Lesson video

Hello everybody.

It is Mrs. Hardisty here again for your English lesson for today.

In our lesson, we are going to be doing lots of planning for the opening of our explanation text all about chocolate.

And, we're going to be learning some really interesting facts about the history of chocolate, ready to put into our writing.

So, when you're ready, let's begin.

So, as I said, we're going to start by learning some fun facts about chocolate, which we can then use in our writing.

And then we're going to think about the purpose of planning and why it's useful, and what format it should be in to help us.

And then we're going to make two plants a day.

So we're going to plan our opening, and then we're going to plan our first paragraph all about growing.

So for this lesson, you will need plenty of paper 'cause remember we're doing two plans, and a pencil or pen.

So please can you get those things now, and then we can start.

So we're going to begin with our fun facts.

Now the first recorded use of cocoa beans was in 1500 BC, which is around 3,500 years ago by the Olmec people.

So this was an ancient civilization, an ancient group of people, who lived in what we now think of as Mexico and we know that this is an area where cocoa beans grow really well.

But this is not a new thing, so for thousands of years, people living in that part of the world have been using cocoa beans.

And the earliest recorded use was in 1500 BC.

Now, it is estimated that the UK eats nearly 700,000 tonnes of chocolate each year, which is around three bars per person every week.

Now, I love chocolate.

I don't think I eat three bars every week, but I do know some people who eat a lot of chocolate and gosh, that all adds up to nearly 700,000 tonnes each year.

There is a World Chocolate Day on the 7th of July, each year, where chocolate is bought and celebrated and of course eaten.

So you might want to remember that when it comes to the 7th of July, you could celebrate World Chocolate Day.

And then the Aztecs, so this is another ancient civilization that lived in that central American area that we now think of as Mexico, they lived after the Olmec people.

The Aztecs ate a lot of chocolate too, and they thought that it had magical powers.

They believed that it had the ability to give them strength.

So they ate chocolate to make them strong.

What a great excuse! Let's check to see if we've remembered what we've just learned.

So when was the first recorded use of cocoa beans? Was it 1000 BC, 1500 BC, 3,500 BC, or 3000 BC? They're all quite similar, aren't they? Can you remember which one it was? Point to it, shout it out, tell me.

So, it was 1500 BC.

Remember, BC means Before Christ.

So that is 3,500 years ago, but the date is 1500 BC.

And can you remember the name of the people that, that uses cocoa beans? The Olmec people.

What did Aztecs believe chocolate gave them? Was it strength, being strong, or was it wisdom, being clever? Which one was it? Point to it, shout it out, which one was it? It was strength.

So, Aztecs believed that you became stronger if you ate chocolate.

So we've learnt some useful facts, and now we're going to think about how and why we plan.

So what are plans for writing? And why are they useful? So plans are useful because they help to organise our ideas.

There are a record all the vocabulary, all the words and phrases that we want to use in our writing.

And they're written in a certain way to help us remember what to write.

So we have learned so much about how chocolate is made and all the different stages, and it's really easy to get them mixed up or to miss them out.

So plans are really helpful because they help us go to in chronological order, in time order, they help us remember every section so we don't miss out an important section.

And we can also record useful facts in there that we want to be able to share with our reader.

So, in terms of the vocabulary plans are really helpful for those subject specific words that we want to remember to spell correctly.

Things like our winnower machine.

And then we can write down any formal conjunctions or causal conjunctions, things like therefore, or in addition, or however, that we want to use in our writing so that we don't have to try and think them up as we're writing.

We can also put down things like sequencing conjunctions, which are really useful, aren't they for helping order our writing for an explanation text, things like first or next.

Now, this is really important.

Our plans are not written in full sentences.

That comes when we come to write our explanation text.

So they're just a way of writing down key phrases and words that we want to use.

Sometimes we can organise them with bullet points in our plan just to help us read our plan more easily.

So now we're going to write a plan for our opening section.

This is what I would like your plan to look like on your page.

So in a moment, we're going to pause the video so that you can draw out this table ready to fill it in to make your plan.

So you can see from my example that we've got a table that's made up of two main columns and all together, we've got four rows across, which makes eight boxes altogether.

And down one side you can see, I have written what I want to include in my plan.

So, opening questions, fun facts, the main stages my reader is going to learn about, and then any useful adjectives that I can use to hook my reader in.

So what I'd like you to do now is get your piece of paper and your pencil.

If you have a ruler that might also be helpful for drawing your lines really neatly.

And then you need to draw this table on your piece of paper, making sure that you have left enough room to be able to write in words and phrases and facts into the blank boxes.

Pause the video now, and I'll see you in a moment.

Well done.

Okay, so hopefully now your plan looks exactly like mine.

And we can start to fill it in.

So, I'm going to share with you some of my ideas.

You can steal some of my ideas and you can put your own things in.

So we want to have some opening questions are going to make our reader think and wonder what's going to happen next.

So we could have things like, have you ever wondered, or did you know.

Can you think of a question that you might want to put into your opening? I'm going to put in, have you ever wondered.

Have you ever wondered how chocolate is made? Have you ever wondered where chocolate comes from? Now you can see that in my plan, I haven't written the whole question.

I've just put in the start at my question, and then I'm going to fill out the rest of it in when I actually come to do my writing.

I'm going to put in two, just so that I've got lots of options.

So I'm also going to put in, did you know that.

Did you know that we 700,000 tonnes of chocolate in the UK? So I've got different ways that I could finish that question sentence starter but I've got them written into my books.

All right, so I've got my questions.

Now, I wonder which fun facts I think are going to be exciting for my reader.

You might already think, you know, what I think the one about Aztecs is brilliant.

So I'm going to put that one into my plan.

I'm going to put in about the Olmec people being the first recorded use of cocoa beans all that long time ago.

But then I want to also talk about chocolate today.

So I think I'm going to be put in my fact about the UK.

So the UK has seven eat 700,000 tonnes in a year.

And then I'm going to add in my fact about the Aztecs.

And then when I come to write, I can choose which one I'm going to use.

So the Aztecs thought that it gave them magical powers.

Okay, so I've got my opening question and then my fun facts.

And now I need to make sure that my reader understands that there's not just one stage to making chocolate, but that it's a multistage process.

And there are lots of different stages along the way.

So I wonder if you can remember what they were, what did it start with? It started with growing, didn't it? And then after the growing, what happened to all those pods? They were harvested, weren't they? So that's our first two.

So I'm going to put those down, and then we have the resting, and the grinding, and then the mixing and the moulding.

So I'm going to list all of those main stages in my opening.

And that's going to help my reader know all the different things that they're going to read about.

And then finally remember that opening really needs to hook your reader in and make them want to read.

So I want to put some useful adjectives in to help them understand what they're going to be reading and get excited about it.

So I could have words like fascinating or interesting.

The chocolate making process, gosh, it's and lots of stages.

So maybe, could you remember what I said to describe the many stages, so we could have multi-stage process? Let's have a look.

So, fascinating, which means interesting, long, multi-step, and interesting.

So now it's your turn to pause your video and fill in your plan with your questions, your facts, your main stages, and your adjectives.

Well done everyone.

So we've done our first plan and now we need to make our second plan for the growing section.

So, our plan now is going to look a little bit different and this format of the plan, isn't, going to stay the same for all the rest of your explanation text.

So you can see that again, I've kind of got headings for what I want to include in my plan.

And I've got three columns now.

And in column one is going to be the stage that we're writing about.

And then in column two are the facts, that I want to make sure I'm covering.

And then in column three, I've got the vocabulary, the words that I want to use.

So as you did before, I would like you to pause the video and make sure that your table now looks exactly the same as mine.

And you really need to make sure that it's deep enough to be able to fill in lots of things underneath.

So I would strongly suggest that you start a new piece of paper, so that you've got lots of space to fill in all the information you need for your plan.

So this time your table is three columns wide and it's labelled stage, facts, and vocabulary.

Pause the video and make your plan.

Well done, everyone.

Let's start filling our plan in.

So, to start with, I know that my first age is the growing stage.

Now, I've put in my little picture.

You don't need to do a picture, but you might want to add one in, but you should definitely write in the word growing because then, you know, that's the state that you're going to be writing about.

And I think it would be also useful to have the subheading written in, because then I know how to organise my writing by subheadings when I come to write.

So I want to think of a subheading that would describe the growing process.

So something like how are cocoa beans grown, or where to cocoa beans grow, what would you use? I'm going to start with something even broader.

So where does chocolate come from? So this I now know is what I'm going to start my section about growing with.

And so now I want to put in all the facts that I have learned about cocoa trees and cocoa plants and where they're grown, and why they're growing in a certain way.

So see what you can remember.

What sort of farms are they grown on? Are they were really big farms or are they smaller ones? Can you remember? So they're grown on family farms in certain parts of the world, really hot parts of the world.

Again, can you remember which ones they were? So West Africa and Central and South America are the main growing areas for cocoa trees 'cause they're hot and they're humid and they're tropical.

And then I mustn't forget to tell my reader about what shaped the pods are and how they grow.

So you can remember what balls they look like? They look like rugby balls, don't they? And they don't grow off the branches.

Where do they grow? They grow up the tree trunk.

So I've got my most important information here.

It's not in a full sentence, it's just the key facts.

So the last thing I need to do, is fill in the key vocabulary that I'm planning on using in my writing.

So I've got before and first, what type of words are they? Can you remember? They're sequencing conjunctions.

I'm going to be probably use the word first at the start of my writing.

And then I've got some more formal conjunctions.

So I've got interestingly, and unusually, and they're a great way of hooking my reader in quite early on.

And then I've chosen the word because.

Can you see it there? Now I thought about using the word because, 'cause I wanted to explain why cocoa beans only grow in certain parts of the world.

So, because it's a great way to explain something, explain why something happens.

And then I've got subject specific vocabulary.

So I've got tropical, and humid, because those are the words that describe the climate of the areas of the world where cocoa beans grow.

So now I've filled in the whole thing.

It's your turn.

Can you now pause the video and complete your own plan.

Well done, everyone.

So let's just recap what we've done today.

We have learned some chocolate fun facts, we've thought about why we plan, and then we've planned our opening, and we made a plan for our first paragraph.

Super work, those plans that will be really helpful when we come to our writing 'cause we'll have everything we need to get writing straight away.

I will see you soon, bye bye.