Lesson video

Hello, my name is Ms. Johnson, and I'm going to be teaching you English today.

In today's lesson, we're going to plan the climax of a narrative.

If you haven't watched the previous lessons, then you should stop this video and go back to the start.

If you have, then let's get started.

We're going to start today's lesson by looking at the purpose of a climax and what its role is in a narrative.

Then we're going to be developing vocabulary.

This is like planning our climax because everything we use today, and everything, all the ideas that we generate, we can use in our writing for when we come to do the climax, and then we're going to have a go at using the vocabulary that we learned today, to write a sentence at the end of the lesson.

In the lesson today, you will need an exercise book or paper, a pencil or a pen, and your brain.

You're going to do lots of the thinking today.

You're going to be generating most of the vocabulary for me.

If you have any distractions that you, for instance, if your phone is near you, or if there is the TV on, or if there's a window open and it's really noisy, now's a good time to pause the video here and go and sort those distractions out, and then press play when you're ready to resume.

Okay, let's get started then.

So we're going to start off by thinking about the purpose of a climax.

What is a climax in a story and what is its role? So, a climax is when the conflict reaches its peak.

So in a buildup, we have a problem that builds and builds throughout the buildup, hence the name, and then in the climax, it's suddenly reaches up its peak.

Imagine we're on a mountain and it's at the top.

It's where all the action happens.

So finally, we get action, and there's a, almost, leading towards our resolution.

It's the highest point of tension and excitement.

And here, in "The Man on the Moon," the climax is a really exciting moment, okay? It's really exciting because the girl finally finds a way to communicate with the old man, and that makes it really exciting for the reader to read.

So, we're focusing on the climax today.

We've done the opening, we've done the buildup and we finished our buildup with Lily being really frustrated she couldn't reach the old man.

Then we move forwards in time and it's morning, Lily opens her presents, run downs the stairs with all her family, opens presents, and then we think of the old man, but little do we know she's found the way to send him her present, and he finally is able to see her, and he finally receives a present and knows someone is thinking about him.

And it's this really exciting, but also quite emotional, moment when the old man finally has somebody reach out to him, and that's what we need to mirror in our writing today.

We need to try and think of all the vocabulary that we can choose to show the emotion in this section of the narrative.

So when we pick this vocabulary, we can choose any word we like, can't we? Authors have the whole dictionary that they can use, but we need to be really selective over the words we use, and we need to really think about the purpose and what meaning we're trying to create and what image in the reader's mind we're trying to create.

Throughout today's lesson, I would like you to magpie my ideas.

What I mean by this is I want you to steal my ideas, okay? I'm going to ask you, though, first of all, to generate and think of your own, and then I will instruct you when I think it's a good chance for you to copy some of my ideas.

Why am I saying copy my ideas? Well, this is going to help your writing be superb.

So, if you can use some of my ideas to get you started, then that's fantastic, but your ideas are as good as mine, and the more original you can be, the better.

So, we're going to think a little bit about action reaction today.

What is action reaction? It's when an action happens and somebody has a reaction to it.

So the action here is somebody's pulled the ball away, and their reaction will be when it hits the other balls and they all start to move.

If somebody was to drop and smash a glass on the floor, the reaction would be that everybody would probably go and scream or gasp, and so there's a reaction to what they've done.

If somebody was to score the winning football goal in a match, everybody would cheer, and that would be the reaction to the action that they have seen.

And today, that's going to help us a little bit.

We're going to think about what is happening and how are the characters reacting to that.

So what happens here? The action, the old man receives the present.

His reaction is that his face beams with excitement and joy and happiness, and that's the reaction he shows to the event that has happened.

And I want to show through show, not tell, and description, what is happening in each image today, and this is going to really help me when I then come to write my climax.

So here you can see Lily running down the stairs.

She's about to be greeted by her family and about to open all of her presents.

So, can you write down what is happening and how the characters are feeling in this scene? So you might describe something that's happening.

What is she doing? Tell me what she's doing.

How is she feeling as she's doing it? So, pause the video here, write down two ideas and press play when you're ready to resume.

Well done, fantastic work.

Let me show you what I've got.

So I said, "Her eyes glistened with excitement because she skipped joyfully down the stairs." I added in the adverb joyfully to show the emotion that she has, she's excited, and so her eyes glisten because the lights are almost making her eyes glisten, but also because she's almost got a twinkle in her eye with excitement, and that's showing me the energy she has, the enthusiasm she has, to get down the stairs in the morning.

So if you'd like now, pause the video and magpie any of my ideas that you'd like to copy and then press play when you're ready to resume.

Well done.

Okay, so can you tell me now what is happening and how the characters are feeling? So, what is Lily doing? She is opening her present.

Can you tell me how she's opening it? Can you describe the present? And can you tell me how she feels afterwards? So pause the video here, try and write down two ideas, and press play when you're ready to resume.

Well done, let's check together.

Let's see the ideas that I have here.

So I said, "She tore open her presents," because what that word tore shows me that she's really desperate to open them, she's almost like ripping them apart, instead of just, "She opened her presents." It adds more detail to it, it shows her excitement.

And I said that "her face beamed with excitement." If you beam with excitement, a sun has beams that come off it, imagine that your face is almost radiating excitement.

I said, "She tightly hugs her family." Why might that be important to include? Well, this shows us that Lily is surrounded by lots of people.

She's well loved.

She's in the heart of her family right now, and then if we contrast that to the old man, he's not, he's completely lonely.

And so, this is our way of building that contrast, the differences between them both.

And then I've also said, "She listened to the joyful sounds of laughter and music." The reason I've done that, again, is because we know the old man is listening to silence.

There's no one around him.

There's no sounds around him, and so this helps us set the scene and helps to build that contrast, throughout our writing.

So, if there are any that you really like, can you pause the video here, magpie them, copy them down, and then press play when you're ready to resume? Excellent.

Which one did you pick, shout it out.

Excellent choice, well done.

I hope to see that in your writing going forwards.

So, now we're going to move to the old man.

We've shown the excitement of Lily.

Now we're going to move to what the old man is doing, and this is a contrast, so contrasting settings or contrasting feelings are the state of being strikingly different from something else.

So here, the man in red is walking the wrong way up the stairs when everybody else is walking downstairs, so he is strikingly different from something else.

So, the old man and Lily are strikingly different because she is surrounded by family and love and he is alone and there's nobody there to help him, and so this difference is what makes it such an emotive piece, it's what makes a response in the reader so powerful.

And we need to show how the old man's feelings change in the climax, so if we were to look closely at where we leave him and how he changes throughout the climax, we can see that change in emotion, and this change of emotion is what builds the excitement in the climax.

It's what makes the climax so engaging for the reader.

How do we do that in our writing? We can do that by describing and picking really carefully our ambitious vocabulary to choose.

Can you pause the video here, and can you just tell me how his emotions change in the images here and then press play when you're ready to resume? Well done.

Now we're going to have a go at putting that into words.

So, what is happening and how is the character feeling? What is he doing? How do you know how he's feeling? Can you use any of those Mrs. Wordsmith words you've learnt in the previous lessons? How do you know how he's feeling? How is he showing you how he's feeling? This is him showing you his feeling, not telling you his feeling, and that's a really effective way that we can write as well, if we show someone how somebody is feeling instead of telling the reader, then it's more effective.

So can you pause the video here, and can you think of three ways to describe him and then press play when you're ready to resume.

Well done, let's see.

So, I thought of my three Mrs. Wordsmith words that I had learnt in the previous lesson, and those words are all sad words, okay? They mean sad, and you can see all the characters in the images are almost like the old man, aren't they? They look like the old man, they look a bit upset.

So, those few words are these.

Desolate, so, desolate.

It's a really great word to use, the desolate man.

It shows that he's given up hope, he's got no hope left, he's feeling really sad.

Melancholy.

Say it, melancholy.

Quite a hard word to spell, that one.

You have to watch out for the C-H in the middle there.

Say it once more, melancholy.

That also means really sad and upset, or feeling a bit down, and we've used that already in our previous writes to describe the old man.

And the next one is glum.

Say it, glum.

Glum is kind of how you feel some days when you wake up and it's raining outside and you're not having a good day, and you're just in a bit of a low mood, glum.

I really like that word because I think it's kind of, almost you can picture what it means just for how it sounds.

So glum, the old man was feeling glum.

So these are three words that would be excellent to try and use in your writing.

So can you press pause here, pick one to copy, and make sure you use it going forwards, and then press play when you're ready to resume.

Well done, which one did you choose? Shout it out.

Really good choice, I agree, I would have gone with that one too.

Right, now we're going to think about how his emotion changes, so now what words might we start to describe? Can you describe what is coming towards him without telling me what is? So, I don't want you to tell me it's just balloons.

Tell me what is coming towards him.

What are his eyes doing? How is he feeling? He's never seen something like this for so, so long.

Someone has sent him something, how does he feel? So can you pause the video now, I'm going to ask you to write three ideas for this because it's like the key scene of the climax, and then press play when you're ready to resume? Well done, let's look together.

So I actually used some questions.

I said, "Something magical appeared." And it's this kind of suspense of not knowing what it is that has quite appeared.

"Where had it come from?" "Who had sent it?" "Was it for him?" And by using those three questions, I kind of show his excitement because he can't believe it.

So these are almost the questions that are going through his mind.

When I come to write my climax, I might put three questions next week to each other for the same effect, to build the pace.

So if you'd like to now, you can pause the video here, you can even copy those three questions if you'd like, and then press play when you're ready to resume.

Really well done, excellent job.

Now, we're going to do that last picture.

How does he finally feel at the end, when he finally receives his present? When he sees it's for him, what happens? You could describe his face, even.

It's so, I love this image.

You can completely see how he's feeling.

So can you press pause here, and write down two ideas you could use and then press play when you're ready to resume? Well done.

Fantastic.

So, let's look together.

There's quite a few, I said, "His face lit up." There was almost a sudden excitement.

I said, "Happiness consumed him." Say it, consumed.

Consumed means it completely takes over him.

It's an excellent word to use, actually.

"Happiness consumed him." Say it, consumed.

And it's a really nice way to show that he's completely happy all over.

I said, "Tears of joy streamed down his face." I could even add in "down his worn face," if I wanted, and that's the idea of these little tears trickling down his face because he's so, so happy and overwhelmed with emotion.

And then finally, I had a question again.

I really like these questions.

I think they really show what the character is thinking.

"Could this really be for him?" And note, I've got my question mark at the end of that one, but I think they are a really effective way to show how a character is feeling.

So again, you can pause the video here, copy down two of my ideas, and then press play when you're ready to resume.

Well done! We've now got so many words that we can pick from in our writing, which is fantastic.

We've worked so hard, and we've got so many different ideas that we can use and vocabulary that we can use for the climax of our writing, so we're almost ready to get started and actually do some writing.

Before we do that, we're going to practise a sentence first, though, because practising sentences and forming ideas in a little bit more detail is a really good way to prepare us for a longer write.

So I would like you to use your vocabulary from today, and I would like you to write a sentence.

I would like you to write a sentence and finish my sentence below about Lily going down the stairs.

So can you complete the sentence below to match the action, what she's doing and how she's feeling in the picture? Now I've given you a complex sentence frame here because I've given you a subordinating conjunction and then I've left you a gap for the subordinate clause, and then I've put your comma in for you to mark where the subordinate clause meets the main clause.

I've told you the reaction, "She beamed with excitement." That's my main clause.

Can you add in a subordinate clause to show me the action? Why did she beam with excitement? What is she doing when she beams with excitement? So pause video here.

When you write, I want the full sentence, capital letter, comma, full stop, neat handwriting.

So pause the video here, take your time and press play when you're ready to resume.

Well done, let's look at the sentence together.

As Lily skipped down the stairs, she beamed with excitement.

Should we say it together and I'm going to to do actions.

So, capital letter as, then we've got another capital letter, Lily skipped down the stairs, comma, she beamed with excitement, full stop.

Once more with me.

As, say it out loud.

As Lily skipped down the stairs, she beamed with excitement, full stop, and that's a really effective sentence I can now use in my writing, so you should also have one to use in your writing.

The "skipped down the stairs" shows her energy, shows her excitement.

Skipping is something we do when we're usually happy.

It shows enjoyment.

And so this is an effective choice of vocabulary to use.

So, well done, we've done a lot today.

We've looked at the purpose of a climax.

We've developed our vocabulary for the climax.

We're going to use that vocabulary in our own writing, and we've had a go at writing a sentence for our climax.

So congratulations, you completed your lesson, but before you go, this is my final request.

I would like you to circle three words that you're going to promise you're going to use in your writing.

The thing is, we now have so much vocabulary that we can get a bit overwhelmed by it, and we might not know which words to pick, so you now need to be a bit selective as an author, and carefully choose three words that you're definitely going to use in your writing.

So pause the video here, and circle those words for me now, and press play when you're ready to resume.

Well done, fantastic job.

You've worked really hard today, you should be really proud of yourselves.

I hope you enjoy the rest of your lessons today and I hope you take care.