Lesson video

How lovely of you to join me in today's lesson.

We are going to be planning a stormy scene today.

I'm Ms. Chu, you are you, let's go.

Today's lesson outcome is, I can plan a descriptive scene about a dark, stormy night.

The key words that you'll need for this lesson are here, my turn then your turn.

Plan, notes, ambitious vocabulary, ambitious vocabulary, figurative language.

Excellent, a plan is a framework that writers create before they write a section or whole text.

Notes are written out of full sentences.

Ambitious vocabulary is high level.

High level language in writing that meets the text purpose.

Figurative language is the use of simile and personification to paint vivid pictures for the reader.

In this lesson, where we're gonna be planning a stormy scene, you're first going to prepare to plan, and then you are going to write the plan.

So let's start preparing to plan.

Ambitious vocabulary helps to paint vivid pictures for readers.

These are all examples of vocabulary that is related to stormy weather.

Blustery, can you say blustery? Blustery, well done.

Blustery means windy or blowing noisily.

Howl, your turn, howl means to cry or wail.

Incessant, your turn.

That means endless or nonstop.

And finally, electrifying, your turn.

And that means thrilling or stunning.

These are all examples of vocabulary that will help us to plan a stormy scene.

Which of the following words has the same meaning as endless or nonstop? Do you remember that picture of the giraffe holding the umbrella? Is it howl? Is it incessant? Is it blustery, or is it electrifying? Pause the video and have a think.

Okay, the answer is incessant.

Incessant means the same as endless or nonstop.

Here are some more vocabulary related to stormy weather.

Get ready to say them with me.

Actually, let's do my turn, your turn.

Ominous, ominous means scary or threatening or menacing.

If you look at that picture, you can see that big, large, ominous tornado is chasing the character in the car.

My turn, tempestuous, your turn, let's break that up, tempes-tuous.

Tempestuous, that means stormy, wild or violent.

Next word, torrential, your turn, that means falling heavily or forcefully.

And finally, we have splattered, your turn, that means splashed or sprinkled in a really disorganised way.

Which of these words are adjectives? Howl, ominous, torrential and splattered.

Think about which of these are describing words and which of these are action words, doing words, pause the video and have a go.

Okay, so the adjectives are ominous, which means threatening or menacing and torrential, that means endless or nonstop.

Howl is a verb.

It means to cry or wail.

And splattered is the action of rain coming down or liquid or water.

When we plan, we log, we write down precise and ambitious vocabulary to help paint vivid pictures for our reader.

Vivid pictures are often written with sensory rich descriptions, screams of howling, incessant wind tore through Aisha's city, just like the fear that tore through her heart.

Can you see there the words howling and incessant are highlighted.

They help us to imagine colours as we write our sentences.

Imagining colours as we write, helps us to choose our vocabulary.

So howling and incessant has painted a negative image for the reader.

So that's why it is in the orangy red part of the colour scale.

That's where the intense and powerful language is used.

On that end of the scale.

On the bluish greenish end of the scale are words that are more calm and peaceful.

We can think of precise and ambitious vocabulary about stormy weather by using and thinking about our senses.

Here are our five senses.

We have the sense of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.

We are going to use our five senses to generate nouns for this stormy weather picture.

Have a really close look at this picture.

I want you to think about what nouns you can see.

What are the things that you can see in this picture? And then I want you to think about some vocabulary that's in the orangy red part of the colour scale that's going to match what this picture is going to paint in the reader's head.

So I can hear thunder, so I might not be able to see it, but I can hear, I can hear rain, and I can hear the wind.

I can see clouds, lightning and rain.

And then maybe for smell, I might smell the damp, soggy earth.

The soil and the air would be really humid and damp.

And I can definitely touch the rain.

I can touch my skin, which will be wet, and my clothes that will feel really heavy and damp.

And then things that I might taste is the rain and then the air.

Now I'm going to use my five senses to generate expanded noun phrases for this picture.

An expanded noun phrase is two adjectives before the noun.

I'm expanding it by giving it adjectives.

So normally my adjectives are separated by a comma.

And I could even stretch myself that much further by saying that, after my noun.

So here is the scaffold that you could use.

Mm comma mm, thunder that, and then for what I can see, mm comma mm, lightning, let me have a think.

Howling, deafening, thunder, would be good for this scene.

'Cause I can hear the thunder that's really echoey and deafening and it's howling and it crack, that crack through the air.

And then for lightning, I can use one of the words that I've learned, electrifying, electrifying, blinding lightning.

Now it's your turn to have a go.

I want you to think about what you can smell.

So two adjectives that could describe the soil.

Two adjectives to describe the rain, that what, what did the rain do? And then finally, what you can taste.

Two adjectives to describe what the air tasted like.

Pause the video and have a go, using those scaffolds to help you to say your adjectives and put them into an expanded noun phrase for each of those senses.

Okay, did you have a good think about what you can smell, touch, and taste.

For smell, I've said that the soil was damp and pungent.

Pungent means like really strong smelling, for rain, I have torrential and incessant because I want to let the reader know that the rain was a nonstop and it was really heavy.

So to extend that, I've said rain that pelted down.

So it's coming down really heavily.

And then for the air, I said, fresh metallic air, that sort of taste of that metallic taste on your tongue.

Figurative language enhances our descriptions to make our imagery most of vivid for the reader.

Let's look at this sentence, the lightning illuminated the dark sky, like the menacing wand of an evil sorcerer.

In this example, I've said that the lightning is like something else, I've let the reader picture what the lightning was like.

So something that is not like the lightning, but that the reader can imagine would be like that.

So you've said that the lightning is like the menacing wand.

Now why would I choose a wand to describe the lightning? Well, because lightning makes a very jagged, electrifying, blinding, bright light.

And I can imagine that that's the sort of image that I would have in my mind when I'm describing a wand of an evil sorcerer.

So, because I've used the word like here to compare things, this sentence here is a simile.

Let's look at this one now.

The storm clouds gathered, sinisterly, plotting their next move.

So in this example, I've compared the storm clouds with something, I've said that the storm clouds were plotting, plotting, now plotting is a human quality because an evil sorcerer might plot its next move.

So in this example, we are saying that there's the use of personification.

We're giving the storm house clouds qualities.

And all of the language and vocabulary in both of these sentences are creating that orangy red emotional feeling that I have in me when I'm reading them.

It's creating the sense of menace, a sense of doom, a sense of something bad happening.

And so that's why it's in the orangy red part of the scale.

For your task, I would like you to fill in the blanks with the precise and ambitious vocabulary from the box below.

So in the box, we have electrifying, howled, incessantly, splattering, and tempestuous.

Let's have a go at saying this together.

My turn, then your turn.

Electrifying, howled, incessantly, splattering and tempestuous.

I'm going to read out this passage or this paragraph, and I'd like you to think about which words would fit well in those gaps.

Just look at the words in the box and then just think to yourself, hmm, which words would fit nicely in there? Are you ready? Let's get going.

In the middle of the mm night, an ominous storm rage like an angry beast, blustery wind mm through the trees and their branches reached out and desperation.

The winds thunderous, deafening cry, echoed through the land.

Lightning arched across the sky like jacketed spears, as if the heavens were in a mm fierce battle.

The torrential mm rain pelted down mm.

And it hit the earth like vengeful bullets.

So much of this is conjuring up that orangy yellow part of the scale.

The emotions for me are that it's a really ominous night.

It's just incessantly raining.

The wind is howling.

It's creating lots of negative images in my head.

I wonder if you could have a go now and just trying to put in those words and then we'll come back and see what you've got.

Pause the video and have a go.

Okay, let's have a look to see what you have put in your gaps.

And whether they're the same as mine.

In the middle of the tempestuous night, an ominous storm rage like an angry beast.

Blustery wind howls, 'cause we've gotta think about a verb, what verb would we would use there? Howled through the leaves.

Sorry, through the trees.

And their branches reached out in desperation, the winds thunderous, deafening, cry echoed through the land.

Lightning arch across the sky, like jagged spears, as if the heavens were in an mm fierce battle.

Try to think of an adjective.

Electrifying fierce battle.

The torrential mm range.

So again, another adjective.

'Cause I can see that this is an expanded noun phrase, just like the previous one in electrifying, fierce battle.

So I'm going to choose flattering rain pelted down incessantly and it hit the earth like vengeful bullets.

We are now onto the second part of the lesson.

We're going to write the plan now.

We've done lots of preparing.

We've warmed up and now we are ready to write the plan.

When we write the plan, we're gonna start by using a zoom in technique, which starts with the big idea of a storm.

And when we zoom in, we're then gonna focus on the descriptions of specific details.

So that's why I've got this V here.

It's just to help us to think about the idea of the storm.

So we're going to go large, we're going to go with the general storm, then we're going to zoom in on the wind, then the thunder, then the lightning, and finally the rain.

So we're gonna go large and then zoom in.

And in this picture, we are painting a very negative picture for the reader because obviously the reader won't have this drawing.

So we need to make sure we paint this picture for the reader in their minds using the vocabulary in the orangy red section of our colour scale.

Now these are all examples of ambitious vocabulary that we can include in our plan.

In fact, we must include these in our plan.

We have blustery, your turn, which means windy or blowing noisily, my turn, howl, your turn, which means to cry or wail, incessant, your turn, and that means endless or nonstop.

Electrifying, your turn, that means thrilling or stunning.

Then we have a few more, ominous, your turn, that means scary, threatening or menacing.

Tempestuous, your turn, that means stormy, wild or violent.

Torrential, your turn, that means falling heavily or forcefully.

And then we have splattered, your turn, and that means splashed or sprinkled.

In our plans, we want to include fronted adverbials because they really help create text flow.

They're sentence starters that give information about the time, the place, the manner or the frequency, that means how often, of the action in the sentence.

These are some examples of ambitious fronted adverbials that we can include in our plan.

So if we wanted to include a fronted adverbial of time, we could say in the middle of the night, because it looks like in the picture, it is nighttime.

If we wanted to include a fronted adverbial of place, we could say all across the desert or in that picture, it would be across the world or in the valley.

And then for manner we would say heavily, because if we wanted to describe the rain, we could say heavily the rain mm, and frequency, we could say how often something happens.

We could say constantly.

If we're again talking about the rain, we're writing about the rain, we want to say that it was constantly falling.

So which fronted adverbial is the most appropriate for a descriptive scene? Any descriptive scene, not just the stormy one.

Would it be furthermore, despite this, in the middle of a storm or as a consequence, think about which one of these is a fronted adverbial.

I'm gonna give you a clue here of time, place, frequency, or manner.

Pause the video and have a go.

Okay, let's have a look.

So I know that furthermore and despite this are formal fronted adverbials that we would use in a formal piece of writing.

And as a consequence is a formal, it's a sorry, a fronted adverbial of cause.

So that's when I want to link a cause and effect together.

So it won't be those.

The most appropriate would be in the middle of the storm because it's a fronted adverbial of place.

It's telling me where something's happening.

So that would be the most appropriate for a descriptive narrative scene.

Now when we plan, we use notes.

Notes are concise and capture precise and ambitious vocabulary.

The purpose of notes is to help the writer to organise information easily for future use.

We often use bullet points or a table when note taking, they look like this.

So these are bullet points.

So they're dark round circles.

And then we write our notes next to them.

When we write notes, we use subheadings to organise our bullet points so that we know what those notes are.

Subheadings are a really important part of organising our notes.

Now in our notes, we don't write in full sentences.

We only capture the precise and ambitious vocabulary that we need.

In your first task, I would like you to write the first subheading storm.

Remember, we're starting with the storm using our zoom in technique.

So think about our V, make a V with your hands, please.

Well done, lovely hands.

And then we're gonna start from the top.

So at the top part of our V is the big picture, the storm.

And then later we will go in to specific details, zoom in.

So we're gonna start with our storm.

We're going to underline that first subheading, just like this.

And then underneath that we're going to complete the table with at least one example of each linguistic device.

So we're going to have, for our fronted adverbial, you could use any of these two or you can come up with your own, all around, might be a good one because we might be talking about the storm being all around.

What about all through the night? That's telling me the frequency of the storm.

That might be helpful.

You can think of your own.

For our expanded noun phrase, we know the expanded noun phrase is an adjective.

An adjective, and then the noun, because it's a storm, we would have the noun storm.

Or you could use a synonym for storm and you could say a blizzard.

So adjective, adjective, blizzard.

And then for our simile or personification, we could say that the storm howled like a, or roared like a, or lashed.

And then finish off that part of that phrase.

Okay, so I want you to pause the video and I want you to just think of one example for each linguistic device, you can use mine, definitely use the scaffolds, they help you.

Or you can come up with your own.

And I can't wait to read what you've got.

Pause the video and have a go.

Okay, let's have a look at my table.

For frontal adverbial, I chose all around, 'cause I thought that would be a good one for the storm.

And then I chose the storm as my noun.

I didn't go with blizzard.

And I said that the storm was ominous and tempestuous because I'm going to use the vocabulary, the ambitious vocabulary that we've learnt.

And then as a simile for the storm, I said that the storm howled like an angry beast because I thought that that was a good comparison to give the storm.

Now you're going to write the next subheading, wind.

Make your V-shape again with your hands.

So we start at the top and now we're going further in.

We're about there.

And then you are going to underline the subheading, wind, just like this.

And then you are going to complete the table with at least one example of each linguistic device.

Similarly to what we had just done with the storm, here are a couple, two fronted adverbials that you could use.

So we're talking about the wind here, through the sky or mercilessly.

That means without mercy.

And then you can think about the expanded noun phrase, so, mm mm wind and then extend it, you can say that.

And then you could say mm mm gust.

So another synonym for wind that, and then for simile or personification, tore through the mm, or branches.

Maybe you could give the branches a human-like quality relating to the wind.

Use the scaffolds, pause the video, and have a go.

So here is mine.

I chose mercilessly as my fronted adverbial, and I chose wind.

So said the blustery, icy wind, that howled.

And then for my simile I said, tore through the trees.

And I actually chose another one.

I said branches reached out in desperation, 'cause I thought that would be a good one to paint that picture.

Okay, next subheading, your V, you are coming closer in, thunder.

You're going to underline the subheading.

And then you're gonna complete the table again with at least one example of each linguistic device for our front adverbials, we have with full force, without a care in the world.

So choose either one of those or come up with your own.

For my expanded noun phrase, I have a mm comma mm thunder.

And then I have echoed as my figurative language.

Pause the video and fill in your table.

Let's look at what I filled in, in my table.

So I chose without a care in the world.

That's what I said about the thunder, doesn't care about anyone, it just does its thing.

And I've said that it's a menacing, deafening thunder.

And I gave it the quality of booming like my voice, like a human's voice, boomed loudly through the land.

Your next subheading.

So further in now the lightning, you're going to write that and then underline it and then complete the table with at least one example of each linguistic device.

For fronted adverbials, I said every few minutes is my fronted adverbial of frequency.

I've said unpredictably.

That's a fronted adverbial of manner.

Remember I'm describing the lightning here.

So I'm saying every few minutes how it was behaving and how unpredictable it was.

And then for my expanded noun phrase, I have my two blanks, my adjectives for lightning that, danced.

So I've extended it by saying that danced.

And then my scaffolds for simile.

I could say like what, or I could say arched across the sky like, so here I've got two similes.

You cannot use one of these or think of your own or use personification.

It's completely up to you.

I can't wait to read yours.

Pause the video and have a go.

Let's look at mine.

So I chose every few minutes for the lightning, and I describe the lightning as being electrifying and blinding that danced, and then I said like, so danced like, frenzied serpents.

So serpents, synonym, snake, they dance like frenzied snakes.

And then I also chose arched across the sky like jagged spears because I wanted to have two options.

I wanted to have the image of dancing snakes, but I also wanted to have the image of jagged spears in the sky, like jagged like this.

And finally, we are now at the bottom part of our V.

So make that V again with your hands.

We are now here.

Okay, we are at the end of our V.

We've zoomed right in, and we're gonna look at the rain in detail.

So we're gonna write rain, underline it like so.

Complete the table with at least one example of each linguistic device.

You can choose one of mine, heavily and angrily, Or you can have in every direction, my expanded noun phrase for the rain, adjective comma adjective.

And then I can say pelted like a mm, or I could say like mm teardrops.

Okay, pause the video and give it a go.

Right, let's look at mine.

So for rain, I have in every direction.

I think that's a really good one to describe how the rain was falling.

And then I said that the rain again was torrential and incessant.

And I used the simile tapped like a drummer, because I can imagine the rain tapping like this, like a drummer.

And I also wanted to have another one as a backup.

So I said like heavy sombre teardrops.

Sombre means sad, so like heavy, sad teardrops, so the person can imit, sorry, the person can imagine what that looks like when the rain comes down really sad and really heavy, and really big drops of rain.

We are at the end of the lesson planning a stormy scene.

Let's summarise our lesson.

A plan is a framework that writers create before they begin to write the section or whole text.

A plan has precise and ambitious vocabulary, and it can contain figurative language for descriptive writing, notes help the writer to organise vocabulary easily for writing in the future and imagining the mood that we want to create for the reader helps us to choose the most ambitious vocabulary.

I hope that you enjoyed planning a stormy scene.

I really loved choosing the right vocabulary to match the mood of that picture.