matter and that is amazing.

Let's look at our final extract now.

Cinderella looked down and carefully stroked her beautiful dress.

She needed to keep touching it to remind herself that it was real and she was not just in a dream.

In her dreams, she had imagined that she would go to the ball, but she never thought that it would actually happen.

The fairy godmother was truly amazing.

Cinderella hopes that everyone had a fairy godmother.

But now it was down to her.

This was her chance to go out into the world and prove to people that she was more than just a kitchen maid.

She had a voice and now the world was about to hear it.

So have a look at the extract.

I would like you to find the difficulty.

Think about the consequences, Cinderella's thoughts and feelings, and think about the bigger learning for the world.

Pause your video now.

Excellent.

Excellent.

I would like to hear some of your wonderful thoughts, so come a bit closer and whisper them to the screen.

Fantastic.

I had such an eloquent answer and that means somebody who spoke really clearly about that point.

They said that, "Actually they found evidence of difficulty because Cinderella did have nice clothes now, but actually she faces a problem because she has to take the power and make sure that when she goes to the ball, she speaks and voices her true opinions to show us her personality." That can be a little bit difficult when we have to make choices about ourself.

Fantastic learning.

I also had another learner say that, "The learning for the world is that actually it doesn't matter what you look like, what matters is feeling confident so that you feel like you have a voice." I am just so impressed and I feel really, really lucky to be able to have these conversations with you today, because it means that we are really thinking about not just ourselves, we are thinking about the world and we are trying to understand it a bit better.

So well done everybody.

If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and @TeachTMcCartney #LearnwithOak.