Lesson video

Hello, it's Mrs. Smart.

Welcome back to this English unit about journalistic writing.

In this lesson, we're going to be applying everything we've learned about direct and reported speech because we are writing the quotes paragraph of our newspaper reports.

In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or some lined paper, a pen or pencil, and your quotes plan.

Remember the speech bubbles you wrote for each of our witnesses.

You're going to need that to help you write your quotes paragraph today.

If you don't have any of these things with you right now, just pause the recording and go and get them.

In today's lesson, we're going to start with an introduction about quotes paragraphs in newspaper reports.

We're then going to explore some of the features and draw up a success criteria.

Then I'm going to model writing a quotes paragraph for you.

Lastly, you are going to write your own quotes paragraph as part of your newspaper report for your independent task today.

So here's a reminder of the newspaper report structure we've been following in this unit.

We've written our opening paragraph and chronological recount paragraph.

Today, we're going to be writing our quotes paragraph.

Here is an example of a quotes paragraph that we looked at in a previous lesson.

You'll notice some of it's pink and some of it's green.

Maybe as I'm reading, you can work out what the pink represents and what the green text represents.

I'm going to read out loud.

If you want to pause the recording and read it yourself, you can.

Otherwise, just follow along on the screen.

Many witnesses have provided further information about the incident.

The Bears' next door neighbour, Mr. Hunter, who was outside gardening at the time, heard a commotion at the Bears' residence.

He reported, "I was just pruning my roses when I was distracted by the sound of crockery smashing." Furthermore, a passer-by stated that she had seen a young girl with blonde hair approaching the Bears' house while she was walking her dog.

The police have issued an official statement.

"Number 3 Honeypot Lane is currently a crime scene and is undergoing further forensic investigation," explained the chief of police.

Did you work out what the pink and the green represented? The pink represents direct speech.

And you can see the first example, I've used speech second in the sentence.

And the second example, I've used speech first in the sentence.

And then the green sentence is showing reported speech.

Now you've had a chance to read through an example of a quotes paragraph, I want you to have a think about this question.

What is the purpose of the quotes paragraph? Why do we include a quotes paragraph in our newspaper report? Pause the recording and write down any of your ideas now.

So, the quotes paragraph provides additional information about the event.

It gives different perspectives on the event.

That means we're not just hearing from one person and what they saw or what they thought about the event, but we're hearing from lots of different people, because different people might have seen different things or have different opinions or thoughts and feelings about the incident.

It also shows where the information for the report has come from.

You know, as journalists, we have to gather our information from lots of different sources, and using a quotes paragraph shows that we've spoken to witnesses, and that's how we found out lots of our information for our report.

Let's have a quick reminder of the key components of speech first.

What are the key components of speech first? "I didn't recognise him," explained Mrs Puckett's neighbour.

Hopefully, you can see in pink, we've got the open speech marks and the close speech marks around our speech.

We've got a comma before we close our speech.

And we've got that key synonym for said, explained, which is a verb.

What are the key components of speech second? Quite similar but a little bit different.

The dog walker commented, "I heard raised voices coming from inside the house." Again, you can see the synonym for said, commented, or the verb, followed by a comma.

That comma is really important.

Then we've got our open speech marks, our bread in our sandwich.

"I heard raised voices coming from inside the house." That's our speech or our filling.

And then our tomato, our full stop at the end, followed by our final slice of bread, closing our speech marks, or our inverted commas.

Here is an example of reported speech that we looked at in a previous lesson.

So I've changed the direct speech into reported speech.

The dog walker commented, "I heard raised voices coming from inside the house." And that's being changed into the dog walker commented that she heard raised voices coming from inside the house.

So you notice the synonym for said, commented, is followed by the word that.

And then instead of using I, I have used she because I'm reporting what someone else has told me.

I'm not directly quoting what she said.

Let's have a think about some of those key features in our quotes paragraph.

Firstly, we're going to consider the language and the types of sentences that we want to include.

Pause the recording, and write down anything you can think about, about the language in a newspaper report or a quotes paragraph, and the types of sentences.

Off you go.

So, for language, we have got formal language, referring to nouns in different ways.

Remember, we thought of lots of those formal nouns to refer to things like witness and house.

Prepositional phrases.

They tell the reader when and where events occur.

Journalistic phrases and formal conjunctions to link sentences together.

For sentences, we can use all three different types of complex sentence: simple sentences, compound sentences, and complex sentences.

In this unit, we've really been focusing on trying to include some relative clause complex sentences in our writing, where we use the relative pronoun who or which in the midst of a sentence to add extra information.

It's really a good idea to try and include a range of these three different types of complex sentence in your writing.

This keeps your reader interested.

Let's have a think about the layout features and the punctuation that we would expect to see in a newspaper report or a quotes paragraph.

Pause the recording and write down anything you can remember about layout or punctuation.

For layout, we need to have an opening sentence at the beginning of our paragraph.

We're then going to have an introductory sentence for each quote, and I'll show you what I mean when I model an example.

And then we're going to include about two to three quotes.

You've planned for four, so if you wanted to write four, you could write four, but two to three is about enough.

Punctuation, of course, we're going to have full stops, capital letters and commas like we do in all pieces of writing.

But specifically, for newspaper reports, we often have brackets to add extra information.

And, of course, in this paragraph, our quotes paragraph, we're going to have inverted commas to show that direct speech.

Here is the success criteria that we're going to be working towards in this piece of writing.

I have used direct and reported speech.

Hopefully, you've had lots of practise with that now, and you'll be able to do that with no problem at all.

I have punctuated direct speech accurately.

Again, you've had lots of practise of that, so I'm sure you'll know that absolutely fine.

I have used formal vocabulary.

I have used a relative clause and brackets to add extra information.

Those last two criteria, we've practised those in our opening and our chronological recap paragraph, so we've had some practise at those already.

So I think we're all going to definitely be able to include all of those criteria in our writing.

Hopefully, you have already got your quotes plan in front of you.

Just check you've got it with you now.

Good, well done.

So, we've planned out our quotes for several witnesses.

Here is the quote that we planned for the neighbour.

"I was pruning my roses when I saw a suspicious looking individual approach.

I didn't recognise him, but I just presumed it was one of Mrs Puckett's many friends." Your quote might be slightly different from mine.

Here is the quote that I wrote for the delivery man.

As I was unlocking my bike, I heard raised voices and saw two figures moving around inside.

I'm sure one of them was holding a stick, but it was hard to see.

Here's the quote for the dog walker.

I was minding my own business when suddenly I saw a large man fly towards the house, waving an axe.

I heard the smash of glass so I presume he broke a window.

Okay, now it's time to write.

We're going to use those quotes, but we're going to put them into a paragraph.

So, my first sentence, as I mentioned before, needs to be an opening sentence that introduces the rest of the paragraph.

I'm going to write Several witnesses have provided further information about this incident.

So I'm introducing this paragraph.

It's going to be further information from witnesses that I have spoken to as a journalist.

So the first witness I'm going to talk about is Mrs Puckett's next door neighbour.

Mrs Pucketts next door neighbour saw the suspect enter the house.

Okay.

Can you see anything missing there? Any punctuation I've forgotten? Yes, my apostrophe.

It's really important if I'm talking about something belonging to someone or showing possession that I have an apostrophe.

The neighbour belongs to Mrs Puckett.

It's Mrs Puckett's neighbour, so I need an apostrophe to show that.

Mrs Puckett's next door neighbour.

Now, I could add a little bit more information about him here maybe.

So Mrs Puckett's next door neighbour, I'm going to make up a name for him.

I'm going to call him Mr Smith and add that in in brackets.

Now, what was he doing at the time when he saw the suspect? He was gardening, wasn't he? So I'm going to say who was gardening at the time, saw the suspect enter the house.

Okay, let's read these two sentences back and check they will make sense.

Several witnesses have provided further information this incident.

Oh! I've missed a word.

It's a good thing I read back.

Further information about this incident.

I'm sure you spotted that error already.

Mrs Puckett's next door neighbour, Mr Smith, who was gardening at the time, saw the suspect enter the house.

Okay, now I want to have my first quote, and I'm going to use direct speech here, so I need my speech marks, so my inverted commas.

And he said, "I was pruning," you can copy this from your speech bubbles that you've already planned, "I was pruning my roses when I saw a suspicious looking individual approach." So I'm not going to include the whole quote I planned for, just the first sentence.

Now, I need to have my comma, my inverted commas, and then I need to think of a word for said.

If they were to say said, that's a little bit boring.

I know, I'm going to say he explained.

Excellent, let's read that sentence back.

"I was pruning my roses when I saw a suspicious looking individual approach," he explained.

Great! Now, I want to move on to my next witness, which was my delivery man.

So I'm going to add more information.

Can you remember what type of formal conjunction I can use if I'm adding more information to a point? Good, I'm going to use a formal and conjunction.

Now, I'm going to use furthermore.

Furthermore, and I must always follow it with a comma, a local delivery man described the fight between Red and Wolf.

So you can see I've got an introductory sentence before I then quote what that person has told me.

Now, I'm going to use reported speech this time because I've already used direct speech.

So I'm going to say: He stated, do you remember that keyword that I need after my synonym for said? Of course, it's that! He stated that he heard raised voices and thought one of them was holding a stick, full stop.

Okay, let's read that sentence back, or those two sentences.

Furthermore, a local delivery man described the fight between Red and Wolf.

He stated that he heard raised voices and thought one of them was holding a stick.

Excellent.

Here, you can see that same paragraph that I've just written, but I've highlighted the direct speech in pink and the reported speech in green, so it's really clear for you to see.

And you can see each speech sentence is introduced by an introductory sentence.

So you can see a sentence in black first, then a pink sentence, then a sentence in black, and then the green sentence.

Let's look at our success criteria and see how I'm getting on.

I have used direct and reported speech.

Yes, I've managed to do that already.

I've punctuated direct speech accurately.

Yes, I remembered all my pieces of punctuation.

I've used formal vocabulary.

Yes, I've been thinking really carefully about my language choices.

I have used a relative clause and brackets to add extra information.

Yes, I've done that already.

So, actually, I've already ticked off everything on my success criteria, but I'm going to include two more quotes in my quotes paragraph.

Here, you can see I've written the next parts of the quotes paragraph.

Let's read it through together.

A local resident, who was walking her dog along Cherry Pot Lane, also witnessed the incident.

She reported, "I saw a large man fly towards the house, waving an axe.

I heard the smash of glass so I presume he broke a window." The police have issued an official statement.

The chief announced that Number 1 Cherry Pot Lane is currently a crime scene and is undergoing further forensic investigation.

Again, you can see there that each speech sentence has an introductory sentence.

That's the black text.

And you can see, again, I've managed to use direct speech in pink, and this time I've used speech second, and then I've used reported speech at the end.

If I check my success criteria through again, that second part of my quotes paragraph, again, I've managed to use direct and reported speech, I've punctuated my direct speech accurately, I've used formal vocabulary, and I've used another relative clause.

I don't think I managed to use more brackets, but I did get a second relative clause in there.

So I've managed to achieve everything on my success criteria.

For your task today, I would like you to write the quotes paragraph of your newspaper report.

Remember to use your success criteria and try and achieve all of the criteria on that list.

Also, your plan is going to really help you because you've already decided what your witnesses are going to say.

So it's just a matter of copying those quotes into your paragraph and adding in an opening sentence and an introductory sentence for each quote.

In today's lesson, we had an introduction to quotes paragraph and reminded ourselves some of the features, we drew up a success criteria, and then I modelled a piece of writing for you.

Now, for your task, you are going to go and write your own quotes paragraph.

Congratulations! You have completed your lesson today.

If you would like to, please share your work with your parent or carer.

I'm sure they'd be really impressed to see your quotes paragraph completed.

See you in your next English lesson.

Goodbye!.