Lesson video

Hello, everyone.

My name's Mrs. Riley, and today we are going to do some writing together.

In our lesson, we'll be focusing on writing part of the opening of "Macbeth." We are going to be describing three very scary witches, and we're going to be including all the things they say to one another.

So I hope you're ready to do some amazing writing together.

Let's get started.

The outcome of today's lesson is to use a plan to write a narrative opening based on Shakespeare's "Macbeth." These are our key words for today.

I'm going to say each one, and I'd like you to repeat it back.

Are you ready? Apostrophe for possession.

Fronted adverbial.

Inverted commas.

Reporting clause.

Well done.

An apostrophe for possession is a punctuation mark, like a full stop, and it's used to show if a noun belongs to another noun.

For example, I would use an apostrophe when I said, "Mrs. Riley's glasses," to show that my glasses belong to me.

A fronted adverbial is a sentence starter followed by a comma.

They're gonna be really useful in our writing today.

Inverted commas are a pair of punctuation marks that signal direct speech to the reader.

So when a character is speaking, we signal it using inverted commas.

And a reporting clause is a clause that tells the reader who said the speech sentence, and how.

In our lesson today we have two learning cycles.

First, we're going to prepare to write.

We're going to review our plan or a plan, and we're going to look at lots of different things that are going to be amazing to put in our writing.

We're just gonna have a quick practise of lots of things that we'll use.

And then in the second learning cycle we will write part two of our opening.

So let's start by preparing to write, a really important part of the process.

So we're going to write the opening in two parts.

Part one describes the setting.

We've already done that.

Or if you haven't, don't worry, we're not doing that today.

That was the heath.

Today, we're focusing on describing the characters.

And of course, the characters in the opening "Macbeth" are those famous witches, there's three of them.

And we're going to include what they say to one another.

So an opening introduces the setting and the characters.

We're not worrying about the setting today, we're just worrying about the characters and what they say to one another.

Let's review the notes from the plan.

Now, in this plan you can see I've drawn three witches.

So I've started to imagine in my mind what they're going to look like.

And I've thought about different elements of them that I want to describe in my opening.

For example, I'm going to describe them as hideous hags, and I'm gonna say they huddled together.

I'm gonna describe their skin as shrivelled skin on their emaciated, that means skinny and bony, hands.

I'm going to describe some smells, like, "They whispered with pungent breath." I'm describing their hair as unkempt and wind swept.

I'm describing their eyes as hollow eyes that reflected the moonlight.

I'm describing their clothes as tattered robes that hung off their scrawny frames.

And finally, I want to describe that they revealed their repulsive, toothless, that means they've got no teeth, grins as they plotted their devious plans.

So all of these things on the plan that I've come up with, all of this really rich, ambitious vocabulary, I'm going to lift straight from my plan and put into my writing today.

If you've got a plan, you can do the same.

And if you haven't got a plan, perhaps you could borrow mine.

So the second part of the opening needs to include the following.

Ambitious vocabulary to describe the witches, like we just looked at in that plan.

Fronted adverbials of place, time, and manner, and we're going to talk about those in a little bit.

Speech using inverted commas and ambitious reporting clauses.

And we're going to revise the speech rules in a second.

Text flow, and text flow means that we're going to use a range of sentence types, including three types of complex sentence.

If every single sentence in my opening started with as, "As the witch huddled together, they did this, as the witches plotted, they did this, as the witches cackled, they did this," it's just going to sound repetitive.

So I want to try and achieve text flow by thinking of lots of different types of sentence to include in my writing.

So fronted adverbials are words and phrases, and they can have different purposes, but all of them tell us more about the action that comes after the comma.

Front adverbials of time show us when something happened, like, then, at that very moment, before long, all of a sudden.

Fronted adverbials of place tell us where something happened.

"In the distance, on the cliff's edge, below, on the heath." Fronted adverbials of manner show us how something happened.

"With toothless grins, elated, with a sneer, without a backward glance." But all of these start our sentences, and all of them have a comma after them.

Now, if we could include some of these in our writing today, again, that would be fantastic.

So let's decide whether each of these fronted adverbials is showing time, place, or manner.

As I read them to you, have a think, is it telling us when it happened, where it happened, or how it happened? A, "Whilst they huddled together, the witches spoke in hushed voices, prophesizing in riddles." B, "On the very edge of the ragged cliff, the three hideous women gathered together." C, "Seconds later, they disappeared in a plume of smoke." Pause the video while you have some thinking time.

Okay, well done.

So A is showing us a fronted adverbial of manner.

It's telling us what they were doing, they huddled together.

B, on the very edge of the ragged cliff is a fronted adverbial of place.

It tells us where the hideous women gathered together.

"Seconds later, they disappeared in a plume of smoke" is a fronted adverbial of time.

It tells us when they disappeared.

Well done for completing that.

So we can connect ideas in our opening using complex sentences which contain a main clause and any type of subordinate clause.

And we're going to look at three types today.

So we've got an adverbial complex sentence.

This starts with a subordinating conjunction, or the adverbial clause starts with a subordinating conjunction, and then we have the main clause.

For example, here's the main clause, "The hideous hags muttered and moaned." Here's my subordinate clause, "As they huddled together." The subordinate in conjunction is as.

A relative complex sentence starts with a relative pronoun, or again, the relative clause starts with a relative pronoun.

"Their tattered cloaks." There's my main clause.

And then here's my relative clause, "Which hung off their skeletal bodies." And then that's the rest of my main clause, "Billowed in the wild wind." So in this one, I've interrupted my main clause with my relative clause.

If I took it out, the main clause would still make sense.

I could say, "Their tattered cloaks billowed in the wild wind." But I've interrupted it with that relative clause, starting with the relative pronoun which.

And non finite complex sentences include a non finite clause, which starts with a verb in its I-N-G form.

"The devious sorcerers plotted together." There's my main clause.

And here's my non finite clause, "Casting sinister prophecies into the night." There's my I-N-G verb, casting.

So all of these different types of complex sentences are going to help us to have that text flow and create variation in our writing.

Could you match each clause to the specific subordinate clause type it is? So we've got non finite clause, a relative clause, and an adverbial.

The first option is, "Spitting as she spoke." Second one is, "Whilst they muttered their spells," comma.

And the last one is, "Which lit up as they began to prophesy." The key words that are going to help you are the first words which start these clauses; spitting, whilst, and which.

Pause the video now.

Okay, let's see how you got on.

So a non finite clause is, "Spitting as she spoke." The clue is that the I-N-G verb spitting.

The relative is, "Which lit up as they began to prophesy." The clue there was that relative pronoun which.

And adverbial, we've got while.

So that's subordinating conjunction, "Whilst they muttered their spells." Now, that one starts with a capital letter, because when you do an adverbial complex sentence the subordinating clause can come first.

"Whilst they muttered their spells, their arms writhed in the air." Or we could say, "Their arms writhed in the air whilst they muttered their spells." If the subordinating clause comes first as it does here, we have to have a comma to separate it from the main clause.

Oh, now look, I've put these clauses into a full sentence.

"'Upon the heath,' replied the sinister sorcerer, spitting as she spoke" So, "Upon the heath" is what she said.

"Whilst they muttered their spells, their wrinkled hands uncontrollably twitched.

The wretched creature's eyes, which lit up as they began to prophesy, reflected the moon's light." Now, you can see there we've got lots of apostrophes.

The creature's eyes 'cause the eyes belong to them, and the moon's light 'cause the light belongs to the moon.

And we're going to revise our apostrophe rules in a second.

So when a singular noun possesses another noun, we usually add apostrophe S to the first noun.

This is an apostrophe for singular possession, "The witch's cloak." The cloak belongs to the witch, so we show an apostrophe, you show that using an apostrophe.

"The hag's hair." The hair belongs to the hag.

There's only one hag.

If we don't have the apostrophe, it just looks like I'm saying hags plural, so the apostrophe is really important.

"The mystic's word." Again, there's one mystic, it's singular.

The words belong to the mystic, so I've got apostrophe S.

Here are my singular nouns.

That means there's one; one witch, one hag, one mystic.

Here are my apostrophe S's which show that the second noun belongs to them, and here are my nouns that belong to the singular noun; cloak, hair and words.

Most plural nouns, that means if there's more than one, end in S.

When a plural noun possesses another noun, we usually add the apostrophe for possession after the S.

Here are some examples, witches and hags.

So now we've got plural, there's more than one.

There's three witches, there's three hags.

So, "The witches' cloaks were battered by the wind." This time I've got my plural noun, witches, and then I just have my apostrophe after it.

"Getting closer, the hags' putrid breath mingled together as they chanted their magic." Again, the hags, there's three of them, the breath belongs to them, so I've just got my apostrophe after the plural noun hags.

There's my two apostrophes to show possession.

Now, not all plural nouns end in S.

For these plural nouns, we just add apostrophe S as we do for singular nouns.

For example, if I took women, if women with M-E-N means lots of, that it's plural.

So for example, I might say, "The women walked into the office." That means there was more than one.

But equally I could say, "The woman," M-A-N, "Walked into the office." That was just one woman.

But when we have women, plural, it doesn't end in an S.

So here we just add apostrophe S like we do for singular nouns.

"The women's voices raised above the howling wind." So let's check what we've just learned.

How would the apostrophe for plural possession be used for each of these examples? Sorry, in each of these ideas.

So here's an example, "The spells belonging to the witches." Now, instead of saying that, I would just say, "The witches' spells." But because witches is plural, I have my apostrophe after the S to show that the spells obviously belongs to the witches, the witches possess the spells.

So you've got the cloaks belonging to the mystics, the piercing shrieks belonging to the sorcerers, the howls of laughter belonging to the women.

So you're going to turn it into a shorter phrase using apostrophe.

For example, the cloaks belonging to the mystics would be the mystics' cloaks.

But the important thing is, where does the apostrophe go? Pause the video now.

Okay, so we've got the mystics' cloaks.

It's plural.

Mystics is a plural noun, so my apostrophe comes after the S.

The piercing shrieks belonging to the sorcerers will be the sorcerers' piercing shrieks.

Again, sorcerers is a plural noun, so I just have an apostrophe after it.

Then this is the one that's a bit more you have to remember, this time we've got the women's howls of laughter.

Now, women is plural even though it doesn't end in an S.

So here we have apostrophe S like we would do for singular nouns.

"The women's hows of laughter." Now, the reason we've just quickly revised apostrophes is because it's quite likely in our opening today that an apostrophe will need to be used when we're describing the hags hair, or the witches cloaks, or the mystic spells.

So let's remember to use our apostrophes in our writing.

Okay, and lastly, we're going to just revise now direct speech.

So we use direct speech to show that a character is speaking out loud.

Each time there is a new speaker, you start a new line.

Each time there's a new speaker, what do we start? That's right, a new line.

"'Where shall we three meet again," asked the menacing creature from beneath her hood.

'Upon the heath,' her wicked companion replied, panting in excitement." Now, because that was a different witch speaking, I started a new line.

New speaker, new line.

Now, these are the words the characters said out loud.

You can see them in purple.

"Where shall we three meet again," and "Upon the heath." This is direct speech.

Direct speech is signalled to the reader using inverted commas that look like that.

Can you see the inverted commas around the two pieces of direct speech? Great, well done.

The inverted commas tell us where the words the character said begin and end.

So a speech first sentence follows these steps.

So here's my sentence, "'Upon the heath,' her wicked companion replied, panting in excitement." So this is a speech first sentence because the speech comes, that's right, first.

So we start with our opening inverted commas.

There they are.

Capital letter, the start of our sentence.

There it is.

Speech, "Upon the heath." Then we close it with either exclamation mark, question mark, comma.

It can't be a full stop, because it's not the end of our sentence.

I've gone for an exclamation mark here.

Then we have our closing inverted commas.

And finally we have our reporting clause, which is who said it and how.

"Her wicked companion replied, panting in excitement." There's my reporting clause.

And finally a full stop, obviously because it's the end of our sentence.

So this is speech first.

Speech second sentence follows these steps.

"Her wicked companion replied, 'Upon the heath.

'" So this time I start with my reporting clause, which obviously starts the capital letter because it's the start of my sentence.

"Her wicked companion replied," really important, after that we have a comma.

If we have the reporting clause first, we have a comma before the direct speech.

That's something I always forget.

So that's why I'm making a big deal of it now, because I don't want you to make the same mistake I do.

So comma after the reporting clause, and then we have our inverted commas to open the direct speech.

Capital letter, even though it's not the start of our sentence, speech always starts with a capital letter.

And then we've got our speech, "Upon the heath." And then we've got an exclamation mark, question mark, or full stop.

I've gone for an exclamation mark.

And then we close with our inverted commas.

And we can use an exclamation mark here because it's the end of the sentence.

I couldn't use a comma here because it's not the end of the sentence.

So a comma wouldn't work.

It's got to be exclamation mark, question mark, or full stop, because all of those three can come at the end of a sentence.

So what needs to be added to this sentence to follow the rules for a speech second sentence? Have a look.

"Leaning towards her sisters, the first witch quietly murmured, 'Come closer, my fellow mystics, we have a plan to hatch.

'" Hopefully, from my witch voice, you could tell what the direct speech was, what the thing that the witch was saying.

And the rest of the sentence will be the reporting clause.

So I would like you to pause the video now and think about the punctuation I would need to add to that speech second sentence so that it was correct.

Pause the video now.

Okay, well done.

So I have my reporting clause first, "Leaning towards her sisters," comma, there's my non finite clause to start my sentence, leaning, I-N-G verb.

"The first witch murmured," here's my comma before this direct speech, the comma comes after the reporting clause.

"The first which murmured," comma, inverted commas, capital letter, "Come closer, my fellow mystics, we have a plan to hatch." Full stop because it's the end of my sentence, inverted commas.

So reporting clause, comma, inverted commas, capital letter, speech, exclamation mark, question mark, or full stop 'cause it's the end of the sentence.

And closing inverted commas.

Okay, so for your first task in this learning cycle, I would like you to say the first few sentences of the opening.

Now, make sure you include the following; precise and ambitious vocabulary from your plan.

Remember, if you don't have a plan, you can use mine.

Fronted adverbials of place, manner.

Sorry, manner, place, and time.

So that you can start off by thinking of a fronted adverbial, and then look at your precise and ambitious vocabulary, and then start putting your sentence together.

A range of sentence types.

So don't make the, if you're going to say the first, say three sentences, try and mix it up a little bit, try and use different sentence types, including those amazing complex sentences we've revised.

You could, you don't have to, but you could use these sentence scaffolds to help you.

"Out of nowhere," that's a fronted adverbial of, that's right, place, 'cause it's telling us where.

Where, "Out of nowhere," comma, "Three," and then you could finish that sentence for me.

Here's another sentence starter.

"As they drew close to one another," comma, that's an subordinate clause starting with the conjunction as.

So that's going to be a adverbial complex sentence.

So there's a couple of ideas.

You don't have to use them, but if you're stuck thinking, "Oh, I dunno how to start my writing," you could use those sentence starters.

Remember, also use your amazing plans.

So pause the video.

We're not writing, we're just speaking.

Practise the first few sentences out loud.

Off you go now.

Well done.

Okay, so here's an example of what you might have said.

"Out of nowhere, three eerie figures appeared on the heath.

Hunching over, they gathered close with tattered robes that hung off their emaciated limbs.

As the first sinister hag drew breath to speak, the other two women trembled in excitement.

Her shrill voice, which was as piercing as a thousand needles, scattered the few ravenous crows that were circling overhead." Okay, so we can see we've got some of those elements there that I asked for.

We've got, "Out of nowhere." So we've got a fronted adverbial of place.

The next sentence starts with, "Hunching over," which is a non finite clause.

That I-N-G verb, hunching with a comma after it, hunching over, comma.

We've got another sentence starting with an adverbial clause.

"As," there's the conjunction, "As the first sinister hag drew breath to speak, comma, and then there comes my main voice, my main clause.

And finally I've got a relative clause, which is interrupting the main clause in that sentence.

"Her shrill voice scattered the few ravenous crows." But I've added some relevant information about her voice, "Her shrill voice," comma, "Which was as piercing as a thousand needles." I've got a simile in there, I'm comparing the voice to something else using as.

"As piercing as a thousand needles." So hopefully that's given you some ideas for your writing.

Okay, so now we're going to write part two of our opening.

Before we do that, maybe let's just have a quick wriggle on our chairs, or on the carpet if you're sitting on the carpet.

Maybe give your arms a wriggle, maybe give your fingers a wriggle, warm them up, ready for writing.

Maybe let's take one big deep breath in and out.

Okay.

So when we write, we always try to do these things, no matter how old we are.

We always plan and say each sentence before we write it.

Because if we start a sentence before saying the whole thing, we might get halfway and think, "Oh, actually I haven't thought this through, I don't know how to end it." So plan and say each sentence before we write it using our plans.

We use punctuation where we know the rules.

We've revised the rules today of speech punctuation, apostrophes.

All of those things are going to be really important.

We're going to showcase each sentence type we know.

Do you know how to write a non finite clause? Well, then show me, show off all those amazing sentence types you know.

Write letters neatly on the line in joined handwriting.

You're going to do amazing writing, and we want to be able to read it, so we need to try and think about our clear and neat handwriting.

And use spelling strategies to spell words accurately.

If you're not sure of a spelling, use your spelling strategies.

And finally, check and improve our writing when we think we have finished.

There's no such thing as just saying, "I'm done." We can always improve our work.

So here's the success criteria for your writing today.

These are the things that you can do to be successful.

Number one, include a fronted adverbial of place, time, and manner.

Ideally, we do all three.

Number two, I have used ambitious vocabulary to describe the witches.

Well, all of you can do that if you use your amazing plans.

Number three, I have written three different types of complex sentence; adverbial, so that's those as and when ones, non finite, the I-N-G verb ones, and relative, the which or who, to improve text flow.

And finally, I have included a speech first and a speech second sentence using my speech punctuation rules and ambitious reporting clauses.

I don't want to hear you just saying, "Said the witch." "'Upon the heath,' said the witch." Use a synonym for said, tell me how she said it.

Did she loudly shrieked, the witch? Loudly shrieked the old hag as she cackled with laughter.

Give me information and lots of detail in that reporting clause.

Okay, so let's just review.

Fronted adverbials, ambitious vocabulary, complex sentences, and speech first and speech second.

So let's look at a model section.

"Shrieks of malignant laughter pierced the shadows as three hideous hags huddled closely together, shielding themselves from the relentless storm.

Beneath their hoods, their eyes were hollows of madness, glinting in the moonlight.

While ear splitting cracks of lightning illuminated the figures' gruesome faces, they plotted and schemed.

Mutters, murmurs, moans." So let's quickly look at my success criteria and see what I've done so far.

I haven't finished yet, but let's just, it's always a good idea after a section to pause and review what you've done so far.

Okay, so I've got, "As three hideous hags huddled closely together." And I've got, "Shielding themselves from the relentless storm." So I've got there an adverbial clause starting with a conjunction as, and I've got a non finite clause starting with that I-N-G verb, "Shielding themselves." So already I'm on my way to having those three different types of complex sentence.

"Beneath their hoods." That's a fronted adverbial of place.

So I'm on my way to doing all three of those.

"Their eyes were hollows of madness." Oh, that's some lovely ambitious vocabulary.

Now, I haven't done a relative clause yet starting with which or who, and I haven't done any speech.

So that's what I'm going to try and focus on in my next section.

Oh, and I haven't done, sorry, speech first or second, I've done no speech so far.

So that's why it's always good to stop and just review, because now I know what I want to try and include in my next part.

"The first witch beckoned her sisters closer, impatiently asking, 'When shall we three next?'" Sorry, "'When shall we next meet him on the heath?' 'Soon, but not yet,' the dominant creature who was trembling in excitement replied." Now, you might have noticed I can now tick off a few more of these things.

So first of all, I've got, "The first witch beckoned her sisters closer and patiently, asking," there's my detailed reporting clause, comma, speech second.

So I can get rid of that arrow there because I've now done my speech second.

New speaker, new line, "Soon, but not yet." There's my speech first, so I can now get rid of that arrow and give myself a nice big fat tick in that box.

Now, have I got a relative clause, because I hadn't done that yet? Oh yes, look, "Who was trembling in excitement." So I can also get rid of that arrow there.

My final section is, "With wicked toothless grins, the sinister sorceress chanted," comma, here's my speech second, 'Fair is foul and foul is fair.

'" At that moment, there's my fronted adverbial of time, "The women's voices," oh, there's an apostrophe possession because the voices belong to the women, "Reached a deafening crescendo, and they disappeared in a dramatic plume of smoke, leaving the heath empty once more." So in this section, "With wicked toothless grins," there's my front adverbial of manner.

"Fair is foul and foul is fair," there's another example of speech second.

"At that moment," front adverbial of time.

"And leaving the heath empty once more," there's my I-N-G verb.

Leaving with a comma before that clause and non finite clause.

So yes, I'm pleased that I've ticked all those things on my success criteria.

So now it's your turn to write.

Remember, indent means leave a little bit of space in the first sentence to start your paragraph.

Use your success criteria, use your plan.

Good luck, I think this writing is going to be incredible.

We've done so much preparation, and you've got such amazing ideas.

So good luck, pause the video now.

Okay, so well done.

I hope you're feeling really proud of yourselves.

You should be, your writing looks amazing.

So what I'd like you to do now is just go back to the very beginning, put your finger on the very first word, and carefully read your whole opening again.

Use your success criteria to help you check that you've included everything needed in this section.

So as you go, oh, so start reading, oh, a fronted adverbial of place, tick it off.

And then think, "Okay, I had time and manner." Keep searching for that as you read.

So I'd like you to pause the video now, and very carefully and slowly read through your work and check your success criteria.

If there's something you haven't included, perhaps you could add it in.

Pause the video now.

Okay, well done.

So hopefully you can tick fronted adverbials, ambitious vocabulary, complex sentences, and speech first and speech second.

So let's summarise what we have achieved today.

So we know that we can introduce the characters in the opening of a narrative, and we can describe them in lots of detail.

We've all done that, haven't we? We can use our plans and our success criteria when writing to help us to be as successful as possible.

Writers can use direct speech using inverted commas to show what the characters say to one another.

The reporting clause says who is speaking and how they speak.

It can include synonyms for said like shrieked, adverbs like loudly, actions, adverbial clauses, and non finite clauses.

For example, you might include shrieked loudly, comma, laughing in ecstasy.

So laughing is my I-N-G verb.

Okay, I think that's enough for today.

You have done so well.

I think you should feel really proud of your incredible writing.

What exciting openings we've written together.

Hopefully I'll see you for some more learning another time.

Bye.