Lesson video

Hi there, I'm Mr. Buckingham and I'm so glad you've decided to join me for today's lesson.

Today we're going to be continuing writing our narratives based on the climax of, "A kind of spark" By Elle McNicoll, and today we're going to be including flashbacks in our writing to make them really engaging for our reader.

I think we're gonna produce some fantastic work today, so let's get going.

Today's lesson is called, "Writing the next two sections of the Climax, including a flashback." And it comes by unicorn, "A kind of spark" Narrative writing.

By the end of today's lesson, you will have written a third person flashback section of the climax of, "A kind of spark" And a first person section showing Addie's speech.

Now for this lesson, you will need to have access to the plan that we wrote in a previous lesson.

So if you haven't done that lesson, I suggest going back and completing it first.

You'll also need to have with you your summarised version of Addie's speech that we wrote in another previous lesson.

So again, if you haven't done that lesson, you may want to go and do that now.

If you've got both your plan and your summarised version of Addie's speech, then let's get going.

Here are our keywords for today's lesson.

The first person is the I or we perspective, and a flashback is a jump to a time or event that happened earlier in the narrative.

The third person is the he, she, it or they perspective, and oral rehearsal means saying the words you plan to write out loud in order to make the writing process easier.

Here's our lesson outline for today.

We're going to start off by spending some time preparing to write, looking at our plans and discussing how we can turn them into complete sentences.

Then we'll spend some time independently writing a flashback and a first person section of our narrative.

Let's make a start.

So we've now written the first section of our narrative that covers part of the climax in, "A kind of spark" And we know that the part of the climax we're focusing on is Addie's speech where she finally persuades the village to get the memorial built for the witches.

So we know this is the basic structure of our text.

We've written a first person present tense section in role as Addie.

Then we're going to have a flashback in the third person past tense.

Then we go back to the first person, present tense, then a flashback again, and then we'll finish in the first person present tense.

Now we know that three of our sections are in the first person present tense in role as Addie, and those are describing her speech.

So Addie, we are in role as Addie and we are saying, or Addie is saying what she's seeing, what she's observing, what she's hearing, what she's feeling, what she's thinking as she performs and makes that speech.

And then two of our sections, our third person past tense sections are our flashbacks where we're describing Maggie's story at the time of the witch trials.

Now we are not taking part in that story ourselves.

There's no I perspective there.

We are using the third person to say what's happening to Maggie in those two parts of our story and our two flashback sections.

So hopefully now you're really clear on what your different sections of your story are, and you should have planned out five paragraphs in our planning lesson as well, and hopefully you've got that plan in front of you now so you know exactly the structure that you're following.

So we know the sections where write in role as Addie will sound quite different to the flashbacks.

So an example of a flashback section.

"Maggie hung her head: how could she possibly argue against them? For hours, for days, they refused to let her sleep, pushing her awake when her head nodded." So we can see here, this is a section where Maggie's on the verge of confessing to witchcraft.

And in these flashbacks we're writing about Maggie, and as we said, we're using the third person and the past tense.

And then we have our sections in role as Addie.

Here's one.

"I'm sure I see the hint of a smile - a real smile - on his lips.

I let out a sigh, stepping away from the microphone." So here we are writing in role as Addie and we're using the first person and we are maintaining the present tense.

We're staying in the moment because we're trying to describe what does Addie see, observe, feel, hear, think, and say in the moment as she speaks.

So our reader should feel really involved in that moment of Addie speaking because we are using the present tense.

So can you put these sentences in the order they should appear in our text, from one to five? Pause the video and have a go.

Well done, good job.

Hopefully you started with this one.

"I sit on the edge of my seat, clenching my hands in my lap." This looks like Addie speaking in role before the start of her speech.

Then we have this sentence.

"Maggie woke with a start to a loud banging on her door." This must be part of our first flashback to Maggie being arrested by the villagers because they accuse her of witchcraft.

Then we have this one.

"Breathing deeply, I lean towards the microphone and begin." So this is Addie in role describing the start of her speech.

Then we have another flashback.

""I confess" She croaked, "I confess."" So this would be right at the end of that second flashback, wouldn't it? Where Maggie is finally confessing after being worn down over many days to the crime of witchcraft.

And then we finish in the first person.

"As I rush back to my seat, more and more people begin to clap." So here we've got Addie speaking in role, describing the reaction to her speech and what she does directly after it.

So we can see that structure of going first person, third person, first person, third person, and finishing in the first person.

Really well done if you've got those in the right order.

So which of these passages are appropriate for including in our flashbacks? Think about the features we said would be included in a flashback.

Which of these passages use those features? Pause the video and have a think.

Well done, great thinking.

So A says, "Instantly she was pushed down to the ground.

A crowd of men had barged past her." We're talking about someone here, aren't we? We were saying, "She was pushed to the ground" Not, "I was pushed to the ground." So this is in the third person and I've got pushed as a past tense verve.

So it's in the third person and the past tense.

So yeah, that one's appropriate for a flashback.

We're describing what happened to Maggie.

B says, "As Mr Macintosh stands up, the room falls quiet and I feel a lump in my throat.

Can I really do this?" Well, I see, "I" There, so this is first person and we're saying, "Stands up" So it's present tense.

So no, this is Addie speaking in role.

C says, "I gulp" So I straight away know that this is the first person and the present tense.

So this isn't a flashback, it's Addie speaking in role.

And D says, "She tried to argue." So, "She" shows me that this might be the third person, and, "Tried" Shows me it's the past tense.

We're describing things happening to Maggie.

So yes, that's appropriate for a flashback.

Really well done if you spotted those two, good job.

So today we're going to be writing the next two sections of our narrative.

We know we've already written the first section, which is in the first person present tense, where we're in role as Addie describing probably what she feels like before she gets up to speak.

So we're going to today, first of all, write the flashback in the third person past tense to show one event from Maggie's story.

Then we'll go back to the first person present tense to describe the next section of Addie's speech.

So we're going to go today third person, and then first person.

So remember, we finished our first section with a trigger that leads into our flashback.

It triggers the flashback.

So for lots of us, that will have been the word, "Maggie" Written on Addie's hand.

And we use this as a way in to a change of perspective because we're doing a big switch here, aren't we? From first person to third person, which might be confusing for our reader.

So using that trigger helps to signal to our reader at change is coming and to help our readers understand, "Ah, it was because Addie looked at that word, "Maggie" On her hand that we are now hearing Maggie's story." And that shows the reader that we're going to see a switch in perspective, and that helps them to understand why we're going from first to third person and from present to past tense.

So have a look at your plan.

What are your next two sections about what's going on in your first flashback and what's going on in your second part of Addie's speech? Pause the video, have a look at your plan and have a look at what's happening in your next two sections.

Well done, good work.

So, Sophia says, "My flashback paragraph is going to focus on the moment Maggie is arrested and I'm going to describe her being woken up by villagers who accuse her of witchcraft." Then Sophia says, "My second first person paragraph" So this is paragraph three of our whole narrative, "Is going to focus on Addie starting to speak and growing in confidence as she continues.

I'll be including direct speech to show what Addie says." Then Sophia will probably also include direct speech in her flashback, won't she? To describe what the villagers say as they wake up Maggie and as they accuse her of witchcraft.

So there'll be direct speech in both parts, but we need to remember, we have to say what Addie says in her speech, which is why we've got that summarised version of Addie's speech with us as well as our plan.

So here's Aisha's plan for her flashback section.

She says, "Maggie woke - loud banging." Ah, so she must be describing the same section as Sophia.

"Come out and face the law, witch!" That must be the villages talking.

"What was happening? Stumbled to the door and opened it.

Pushed to ground and the crowd pushed past." There was a man holding a torch.

They shouted, "Take the witch!" "Why were they calling her a witch?" And then, "Hands lifted her up and she cried out." So a really distressing section of our story.

We're going to have to try and show that kind of dark, scary, intense mood, aren't we, when we write? So we can see lots of different elements in the content here.

What are we talking about? We can see things Maggie and the villages do.

We can see things that happened to Maggie, we can see things Maggie and the villages say, and we can see questions Maggie asks herself.

Let's see if we can find these elements in Aisha's plan.

What about the things Maggie and the villagers do? Well, we've got Maggie stumbling to the door and we've got a man holding a torch.

That's something a villager does.

Things that happen to Maggie.

Ah, well she's pushed to the ground and the crowd pushes past her.

Things Maggie and the villagers say.

Well Aisha hasn't planned for Maggie to say anything, but she's got the villages saying, "Come out and face the law, witch!" And, "Take the witch!" And then we've got questions Maggie asks herself.

We've got what was happening and why were they calling her a witch? Notice how we haven't written, "Why are they calling me a witch?" Because we're writing in the third person so we're saying this is a question Maggie asks herself, we're not saying, "I am asking myself this question" Because we're not writing in role as Maggie, we are writing about what happens to Maggie.

So think about these different elements we've just discussed.

Can you see examples of them in your own plan? Pause the video and have a chat with your partner about where you spot these different elements in your plans.

Well done, good job.

Having all these different elements really helps our reader understand really clearly what's going on in this situation and have a really clear mental image of what we're describing.

If you've missed any of those elements, don't panic.

You can always add them in during your oral rehearsal later or during your writing at the end of this lesson.

So don't worry, we can make sure we've got all those elements later on.

Now, here's Aisha's plan for her first person section.

I'd like you to pause the video and have a read of that plan and then decide which of the following has Aisha included in her plan for this section.

Does she have things that he does, things that he sees, things that he thinks, things that he says, and a trigger to the next flashback.

Can you find them in Aisha's plan? Pause the video and have a look.

Really well done.

I think we've got all these elements.

Let's find them in Aisha's plan.

We've got things Addie does.

For instance, clearing her throat and gulping.

We've got things she sees.

For instance, she sees their faces and she sees their eyes on me.

Things she thinks we definitely have.

She's got things like, "I can do this." She realises, "I have to persuade them." There's definitely things she says.

Notice how Aisha's put a few pieces of direct speech from her summary speech into this plan.

She's got, "Hi everyone, I'm Addie and I'm autistic.

And because of that I see the world differently" And, "Long ago, people like me were accused of witchcraft, we might have been locked up or worse." And she finishes with a trigger to the next flashback, which you won't be writing today, but it's included in the plan all the same, which is to look at her hand again.

So Aisha's got a really detailed plan here.

Notice how she hasn't done all her direct speech in one place.

She's broken it up with observations that Addie has, things Addie thinks, things Addie feels, things Addie sees.

And that makes it varied and interesting for a reader.

Really well done if you spotted those.

Now we've got some sentences here from Aisha's writing today.

Based on the language used in them, would each of these sentences be found in the flashback or the first person section of Aisha's writing? Pause the video and decide for each sentence.

Well done, really good job.

So A says, "A man stood over her." I can tell this is past tense and third person, so this is from the flashback.

B says, "I gulp; I know I have to persuade them." This is Addie doing and thinking things.

This is in the first person section.

C says, "Because of that I sometimes see things a little differently.

I continue.

." I can tell This is Addie saying things in the first person in the present tense.

This from our first person section.

And D says, "As rough hands lifted her up, she cried out in fear." This is a very sad ending, isn't it? To our flashback section because we've got poor Maggie being lifted up by the villagers.

Really well done if you spotted the differences there.

Good job.

So in both of the sections we're going to write, our flashback and our first person section, we are of course going to want to include the full range of sentence structures and different punctuation that we've learned all the way through this year.

And both paragraphs will also make use of lots of direct speech.

So in the flashback we'll hear the villagers and Maggie talking to each other, and in the first person we'll probably hear the start of Addie's speech maybe in a few different sections like we saw in Aisha's plan.

So we'll need to remember to punctuate our direct speech correctly.

Now, there will also be some differences between our two sections, between our flashback and our first person section.

So in our flashback paragraph, we're likely to be using more formal language and more dramatic description because we're trying to paint a picture for our reader of what is happening to Maggie.

And in our first person paragraph, we're speaking as Addie in the moment, so we're likely to use slightly more informal language.

For instance, we might have contractions like, "I'm" We might have simple sentences or shorter sentences and we might have sentences that start with, "I" Because Addie is speaking in role in the first person.

So there might be some language differences even though we'll be trying to use the full range of sentence types and punctuation that we know in both of our sections.

So what sentence structures and punctuation do you notice in these examples? Pause the video and see what language features that you've learned throughout the year you can spot in these passages.

Have a go.

Well done, great job.

So we might have seen some fronted adverbials of manner and time, "In confusion" And, "Instantly" for instance.

You might have seen a colon to introduce an explanation.

"Instantly she was pushed down to the ground: a rough crowd of men had barged past her." What comes after the colon there explains what came before.

You might have seen some non-finite -ing complex sentences which contain a non-finite -ing clause starting with a verb in its -ing form.

For instance, "Breathing deeply" Is a good example.

And you might have seen some direct speech there using inverted commas, remembering to follow the rules for punctuation made there.

Really well done if you spotted all this.

So what makes the flashback example here more formal than the first person example? Can you spot any in the language that's been used? Pause the video and have a think.

Well done, good thinking.

So you maybe spotted that the first person example uses more simple language, including these informal words like, "Hi" And, "I'm." It still uses a range of sentence types.

It's still interesting, it's still engaging, it's still varied, but it uses slightly simpler language, slightly more informal language.

And then the flashback example at the top uses more formal descriptive language like this fronted adverbial manner, "In confusion." It would be unusual to include a fronted adverbial manner like that in a first person piece of writing where we're speaking in the moment as Addie.

So we're going to try and use slightly more informal language in our first person paragraphs like you spotted here.

Well done.

So let's do our first task for this lesson.

As you probably know, before we write, it's really helpful to already rehearse our ideas to help us to know what we want to write.

So you're going to look carefully at your plan and think about the language features we've discussed throughout this lesson and that you've learned during the year.

And I want you to try saying the two sections of your plan aloud as sentences using a range of these different sentence structures, and make sure you switch perspectives and tense for the first person section using more informal language as appropriate.

So start off by saying your flashback section and then switch tense and perspective to say your first person section.

And don't worry if this isn't perfect, you'll obviously have much more time to think when you're writing.

The purpose of oral rehearsal is not to get everything perfect, it's to get some ideas ready in your brain so that when you come to write, it's much, much easier.

You're not thinking of everything for the first time.

Instead, you are building off some basic ideas that you came up with when you orally rehearsed.

So if we do this step of the work really, really well, it'll make our writing in a moment so much easier to do.

So pause the video and have your best attempt at doing an oral rehearsal of both of your two paragraphs.

Have a go.

Fantastic job, well done.

That's gonna help you so much when you come to write in a moment.

So here's a short sample of Aisha's oral rehearsal for each of these sections.

I'm not gonna show you the whole thing for each one, I'll just give you a flavour of what Aisha's thinking and saying aloud.

So here we start off with the flashback.

"Maggie awoke with a start: Someone was banging on the wooden door of her tiny cottage.

before she could even get out of bed, she heard a loud, grating voice.

"Come out and face the law, you witch!" It bellowed.

The law? A witch? What on earth was happening?" So I hope you spotted here the wide range of punctuation and sentence structures that Aisha's used.

She's got an adverbial complex sentence, you've got a colon to introduce an explanation.

She's got direct speech, she's got questions asked to Maggie.

So really good oral rehearsal there from Aisha.

Here's another example of Aisha's oral rehearsal, this time for a first person paragraph.

It says, "Standing up straight, I clear my throat and I look out at the sea of faces.

I can do this, I can tell my story, I'm doing it for Maggie.

"Hi everyone" I say, trying to sound more confident than I feel.

"I'm Addie and I'm autistic.

I don't have autism, I'm autistic" I continue." So again, we've got direct speech, but notice how here we've got slightly more informal language, some really short sentences starting with I in some cases, but we've still got a variety of sentence structures like our non-finite -ing complex sentence to start.

So in both these oral rehearsals, we've used a range of sentence structures.

We've used slightly more informal language in the first person section.

Really well done if you managed to do the same.

So, we've prepared to write by discussing lots and orally rehearsing our work.

Now we're ready to write our flashback and our first person section.

So we're ready to write these next two paragraphs of our climax.

And when we write, we always try and do the following things.

We need to try and plan and say each sentence before we write it.

We might be thinking that through in our head, not out loud, but we're still thinking our sentence before we write it down.

And we're going to try and use punctuation where we know the rules and we've discussed some different punctuation we might use.

And we want to showcase each sentence type we know, the whole range of language features that we've learned across the year.

We want to try and write letters neatly of course, on the line in our best joined handwriting, and to use any spelling strategies we know to try and spell words accurately.

And of course we can check and improve our writing when we think we've finished.

You might want to read each sentence back when you put the full step at the end to check it's exactly what you had in mind when you started the sentence.

And here's the success criteria we're going to be following today.

It says, "I have used a wide range of sentence types and punctuation.

I've written a flashback in the third person in the past tense using more formal language, and I have written a first person paragraph in role as Addie in the present tense using some more informal language features.

And I've included a trigger to a second flashback.

So at the end of our first person paragraph, we're gonna try and pop in a trigger there.

And of course we can tick these off as we write.

So now it's your turn to write these next two sections and show off all your English skills.

Make sure that the model text, if you've had it anywhere near you, is now no longer visible.

And I want you to be referring constantly back to your plan.

You've got great notes there to help you to write really well today.

And of course you can change ideas that you came up with in your oral rehearsal.

Hopefully that oral rehearsal gave you some basic ideas which you can now really refine and build on as you take your time to write these two sections.

Pause the video and have a go at writing your flashback and your first person section.

Fantastic job, well done, really good effort.

Now, I'm not going to show you another example here because you've already seen the model text previously, but let's follow some steps to make sure that we've met our success criteria.

I'd like you to read your work out loud to yourself now, the whole two paragraphs that you've written today.

And as you do that, make any small changes that you can see need to be made just by looking through it quickly as you read aloud.

And then I'd like you to find the places where you've met the success criteria and tick off the criteria if you haven't done that yet.

So pause the video here and follow those three steps to make sure we've done our best effort at meeting these success criteria.

Well done, great job.

So hopefully you've been able to tick off all four of these success criteria in your pieces of writing today.

Fantastic work.

Let's summarise our learning in this lesson.

We've said that in this part of the climax.

Let's summarise our learning in this lesson.

We've seen that in this part of the climax, we've shown a switch in perspective from third person to first person.

And we've used the third person in past tense to describe a flashback to Maggie's story using a range of sentence types, vocabulary and punctuation.

And we use the first person in present tense to show added experiences in the next part of our speech and we also used some more informal language in this section.

And we found that referring to a plan and orally rehearsing ideas prior to writing, that means before writing, helps us to do our best work.

Really well done for all your effort in this lesson.

You've done a fantastic job and I hope you're really pleased with the two paragraphs that you've produced.

I'd love to see you again in the next lesson to complete our narrative.

Goodbye.