Lesson video

Hi, I'm Mr. Buckingham and it's so good to see you here for today's lesson.

Now, today's lesson is an exciting one 'cause we're going to be starting writing our biography of Darwin.

So this is a chance to show off all our amazing writing skills, but also all our knowledge about his life.

I think you're gonna be doing some amazing writing today.

So let's make a start.

Today's lesson is called writing the first half of our biography about Darwin and his theory of evolution from our unit called "Charles Darwin: Biographical Writing." By the end of today's lesson, we'll be able to write the first half of our biography using a range of language features.

Now hopefully, you have a plan for this piece of writing with you from the previous lesson, and if you do, make sure you've got it in front of you.

If you don't, please don't worry.

I'll be giving you lots of help in this video.

You might also want to have access to the cohesive devices bank that comes with the additional materials for this lesson, so make sure you've got access to that as well.

If you're ready, let's make a start.

Here are our keywords for today's lesson.

My turn, your turn.

Formal tone, cohesive devices and subject-specific vocabulary.

Well done.

So a formal tone is the effect created by choosing serious factual language.

And cohesive devices are language structures that develop text cohesion.

That's the flow of our writing and the way that we connect ideas together well.

And subject-specific vocabulary is vocabulary we use when writing about a particular subject.

So here's our lesson outline for today.

We're going to be writing two paragraphs of our biography today.

We'll start off by writing about Darwin's early life, and then we'll write about his time at university and on the Beagle.

So as you know, we're going to be writing our biography of Charles Darwin using the following themes for each paragraph.

We'll have a paragraph about his early life, about university and the Beagle, about his time on the Galapagos.

And then finally, a paragraph talking about Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and his legacy, how we think of him today.

So in this lesson, we're going to write these first two paragraphs and we'll need to use certain language features.

We're going to write in the third person, mostly in the past tense.

We're going to use a formal tone and subject-specific vocabulary, and we're going to use a range of cohesive devices to connect our ideas.

So as I said, we will be using the bank of cohesive devices in the additional materials to this lesson.

So let's start off by reading the example first paragraph of a biography below.

So read it through carefully and then think about what do you notice about how it is structured? Pause the video.

Have a go.

Well done, good reading.

So I bet you noticed that it starts off with a title for the whole biography.

We've gone for Dame Jane Goodall: her Life and legacy.

Then we have a subheading for this particular paragraph, and this one's called "A passion for nature." Now, it could just be called "Early life" and that will be fine, but we've given it a different subheading to kind of inspire our reader to think, oh, what's important about Jane Goodall's early life? And we can do the same for Charles Darwin if you like.

And then we've got an indent here to show the start of that first paragraph.

So we are gonna try and replicate all three of those features in our biography of Darwin.

So before we write, it's always a good idea to orally rehearse.

That means practise saying out loud sentences we'd like to write.

Now, we're going to start off by orally rehearsing just very simple sentences.

We're not going to worry for now about how we're connecting those ideas together.

So we're going to say the basic sentences out loud that our plan represents before we think about how we can write more formally.

So here's my plan for our first paragraph about the early life of Darwin.

I could take this note, couldn't I? And I could say it out loud like this.

The six Darwin children lived in a large house called The Mount.

Very simple, but I've made it a complete sentence and that helps my brain to know, ah, we need to expand these notes out and make them complete sentences.

So I could do the same with this one.

I could say Darwin did poorly at school.

He wanted to be outside collecting specimens instead.

This time, I've made that one note two separate sentences and that is fine.

Okay, so can you now do the same thing for the complete paragraph? I'd like you to practise using your plan if you've got it or mine if you don't.

Just say the entire first paragraph out loud as complete sentences.

Pause the video and have a go.

Well done.

Really good job.

So for instance, maybe you took this note and you said his father was a doctor and his mother had a large family fortune.

Maybe you took this one and you said his mother died when he was eight and he was sent to boarding school.

Notice how for now, I've kept it fairly simple.

I've kept these sentences fairly straightforward and that's okay for now because now, now that we know what we want to say, we can think about using cohesive devices to connect the ideas together.

So here are some of the cohesive devices we could use.

We could use fronted adverbials.

We could say in 1809, Darwin was born into a wealthy family.

However, his childhood was not easy.

We could use colons to explain.

Darwin disliked school: he wanted to be outside collecting and observing nature.

We could use semicolons to join two closely related sentences.

We could say Darwin was sent to Edinburgh to study; however, he soon left for Cambridge.

We've also got our fronted adverbials however there as well.

We could use parenthesis.

We could say Darwin, who was studying to be vicar, there's a relative clause, spent most of his time on entomology, the study of insets.

We've got parenthesis with bracket as well.

We can use compound sentences using and, but, and or.

Darwin loved science from an early age and he spent hours performing experiments in the garden shed.

And we can use a whole range of complex sentences.

Here's an adverbial complex sentence.

After he completed university, Darwin joined the voyage of the HMS Beagle.

There are other types of complex sentence you might know as well.

So look, we've got a vast range of cohesive devices here we can use to connect our ideas together.

It's up to you to choose which ones are most appropriate in different situations.

So here we've got some more examples of cohesive devices being used.

Which cohesive device has been used in each example? Can you match each sentence to the device that's been used? Pause the video and have a go.

Well done, really good.

So A has some parenthesis using a relative clause.

We've got that relative clause, which began in 1831.

For B, we've got an verbal complex sentence.

We got when Darwin had completed university as an adverbial clause, starting with that subordinated conjunction when.

For C, we've got a fronted adverbials and a semicolon.

We've got Darwin hated medicine; as a result, he soon transferred to Cambridge.

That is a fronted adverbials, of course.

And finally, we've got a colon to explain.

Darwin soon transferred to Cambridge colon: he hated medicine.

That second part explains what comes before the colon.

Really well done for matching those up correctly.

So now that we've recapped those cohesive devices, let's think about how we could connect the ideas in our paragraph in a more formal way using some of them.

For instance, we could take this note and we could say this: Darwin did poorly at school: he wanted to be outside instead, collecting specimens of plants and animals he found.

So I've got a colon to explain there, and I've got a complex sentence too.

Collecting is a -ing verb, which is starting off that non-finite -ing clause to create a non-finite complex sentence.

So we've used two different cohesive devices there to connect up this information and then show our reader how it relates to each other, how it connects together.

So can you now try and say the paragraph aloud again, using cohesive devices now to connect ideas together? So this is our real formal oral rehearsal where we're practising saying what we might want to write and you might want to use the cohesive devices bank to refer to for ideas here.

So pause the video and have a go at saying the whole paragraph using some cohesive devices.

Have a go well done, really good job.

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

So maybe you took these two notes and you connected them together like this.

Maybe you said Darwin was born in 1809 into great privilege: his father was a wealthy doctor and his mother had a vast family fortune.

So there we've got a colon to explain and we've got a compound sentence using and as well.

So that really shows our reader how those pieces of information relate to one another.

Really well done if you've managed to do something similar for all the information in the paragraph.

So before we begin writing the events of Darwin's early life, which we've just practised saying, we need to write a title, a subheading, and an introductory sentence for the whole text for our whole biography.

So the title should introduce the whole biography, like we saw for Jane Goodall.

And the subheading should introduce that paragraph about Darwin's early life.

And then the introductory sentence should say who Darwin was and why he was important.

For example, you could use these two facts, the fact that he was an English naturalist and the fact that he was famous for his contributions to our understanding of evolution.

So I'd like you to pause the video now and write a title, a subheading for the first paragraph and its introductory sentence with an indent at the start.

Pause the video and have a try.

Well done, really good effort.

So here are two examples of how you might have done that.

Maybe you said Charles Darwin: his life and legacy, like we have for Jane Goodall.

And then I've written my subheading, a privileged childhood, and my introductory sentence, Charles Darwin, who is an English naturalist, is best known for his contribution to the theory of evolution.

So I used a cohesive device, a relative clause to combine those two pieces of information.

And we've got an indent there at the start of the paragraph as well.

You could have done it like this.

I've got Charles Darwin: Britain's greatest scientist? And then the subheading, Darwin's early life.

And I've written Charles Darwin was an English naturalist; he is famous worldwide for his contribution to our understanding of evolution.

So hopefully you managed to use a cohesive device to connect up those two pieces of information or two pieces of your own that you thought were appropriate for our introductory sentence.

Really well done.

Okay, so now we're ready to write the rest of that first paragraph like we've practised saying out loud.

And this is the success criteria that we're going to use to write today.

Let's read it through.

We've said, I have written the fact of Darwin's life using a formal tone in the third person.

I have included a range of cohesive devices, I have used a colon and a semicolon and I have used subject-specific vocabulary.

And of course, we can tick off our success criteria as we write.

So now I'm going to show you how you can write this paragraph.

Okay, I've got my success criteria stuck in up here and I've got my notes here to help me with this paragraph.

And I've already got the title and the subheading and that introductory sentence in my book.

And I've started off my first note here.

I've said Darwin was born in 1809 into great privilege.

So instead of privileged family, I've said into great privilege.

But I think I can connect that on to the next sentence using a cohesive device because this is why they were privileged.

So I'm going to use a colon to explain.

I'm going to say his father.

We wouldn't say dad because we're being formal.

So we're gonna say his father was, past tense because it's a long time ago.

His father was a doctor and, so I'm using a compound sentence as well.

And his mother had what? Yeah, well done.

His mother had a family fortune.

Okay, now, I've already met some of my success criteria because I've used and as a cohesive device and I've used a colon.

Let's just read it back.

Darwin was born in 1809 into great privilege: his father was a doctor and his mother had a family fortune.

Oh, I wonder if we could add a something doctor to show that he wasn't just a normal doctor, he was a very wealthy doctor.

Oh, I've just given the word there.

We could say a wealthy doctor.

And what about for this fortune? A something family fortune.

Could say big or we could say, yeah, vast would be more formal, wouldn't it? Let's go with that.

Okay, I'm really happy with that now.

Okay, let's look at our next note.

We've got six children, large house, The Mount.

So we're trying to say here that there were six Darwin children and because they had all this money, they were able to live in this large house called The Mount.

Oh, so actually, here's a chance for another cohesive device.

I could build on the last sentence using a fronted adverbial, of course.

I could say as a result, as a result of all this wealth and privilege, they were able to live in this large house.

So as a result, we could say the six Darwin children, and that's six, including Charles, remember.

So I could say as a result, the six Darwin children, I could say lived happily.

But we're not really talking about their feelings here, are we? We're talking about kind of their lifestyle.

So I could say lived.

Yeah, good idea.

I could say lived comfortably, couldn't I? Lived comfortably in a, could say big house.

Can't say vast again, big's not very formal.

So what do you think? In a, yeah, large is fine, isn't it? We're not writing a story here.

So large is fine to describe this house, in a large house.

And then I could just say called The Mount, or I could say which was called The Mount.

So now I've used a relative clause.

And where was that house? Do you remember that extra information we learned about this house, The Mount? Yeah, well done.

It was in the town of Shrewsbury in England.

So I wonder if I could add that in as a piece of parenthesis and I could do it in brackets, couldn't I? I could say in Shrewsbury, it's spelled Shrewsbury, but we say Shrewsbury and then I don't have to say in Shrewsbury in England.

I can just say in Shrewsbury, England.

And then I lock that in with a full stop.

Right, let's read it back.

As a result, the six Darwin children lived comfortably in a large house, which was called The Mount in Shrewsbury, England.

Oh, I bet you spottedit.

I need to close off my parenthesis with the bracket there.

Okay, I'm really happy with that.

Okay, let's have a look at our next sentence.

Our note says, loved science and shed/brother.

What are we trying to say here? Well done, we're trying to say that he loved science from an early age and he and his brother did lots of experiments, didn't they? In their garden shed.

So I'm going to use Charles or Darwin.

I think Darwin's more formal.

So I'm going to say Darwin loved science.

Now, I could say from a young age or from an early age, which do you prefer? Yeah, let's say early.

I think that's ever so slightly more formal.

So Darwin loved science from an early age.

And I'm gonna put that as a full stop for a short sentence there.

And then I'm going to say about the shed and his brother.

So I could say he and his brother often did what? Well done.

I could say often did experiments.

Oh wait, but did isn't very formal, is it? So we could say often.

Yeah, well done.

Often performed experiments.

Where did they do them? Yeah, well done, in their garden shed.

Would it be their garden shed or his garden shed? Yeah, theirs is better because it belongs to the whole family.

So in their garden shed works really nicely.

Okay.

And I think that's fine for that sentence.

Okay, let's read back those two sentences.

Let's have a look.

Darwin loved science from an early age.

He and his brother often performed experiments in their garden shed.

Oh, now, I've just noticed, those two sentences are very closely related, aren't they? So actually, I could connect them with a semicolon instead of separating them out with a full stop.

So then that he is going to become lowercase, H-E, isn't it? So I'm showing my reader now how closely related those two sentences are by joining them up with that cohesive device of a semicolon.

Okay, I'm really happy with that.

Okay, let's go back to our notes.

We've got now, oh, the really sad one unfortunately.

We've got his mother dying when he was eight and he went to boarding school.

So this is kind of a contrast, isn't it? We've made their lives sound lovely so far and now we're contrasting it with the very sad fact of his mother's death.

So I think I'm going to use a formal fronted adverbial to show a contrast.

So I could choose however.

So we're trying to show that things weren't always easy.

So I could say however, Darwin's childhood was what? Yeah, I could say was not always easy.

Should we just check that back? However, Darwin's, oh, hang on, Darwin's.

Here it's a childhood belonging to Darwin.

So I should have apostrophe S, shouldn't I? Now, I've joined up my S there, so I'm actually going to cross it out and separate it out with my apostrophe like this.

So however, Darwin's childhood was not always easy.

Okay, well, why wasn't it always easy? Yeah, because of his mother's death.

Now, we could use because, but I could actually use a colon here, couldn't I? To explain.

Darwin's childhood was not always easy.

I could say his mother, and I could say died or passed away.

Which would you say is more formal? I think actually passed away might be, mightn't it? So I could say his mother.

Definitely not mom because we're being formal.

His mother passed away when he was, when, another cohesive device, when he was only eight.

And I'm gonna write eight with letters instead of the number because it's a number of 10 or below.

Okay, and then our last fact here is gonna be for the boarding school.

So that's kind of a result of her dying, isn't it? So I used as a result up here as a fronted adverbial, of course.

So I think I could use a different one here.

I'm going to say consequently.

What happened? Yeah, he was sent to boarding school.

Okay, so we've used that fronted verbal, of course, to show how that information of going to boarding school related to his mother's death.

Okay, I've started a new page because we've got one last detail to do here.

We said here he wants to be outside collecting instead of being in boarding school.

So what's the reason we are talking about this fact? Well, it's surprising, isn't it, that someone who went on to discover amazing things actually did quite poorly at school.

So I think it's important that we say that to our reader.

So I'm going to start off by saying Charles did poorly.

No, let's use performed again.

We could say Charles performed poorly at school.

Now, we could use another colon here, but we've already used two.

So instead, let's use a different cohesive device.

I think I could use a non-finite -ing clause.

I could say preferring.

So I've used the -ing form of that verb prefer.

How can I finish this sentence now? Charles performed poorly at school, preferring, yeah, to be outside and then I can say collecting.

Maybe we've got a chance for some subject-specific vocabulary here.

Collecting what? Yeah, specimens, isn't it? So we could say collecting specimens in nature.

Let's just check that back.

Charles performed poorly at school, preferring to be outside collecting specimens in nature.

Okay, I'm really happy with that.

Let's just read through our whole paragraph to check that we've met our success criteria.

I'm going to go from where we began.

I'm not gonna do the introductory sentence.

So we said Darwin was born in 1809 into great privilege.

His father was a wealthy doctor and his mother had a vast family fortune.

As a result, the six Darwin children lived comfortably in a large house, which is called The Mount in Shrewsbury, England.

Darwin loved science from an early age.

He and his brother often performed experiments in their garden shed.

However, Darwin's childhood was not always easy.

His mother passed away when he was only eight.

Consequently, he was sent to boarding school.

Charles performed poorly at school, preferring to be outside collecting specimens in nature.

So let's have a look.

Have we used a formal tone and the third person? Yes, we made lots of choices, didn't we? Where we were more formal instead of being informal.

We chose more formal versions of a word.

We've definitely used lots of cohesive devices.

We used some fronted adverbials, of course, didn't we? We used a formal fronted adverbial.

We used some parentheses as well.

We've used at least one colon and at least one semicolon.

And right at the end there, we snuck in specimens as some subject-specific vocabulary.

I'm not going to tick that one off just yet 'cause we only did the one.

And in this part of our biography, we won't see so much of that because Darwin isn't yet doing the science, is he? This is about his early life, his childhood.

Okay, now it's your turn.

You're going to write the rest of this paragraph about Darwin's early life.

I want you to use your success criteria and your plan.

If you don't have a plan, you could wind back in the video to see mine and of course, refer to that bank of cohesive devices for ideas about how to connect your notes together into complete sentences using different cohesive devices to connect ideas in different ways.

So pause the video and have a go at writing this paragraph.

Fantastic effort, well done.

So here's an example of the first part of the rest of that paragraph.

Now, notice I don't have an indent here because of course, we already started the paragraph with that introductory sentence, so I'm continuing on from there.

So let me read it to you.

I've said Darwin was born in 1809 into great privilege: his father was a wealthy doctor and his mother had a vast family fortune.

Consequently, the six Darwin children lived very comfortably in a large mansion, The Mount, in Shrewsbury, England.

Here, Charles loved performing experiments with his brother, burning chemicals and growing crystals in the garden shed.

So I've got a formal tone here.

I, for instance, used performing here instead of doing, and I know it's third person because I'm saying Charles instead of I.

Then I've got a range of cohesive devices.

For instance, I've got consequently as a fronted adverbial, of course, I've got The Mount as parenthesis and brackets and I've got burning starting a non-finite -ing clause there.

I haven't used a semicolon, but I do have a colon here to introduce an explanation of what made them so privileged.

I haven't got any subject-specific vocabulary so far, which makes sense because we're talking about his early life, which isn't really very specific to him.

It could be describing almost anyone at this point.

Let's look at the rest of the paragraph I've written.

I said, however, Charles's childhood was not always easy.

His mother died when he was only eight and he was sent away to boarding school soon after.

Charles performed poorly in many subjects at school, preferring to be outside exploring nature and collecting items he found, such as eggs, fossils, and insects.

So again, I've got that formal tone, for instance, poorly instead of badly.

I've got a range of cases of devices.

I've got however as a formal fronted adverbial.

I've got and to make a compound sentence.

And I've got preferring for another non-finite -ing clause.

I've got here at the end some parenthesis in bracket.

And again, I've got a colon I've used here to introduce an explanation.

And again, we haven't used subject-specific vocabulary so far, and that is fine because we could use it in the next paragraph that we're going to write in a moment.

So fantastic work so far writing about Darwin's early life.

Let's move on to the second paragraph we'll write in this lesson.

So we can now move on to writing that second paragraph about Darwin's time at university and the voyage of the Beagle.

And again, we can say the basic sentences out loud first using our plan.

So here's my plan for this paragraph, and I could take this note and I could say this sentence, Darwin collected over 5,000 specimens and he made thousands of pages of notes of his observations about living things.

So can you practise using your plan to say the entire second paragraph here out loud as complete sentences? And like we did before, don't worry too much about cohesive devices yet, or making it sound formal.

For now, let's keep it simple and remind ourselves what do these notes stand for? What complete sentences do they represent? Pause the video and have a go.

Well done.

Really good job.

So perhaps you took this very long note here and you said it as several sentences like mine.

I think I've used five sentences here.

I said Darwin's father sent him to Edinburgh to study medicine.

He didn't enjoy it.

He was then sent to Cambridge to study to be a vicar.

He didn't enjoy his academic studies.

He focused on entomology instead.

Now, I bet that you've noticed there that I haven't used any cohesive devices at all really.

I've just said what does this note represent in simple sentences? Now, you probably used some cohesive devices without even thinking about it, and that's great, but I've just used really simple sentences here to remind myself what this note meant.

So now we can think about how we can connect these ideas together using cohesive devices.

So if I take these simple sentences that I've just said out loud, I could make them into more formal writing using cohesive devices.

So now I've said when he had finished school, Darwin was sent to Edinburgh University to study medicine; however, he did not enjoy this subject.

As a result, he was then transferred to Cambridge where he studied to be a vicar.

So I've taken my simple sentences I said out loud, and I've connected them using cohesive devices to make it more formal as I would do in writing my biography.

So you probably noticed I used a complex sentence there using when, I had a semicolon to connect two complete sentences, and I had two fronted adverbial, however as a formal fronted adverbial to show contrast and as a result as a fronted adverbial, of course, to show cause and effect.

All of these devices help to show the relationships between those pieces of information and help my readers to understand how they relate to one another.

So can you now try and do your oral rehearsal for this paragraph? Try and say the paragraph out loud using cohesive devices to connect the ideas together.

Pause the video and have a go.

Well done, really good effort.

Again, that's going to be so helpful to you when you come to write in a moment.

So maybe you took just these couple of notes here and you said something like this.

Although Darwin did not enjoy his academic studies at Cambridge, he enjoyed spending time focusing on his favourite hobby of entomology, the study of insects.

So there I've used a complex sentence using although, and I've got some parenthesis in bracket as well.

Really well done for your oral rehearsal there.

Great job.

So now it's your turn to try and write this paragraph.

Again, you're gonna need to write a subheading and of course, an indent at the start of the paragraph and use your success criteria and the plan to write, referring to that bank of cohesive devices for ideas about how to connect your notes together.

Pause the video and have a try at this second paragraph.

Well done.

Fantastic job.

So here's an example of how the start of this section could look.

So I've got my subheading, an incredible voyage, and my indent.

Let me read it to you.

I've said once he had finished school, Darwin was sent to Edinburgh University to study medicine.

However, he did not enjoy this subject.

As a result, he was transferred to Cambridge University where he studied to become a vicar.

Although he did not enjoy his academic studies there, he enjoyed spending time focusing on his favourite hobby of entomology, the study of insects.

So let's check our success criteria.

I've definitely used a formal tone and the third person.

For instance, he was transferred instead of he was sent.

I've used a range of cohesive devices, for instance, I've got once to start, an adverbial complex sentence.

As a result, as a fronted adverbial, of course.

And here some parenthesis at the end.

There's other ones too.

I've got my colon and semicolon as well.

This time I've focused on the semicolon.

So I've here connected two complete sentences together with the semicolon.

And here I've got some subject-specific vocabulary this time.

I've got academic studies and I've also got entomology as well in there.

So I've met my success criteria.

Let's look at the final part of this paragraph.

I've written, when he left university in 1831, Darwin was invited to join a voyage of scientific discovery on the ship HMS Beagle.

During the voyage, which lasted five years, the Beagle circumnavigated the globe.

While he was on board, Darwin collected over 5,000 specimens of plants and animals, and he made thousands of pages of observations about what he'd seen.

So again, we've got our formal tone.

Darwin was invited instead of just Darwin joined.

We've got our cohesive devices like when for an adverbial complex sentence and parenthesis here in brackets and a relative clause here.

This time, I haven't used the colon, semicolon.

That's fine.

I've already used plenty, but I've got some subject-specific vocabulary, such as specimens that I can see, circumnavigated and observations as well.

So really well done for your effort there in that writing.

I'm sure you've met your success criteria as well.

Great job.

So let's summarise our learning in this lesson.

We've said that when we write a biography, we use a formal tone, keeping to the third person and using a range of subject-specific vocabulary.

We said that we can use a wide range of cohesive devices to connect ideas together, and that when we write, it is helpful to already rehearse our sentences first.

Then we can try out different pieces of devices we may want to use to connect the ideas together.

I'm really impressed with your work in this lesson.

I hope you're really pleased with the writing that you've produced.

Fantastic effort and I hope to see you again in a future lesson.

Goodbye.