Lesson video

Hi, everyone and welcome to our lesson today.

We are going to be putting together all of the skills and the vocabulary that we've been working so hard on so far for this writing outcome.

We are going to be writing our letter opening today.

I'm so excited for us to showcase all of the skills and the knowledge that we've been developing over the past few lessons.

So today's learning objective is to write the opening of our persuasive letter.

This is lesson number 8 of 10, and it's our third writing outcome.

In this lesson, you will need your exercise book or paper, a pencil or pen, and your best learning brain.

Pause the video if you need to go and get those things.

Here's our agenda for learning today.

Firstly, we're going to develop our formal writing.

Then we're going to discuss and agree on our success criteria.

Then we're going to make sure we really understand the structure of our opening paragraph, and finally, we're going to write a long with me by looking at some modelled writing.

For our writing warm up today, we are going to formalise a piece of writing.

Does this piece of writing seem appropriate for the context of our letter to Sherlock Holmes? Bearing in mind the fact that we know that Lord and Lady Stoughton are very wealthy characters and their writing style would be very, very formal for this letter.

Let's read this couple of sentences together.

"Our lovely horse, Blue Knight, was taken from the stables last night! We're absolutely distraught!" Well, there is some high level vocabulary here that "we're distraught", so really ambitious word for sad or upset.

But if we think back to some of the things we know we shouldn't be including in our formal writing, is this completely appropriate? Let's just remind ourselves of what we would expect in formal writing.

Formal synonyms, no contracted words, so I should not see any apostrophes unless they are apostrophes to show possession and I should not see any exclamations.

So no exclamation marks in this piece of writing.

So let's go back and look again at that example.

Oh, okay, I can see two examples of exclamations.

"Our lovely horse, Blue Knight, was taken from the stables last night! We're absolutely distraught!" I would like you to write down this couple of sentences and decide what punctuation I should have used instead.

So I could keep this as two separate sentences or I could substitute that first explanation mark with a different piece of punctuation to mark the boundaries between those two mean clauses.

Pause the video while you do that.

Okay, everyone.

Hopefully you've paused the video.

You spent the last couple of minutes writing down this couple of sentences and deciding what my more formal punctuation should be.

Did you decide to keep the two sentences separate, or did you use a different piece of punctuation instead of that first exclamation mark to join them together and make one sentence? I decided to get rid of the first exclamation mark and replace it with a dash.

I can use a dash to join two simple sentences.

Now, if you use a comma, unfortunately that's not correct because a comma isn't used ever instead of a full stop, but you could use a dash instead, or you could just keep them as two separate sentences and use a full stop.

And then of course, at the end of my sentence, "we're absolutely distraught." I'm going to read it through together again.

"Our lovely horse, Blue Knight, was taken from the stables last night- we're absolutely distraught." That seems pretty good to me.

Do you think I'm ready to go? Oh, of course, you're right.

There's still a contraction there.

That word "we're", Hmm.

How can I uncontract that word and make it back to what it was before I used the apostrophe to contract it.

What's the uncontracted version of "we're"? Some thinking time.

Tell me if you know.

Oh, of course.

Thank you.

"We are absolutely distraught." That's better.

Let's go from the start again.

Our lovely horse, Blue Knight, was taken from the stables last night- we are absolutely distraught.

Oh, the word "lovely".

I thought that was quite a nice adjective, but I guess it's not quite precise or ambitious enough.

How else could I refer to the horse, to Blue Knight? Have some thinking time.

Maybe you could give me a different suggestion of some adjectives or maybe I would refer to him in a completely different way.

Pause the video while you write down what you think should go in there.

Okay, everyone.

Hopefully we've all paused the video and had a go at replacing the adjective "lovely" with something else.

I've gone with "champion race horse".

"Our champion race horse, Blue Knight, was taken from the stables last night- we are absolutely distraught." That's a lot more precise.

"Lovely" isn't quite ambitious or accurate enough to describe Blue Knight, but he really is a champion race horse.

We've gone from the top sentence.

"Our lovely horse, Blue Knight, was taken from the stables last night- we are absolutely distraught." And then we've carefully formalised it bit by bit, starting with the punctuation and then making the vocabulary choices more precise and formal.

Now, we've ended up with a far more appropriate sentence.

Let's read it through together.

Our champion race horse, Blue Knight, was taken from the stables last night- we are absolutely distraught.

Just one thing to remember.

Blue Knight is a proper noun.

It's a name.

So we've got to always remember that we use a capital B and a capital K for his name.

Okay, everyone.

That was such a great start to our lesson.

Now, we're going to discuss our success criteria.

What do you think our success criteria should be? Here's a little clue.

What skills have we been developing so far in this writing outcome? If you think back to our previous lessons.

Have a think.

Pause the video if you need some more time.

I'm going to reveal our success criteria now.

So we are writing the opening of our persuasive letter.

First of all, we've got to use formal vocabulary just like what we did for our warmup.

Then of course, we've learned all about using relative clauses, which are a type of subordinate clause.

So we've got to include at least one complex sentence, which has a relative clause in it.

And finally we need to include at least one flattery sentence.

In our last writing lesson, we came up with some really high level ambitious flattery sentences, which we can use in this writing today.

So of course we've got to make sure we use them.

Okay, fantastic.

Now you remember you need to have any mind maps of vocabulary from our previous lessons right next to you during this writing warmup.

I remember we might come up some really high quality flattery sentence scaffolds.

We also had a high level word bank with formal synonyms for "ask" and "help".

Make sure you've got those with you as well.

Okay, everyone.

Now, I like you to pause the video to copy down your success criteria.

Number one, use formal vocabulary.

Number two, have at least one complex sentence using a relative clause.

And number three include at least one flattery sentence.

When you're done, make sure to press play.

Here's a quick reminder of some of the word banks we've already used so far in our writing lessons.

So our formal synonyms for "help" and "ask", if you need to pause the video to write those down now, do make sure you do that.

If not, we'll just do a quick talk through.

Aid, your turn.

Support, your turn.

Assistance, your turn.

Those were our formal synonyms for "help".

Next, we're going to do some, "my turn", "your turn", on formal synonyms for "ask".

Request, your turn.

Implore you to, your turn.

Appeal to you to, your turn.

Fantastic.

Here we're going to talk about the structure of our opening paragraph.

First of all, we've got to write our address.

Who's it to? We've got to write it to Detective Holmes.

We always begin a letter with "Dear".

So "Dear Detective Holmes".

That's his title.

Next, we've got to state the purpose of the letter.

We've got to explain to our reader who is Sherlock Holmes, why we are writing to him, and then we're going to make sure that we flatter him.

I would like you now to pause the video, to copy down your structure and you can press play once you have done that.

Okay, everyone.

Look at how I've organised my learning on the screen and I would like you to make sure that your learning space at home is organised in a similar way.

So first, check you've got your structure.

Give me a thumbs up when you've got it.

Fantastic.

Then I want you to make sure you've got your word bank with your formal synonyms for "help" and "ask".

Give me a thumbs up when you've got them.

Excellent.

And finally, I want you to make sure that your success criteria is somewhere that you can see it as well.

Give me a thumbs up when you've done that.

Wonderful.

My success criteria, my structure and my word bank are all really important resources I'm going to need to use to help me write successfully.

Now it's time to write.

Give yourself a little shake, rule out your shoulders, make sure you're feeling ready.

Get those fingers warmed up.

We're writing a letter.

If we were to just put it in the postbox without having an address on it, I don't think it would get to where we want it to go.

So we've got to begin by writing Sherlock Holmes' address.

So on your page that you're going to write on, in the top right hand corner, you'll see his address.

I would like you to copy it down please.

Now, we could write 221b Baker Street all on one line.

Then a comma and the line below, Marleybone.

That's quite a tricky word to spell so make sure you copy it down carefully.

London, and then the postcode in capital letters is NW16XE.

When you've done that, we are ready to begin writing.

Pause the video while you copy down the address.

Okay, everyone, we should all have our address.

Give me a thumbs up if you've got it.

Wonderful.

So let's look at our structure.

What's the first thing we need to write? Tell me.

Oh, of course you're right.

We need to write "Dear Detective Holmes".

Detective Holmes is his title so we've got to make sure we capitalise all of those words and we use a comma afterwards.

On the left side of your page, we are going to write down "Dear Detective Holmes".

Off you go and pause the video while do you do that.

Well done, everyone.

So we've already done the first part of our structure.

We've paused the video we've written down "Dear Detective Holmes".

Do a quick check.

Did you remember to write a capital letter for "Dear", "Detective" and "Holmes"? Excellent.

Did you remember comma after the word "Holmes"? Even better, amazing.

If you've done all of those things, then you can put a little tick on your structure where you have done part one.

Now we've got to state the purpose of your letter.

Why are you writing time again? What's happened? I'm writing to you today to ask for, I'm not going to go for ask, request maybe your help in solving a mysterious crime.

What is the crime? I'm going to show you mine.

I'm writing to you today to request, that formal "ask", your assistance, it's formal "help", in solving a terrible crime.

That's why I'm writing.

Now, in my second sentence, I'm going to explain what the crime is.

"Our beloved race horse, who is my family's pride and joy, has been abducted." So that was my example.

We are doing some modelled writing so I'm going to model each sentence to you, and then you're going to maybe make by some parts of mine, but use your word banks and your best thinking brain to write your own sentences.

Now we are stating the purpose of the letter, so we are asking to, we are writing to request his support or aid or assistance, and then you need to one more sentence explain what the crime is.

Pause the video now while you do that please.

Okay, everyone.

We should all have paused the video.

If you have got two sentences written, the first one is using some vocabulary from your "help" or "ask" formal word banks to explain that you're writing to ask for his help, but in a more formal way, then great.

If your second sentence, outlines very briefly what the crime is, then excellent.

You can tick off number two.

We are not writing in detail about the crime yet because that's going to come later on.

Now, we are just explaining that the horse, Blue Knight, has been stolen.

I've been focusing a lot on my structure, but I need to also make sure I'm using my success criteria.

Have I used any form of vocabulary? Yes I have.

I've used a formal "help" word and a formal "ask" word so I've done success criteria number one.

I used the word "request" instead of "ask", and I used "assistance" instead of "help", so super.

Have a quick check.

Have you done that for yours? Number two, at least one complex sentence using a relative clause.

I've used, Oh, well actually, can you spot where I've used a relative clause? Point to it on the screen and say it out loud.

If you can see it, well done.

Who is my family's pride and joy? I've used that "who" relative clause there.

So I've met success criteria, number one and two.

Now I need to give Sherlock Holmes a little bit more detail here about where the current situation lies with solving this crime.

"Although we have notified the police, the case remains unsolved." So that's actually a complex sentence.

The word "although" is a subordinating conjunction.

"Although we have notified the police, the case remains unsolved." Now, I've given Sherlock Holmes some information about the crime.

I've explained the purpose.

I'm writing to him to ask for his support, and I'm explaining that we have gone to the police, but they're not solving the crime for me, so now it's time to flatter him.

"I have no doubt that you are the only detective astute and skillful enough to solve this mystery." So I've referred to the police, but I've also used that as an opportunity to flatter Sherlock saying, "Actually, I don't think any of the police will have the skills or the intelligence to be able to solve the crime.

You are the only one who can help us." Go back to the sentences that you wrote in our last writing lesson where you plan some incredible flattery sentences and choose one that you would like to use and one that's appropriate for this opening paragraph.

Pause the video while do you do that.

Okay, everybody.

So we should now have our opening paragraph written.

I hope you're feeling really proud of what you have done.

Now, the final step of checking our writing is to do a quick success criteria check.

Here is my example.

So I use some formal vocabulary number one, where I wrote "request your assistance".

Number two, I needed to use a complex sentence using a relative clause, and there's my relative clause, "who is my family's pride and joy".

And number three, my flattery sentence.

"You are the only detective astute and skillful enough to solve this mystery." Now, I would like you to pause the video, and number where you've met your success criteria in your writing and press play when you're finished.

Okay, everyone.

Here we are at the end of another lesson.

You have worked so hard today and I am incredibly impressed with your ability to produce such high level writing.

I am really, really proud of you.

Well done.

If you would like to, you can maybe share your writing with me on social media, @OakNational so I can see your amazing outcomes.

Well done, everybody.