My name's Ms. Halladay.

Thank you for joining me today.

I absolutely can't wait to hear all your amazing ideas and suggestions.

So let's get started.

Welcome to today's lesson in our writing master's unit.

Today's lesson is called Presenting Opinions with Flair.

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to identify how model answers meet the ambitious success criteria.

But first, here are some key words that you'll need in order to unlock today's learning.

We have defy, jockeying, meagre, loathsome and to implore.

Let's take a look at what some of these keywords mean.

I'll give you a few minutes just to read some of the definitions as they pop up.

Here's our lesson outline for today.

We're going to start with learning cycle one, where we'll look at writing with flair and how we can really refine our writing skills.

What does writing with flair look like and what does it entail? Then we'll move on to learning cycle number two, where we'll look at a model response and evaluate its success against our success criteria.

Let's start with our first learning cycle, writing with flair.

So what is writing with flair? Well, first of all, having flair simply means an ability to do something really well, exceptionally well.

When we apply that term to writing, having flair means being deliberately stylish and really creative with our linguistic choices.

So our choice of language, punctuation and structure.

I'm going to show you an example of an opening and I'd like you to think about what gives this flair.

I'll read it to you first and then you can have your discussions.

Let's talk about superheroes.

Everybody has their favourite.

As young children, we look up to the likes of handsome and noble Superman; we marvel at limb-flexing Mrs. Incredible; we purr in admiration at the achievements of Black Panther, and let's be honest, we've all optimistically stared at an inanimate object in vain hope that the sheer power of our mind might persuade it to shuffle two tentative steps towards us.

I'm going to encourage you now to pause the video and think for a few moments about what it is that makes this such a flairful opening.

Amazing discussions.

Well done.

I'm really impressed with what you've come up with.

Let's gather some of our ideas together.

So first of all, the opening.

"Let's talk about superheroes." This is a really intriguing and engaging opening because it's opening up a conversation.

Let's talk.

We're being invited into this chat about superheroes.

It's also quite an abstract opening.

We're not quite sure where this is going.

Okay, but we're definitely interested to find out and next we get this, "Everybody has their favourite." This is a really thought provoking statement and it actually involves us as a reader because at this point we start to think about, well, who's my favourite superhero and what do I think about superheroes? So in this really quite simple statement, we are opening up a dialogue with our audience in this case, and here we start to see some of those really intelligent choices of vocabulary coming in.

We see the handsome and noble Superman.

We marvel at limb-flexing Mrs. Incredible.

And this is an intelligent choice of vocabulary because as we know, Marvel is one of the key producers in superhero movies.

So again, this is an intelligent choice of verb for that reason.

Similarly, we see this, "purr in admiration at the achievements of Black Panther." And that verb purr here really reflects the feline nature of the superhero Black Panther.

We also see that really effortlessly engaging tone.

Let's be honest, we've all done this.

We look up to this, that again creates this sense of community and it engages us, okay? It captures our attention because it, we realise we're part of this conversation.

So here we really see that flair coming through from the very beginning of our piece of writing.

So what is writing with flair then? Well, writing with flair means using really provocative and precise language that is manipulated to elicit multiple desired responses from the reader or the audience.

Now it's quite a lot to unpick there.

So let's have a look.

First of all, that provocative and precise use of language.

Well, provocative means thought provoking language that causes a really strong reaction or response from our reader or audience.

When we talk about precise language, we're talking about choosing the most appropriate and the most specific word possible.

And that may not always be the most sophisticated word or the longest word, but it's the word that will really mean, will choose to convey our meaning effectively.

We're manipulating language, we're choosing language for effect.

We're choosing it for a purpose.

And actually we're not just looking to elicit one response from our reader.

We're looking to elicit multiple.

We're looking to help our reader or our audience feel a variety of emotions, not just the one.

And these emotions and responses, they're desired.

We plan them into our writing from the very beginning depending on the purpose of our piece of writing.

So let's think about these responses a little bit more detail.

I'd like you to discuss what kinds of positive and negative reactions do you think that you could aim to elicit from your reader? And I'd invite you to pause the video and have a little bit of a discussion before we share our ideas together.

Fantastic.

I heard some amazing ideas being thrown around the room there.

Let's share some shall we? So some of these reactions could be positive, so feelings of motivation and happiness, maybe some excitement or amusement or they could be more negative, feelings of despair and heartbreak, sympathy or anger.

Let's check your understanding.

What is the aim of writing with flair? And I'd like you to select the most appropriate response here.

Do you think that it's A, to respond to the task that you've been given? Is it B, to express your thoughts and opinion? Or do you think that it's C, to elicit a desired response from your reader? And again, if you just pause the video, take a few seconds to write down your answer and then we'll come to share answers together.

Congratulations to those of you that said C, you are absolutely right.

It is to elicit a desired response from your reader.

Well done.

We know that those responses and reactions are really important, but how do we get them? Well, to elicit the desired responses from our reader, we should be looking to be using a really consistent tone of voice with character.

Now, when we talk about consistency, what we mean by that is the fact that it should sound like the same person has written it throughout.

It wouldn't be very convincing, would it, if it sounded like two different people had written the piece of work.

Now, in order to do that, we've got to make sure that our writing is of the same really high quality throughout to make sure we have that consistent tone of voice.

When it comes to characterising our voice, we've got to have that really clear sense of narrative voice of whose perspective our writing is from.

And that may not always be your own voice.

You can choose to write from a different perspective.

We're also looking for those structural devices used for effect, such as mirroring, where we reflect elements from the beginning of our work again at the end, creating that cyclical structure.

We're also looking for provocative and precise use of language, just like we saw in our exemplar from earlier, including a wide range of those really all important rhetorical devices that you've all learned.

We're looking for intentional use of punctuation and grammar.

Accuracy is always important, but we've got to use that punctuation and grammar intentionally as well to enhance meaning.

And lastly, and most importantly, we've got to be using one viewpoint and one perspective.

We are not looking to give a balanced view here.

We're not looking to weigh up both sides of the debate as that is not very convincing.

We're looking to just really passionately argue one side of the debate.

Let's check for understanding again.

True or false.

In order to be convincing, you should always present both sides of the argument.

Now, I'm going to invite you to pause your video again here and think about whether you think this is true or false.

Fantastic, amazing work.

You're absolutely right.

It is false.

Now let's see if you can justify your answer.

Again, I'll show you the options and then I encourage you to take a few moments just to think about which justification you would choose for this answer.

Well done.

It is B.

We know from before that it is far more convincing just to present one side of the argument so that our reader knows that we're really passionate about it.

Onto another aspect of writing with flair, possibly my favourite aspect.

Writing with flair will often use humour or sarcasm to attract, engage and influence the reader or audience.

But this comes with a little bit of a caveat.

We can only use humour in a context where it is appropriate.

And in order to establish whether it's appropriate, we need to look to the form, audience and purpose of the task.

So here's an example.

I'd like you to imagine that you are writing a letter to your head teacher, you're outlining your views on a widespread bullying problem in school.

Would you use humour here? Why or why not? Remember, in order to establish whether you can use humour or not, you need to think about the form, audience and purpose first.

I'd now like you to pause the video for a few minutes and discuss, do you think you could use humour here before we share our ideas? Some really great discussions there, and I loved how deeply you were all thinking about that.

All important form, audience and purpose.

Congratulations to those of you that identified that the form here is a letter as that is the type of writing that we will be doing.

Well done to those of you that identified that our head teacher is the audience for this piece of work as this is the person who will be reading our writing.

And finally, our purpose here is to outline our views.

So we are looking to persuade our head teacher to pay attention to this really growing bullying problem.

And of course it is not appropriate to use humour here because we know that bullying is never an amusing topic, but also that a letter to our head teacher needs to be formal and that using humour in this context would be quite inappropriate given the audience and the form of the topic.

And now another check for understanding, which two of the following tasks might you use humour in? Remember to think about that form, audience and purpose before you answer.

Is it A, an article in your local magazine about the worst places you've eaten at? Would it be B, a letter to your local council about food waste? Or might you use humour in task C, a speech to your classmates about school uniform? Again, I'm gonna ask you to pause the video while you have a little bit of a think about what you're going to put as your answer.

Great effort.

I'm delighted to see that most of you did put A and C.

Of course we could use humour in task A.

We're just talking about the worst places we've eaten at.

So we could really use humour to enhance this piece.

Really exaggerate how awful these menus were.

We could also use it in C as speech to our classmates about school uniform.

And here, there's a real opportunity to use humour because we've got those shared experiences with our classmates of everybody has those things that they do and don't love about school uniform.

So we can really capitalise on that there and create the humour from the shared experience.

However, B, as we know, food waste is not a humorous topic and therefore we cannot be using humour.

We're also writing to our local council.

So that would need to be much more formal and therefore again, humour would not be appropriate here.

Another little check for understanding to see if you've been listening, which two of the following might you use in order to write with flair? Would you use a changing tone of voice throughout? Would you use humour where appropriate? Might you use intentional punctuation and grammar for effect or would you use the most sophisticated words you can think of? Again, if you pause your video for a few seconds, you can get your answers together.

Fantastic work and congratulations to those of you that put B and C.

You are absolutely right.

We should be using humour but only where appropriate.

And also that all important intentional use of punctuation and grammar for effect.

We're going to move on to our first practise task now of the lesson.

I'm going to show you a piece of text and I would like you to rewrite it, making sure that only one viewpoint is presented.

Here's your text.

Cycling to school is the the most time efficient and enjoyable way to travel.

Even though some days it may be faster to catch a ride with your folks, cycling is always advisable as it reduces your time travelling and gives you those oh-so-sweet moments of solitude before the chaos and carnage of the school day.

However, travelling by car means preserving your perfect hair -- no more messy up-dos for you.

There's no need for helmets in cars.

That's what seat belts are for.

Travelling by car means arriving in and with style.

I'd like to invite you to pause the video and have a go at this task.

You'll need to identify which aspects of the two paragraphs are inconsistent in their perspectives and you'll need to fix those in order to present this as just that one viewpoint.

So take the time now to pause and have a go at rewriting.

Well done.

I can see loads of heads down and hands writing furiously there.

So great effort.

Here's what you could have written.

Cycling to school is not always the most time efficient mode of transport, but it's always the most enjoyable.

It is indisputable that some days it may be faster to catch a ride with your folks, but cycling is always advisable.

So you'll see there that we've swapped that sentence.

We've acknowledged that actually sometimes it might be faster to get a lift in the car, but we've said that actually cycling is preferable.

So we're presenting that one viewpoint, which other vehicle allows you those also sweet moments of solitude before the chaos and carnage of the school day? Furthermore, cycling reduces traffic, more time to spend on perfecting your do for the day.

Why get tangled in traffic when you can spend those extra 20 minutes smoothing and styling your tresses? For a knot-free route and day, choose to cycle.

So as you can see here, there's just that one really clear perspective presented.

Onto our next learning cycle.

We're going to be evaluating the success of a model response.

Now you are going to read a response to the following task.

Canteen staff are often mistreated and undervalued.

Students should serve themselves.

Write a speech to your fellow students arguing your views on this matter.

Now we know that before we do anything, we've got to establish that form, audience and purpose.

So I'd like you to discuss what is the form of this task? What is the audience or who is the audience for this task? What is the purpose of this task? And once you've established those three things, you can start to think about what reaction or response would you want to elicit from your audience here and do you think that you could use humour? So I'm going to invite you to pause the video again, have some discussions, jot some ideas down before we share our ideas together.

Well done, some really fruitful discussion there.

Firstly, well done to those of you that identified that the form of this is a speech, that the audience here is our fellow students and that we are really looking to argue our views here as our purpose.

Now in terms of reactions, we might be wanting to elicit some sympathy and some real appreciation for canteen staff and all the really hard work that they do.

Now we're looking to argue our views on students serving themselves.

So here we're looking to really motivate our audience to want to serve themselves at lunch.

Now we could use humour here and actually I think this will be a really good opportunity for you to use some humour because there's those shared experiences.

You are a student and you are talking to other students, okay, we all have things about school that we love and that perhaps we're not as fond of, and here's your opportunity to really capitalise on those to create the humour.

So let's read the full exemplar response.

As we read, I would really like you to look out for that consistent tone of voice with character.

Those use of structural devices for effect such as mirroring.

We're looking for that really provocative and precise use of language, including the use of rhetorical devices.

We're looking for that intentional use of punctuation and grammar and of course, the presentation of only one viewpoint.

I'm now going to read the model answer.

Make sure you're looking out for where it meets that ambitious success criteria.

Let's talk about superheroes.

Everybody has their favourite.

As young children, we look up to the likes of handsome and noble Superman.

We marvel at limb-flexing Ms. Incredible.

We purr in admiration at the achievements of Black Panther.

And let's be honest, we've all optimistically stared at an inanimate object in vain hope that the sheer power of our mind might persuade it to shuffle two tentative steps towards us.

In the last year alone, I have read two endearing, but somewhat disturbing reports of young children encouraging spiders to bite them in misguided attempts to transform into superhuman, gravity-defying versions of themselves.

Let's face it, we love superheroes, but fellow pupils, I am here today to defy popular belief and to call into question everything you thought you knew about them.

We've all heard the phrase, not all heroes wear capes.

Well, it's true.

Real superheroes do not wear capes.

Real superheroes wear aprons, lanyards and serve chicken and chips, but only on Fridays.

Real superheroes, ladies and gentlemen, are our canteen staff.

Save your looks of disbelief friends, and ask yourselves what a superhero does.

Saving children, clearing up their mess of super villains, running through burning buildings, putting out fires and the rest.

Now ask yourselves, what do canteen staff do? Do they not save starving children from malnourishment and fatigue? Tick.

Do canteen staff not tirelessly clean up the mess of others? Check.

Do they not extinguish numerous social fires between rival groups of popular it girls every day? Affirmative.

Canteen staff do nothing short of the work of heroes.

Yet despite their valuable and let's face it, essential work, they are still the most underappreciated, undervalued and disregarded members of staff in our schools.

It's high time they were given the break from our ingratitude that they so desperately deserve.

In other words, it's high time that pupils serve themselves.

Don't be horrified.

I anticipated screwed up faces and snots have disgust, but rest assured, the reality of you serving up your own chicken and chips is far more civilised than the greedy grabbing of food by greasy little unwashed fingers that you are envisaging.

We can be polite, we can use cutlery.

There'll be no "Lord of the Flies" style feasting in this canteen.

We'll draw up a rotor.

Year sevens can take the Monday salad shift.

Year eights can take the Tuesday taco shift, year nines can have fish and chips Wednesday and so on and so on until Friday where we can take over the chicken and chip shift.

Quiet in your rumbling stomachs.

Of course you'll still have time to eat your own chicken and chips and more.

You've all craved the crunch of just one more chicken goushon, haven't you? Well, here's the opportunity to have it.

We'll halve the portions, we'll halve the serving time.

What does that equal? Correct, more chicken and chips for us and still plenty of time to eat.

If we serve the Friday food, we can ensure that despite Mr. Smith letting us out late for lunch, there will always be plenty of food left.

It's genius.

You can kiss goodbye to meagre scraps and please, "Sir, I want some more." From now on, it'll be us dishing the dishes.

Those of you rubbing your greedy little hands together, you are right to.

Because serving our own food doesn't only offer us this glaring advantage, but many others too.

We've all complained recently about the insolence of some of the younger pupils.

They've been jockeying for dominance all year.

This is the ideal way to teach these loathsome little opportunists some manners.

I would bet my chicken and chips that the vast majority of them have never lifted a finger in their life.

I bet they've never made their tired mothers a cup of tea or cleared their brother's plate after dinner.

In voting for them to serve a shift in the canteen, we are doing our community a service and what feels better than philanthropy? We are teaching them manners and humility, to know their place, to contribute.

These are valuable life lessons that they can carry forward and brag about on their CVs when they eventually leave school.

We're doing them a favour and if we happen to humble a few arrogant and entitled students in the process, then who's worried? We'll be killing two chickens with one chip.

I sense that many of you are starting to come round to the idea.

So one question remains for me to answer.

If the canteen staff aren't serving food, then what will they be doing? It's a great question, one that I've considered carefully.

We don't want to put the canteen staff out of work.

They too have families to feed and bills to pay.

With this question in mind, I present to you the greatest advantage of this proposal.

We redirect the canteen staff to local food banks.

Instead of working a shift serving sniffling year sevens and gabby year nine girls, the canteen staff can serve the people in our community who need it the most.

That is the stuff of heroes, don't you think? As much as many of us appreciate the fantastic work the staff do, we don't need them to serve us.

We can do that ourselves.

The most vulnerable and often isolated members of our community, however, who rely on food banks as a means of survival, do need a hero right now, a real one.

We can provide them with just that.

So if you now recognise that through selflessness and a little sprinkle of community spirit, we can free up our canteen staff to do genuinely heroic work.

I implore you to vote in favour of serving ourselves at lunch Through serving ourselves we can serve to serve others.

Who's with me? Let's check for understanding.

Which three words best describe the tone of this piece? Is it A.

Lighthearted, B.

Informal, C.

Serious, or D.

clear? I'd like to invite you to pause the video for a few seconds just to think about your answer.

And well done to those people that selected that actually it is A, B, and D.

The tone is lighthearted, informal and clear.

Well done.

Let's look at the model answer in a list bit more detail.

You'll notice I've put some sections from the model answer onto the screen for you and highlighted a key section in green.

I'd like you to read this again and look at the section in green and then think about, well, how has the writer created humour here? What have they done? And also, how does this section make us respond to the speaker here? I'm going to invite you to pause the video so you can gather your thoughts and jot down some ideas, some great discussion and really well done to those of you that notice that actually the humour here is created through that mutual experience.

The speaker is drawing on common experiences within school, common enjoyments, common frustrations, things that all students can relate to in order to create that humour.

It's really effectively used here.

It also makes us like the speaker, and that's not to be underestimated.

We are never convinced by somebody that we don't like.

So actually getting your audience on side is a really important part of persuasive writing.

Another check for understanding.

Show me what you've understood.

The writer compares canteen staff to superheroes.

This is an example of what? Is it A.

A simile, B.

Imagery, or C.

an extended metaphor? Again, I'd like you to pause the video here and jot your answer down.

Massive well done.

I've seen loads of answer Cs there.

Well done.

You are absolutely right.

It is an extended metaphor.

Congratulations.

Back to the model response.

Again, two more paragraphs here, one new question.

How might the effect change if we change the order of these words to undervalued, disregarded and underappreciated? Have a little think about that.

Pause the video and gather your ideas together.

Now, this was such a difficult question.

So a massive well done if you manage to notice that actually the alliteration of the U and the U, it makes the text read more smoothly.

In addition to that, some of the more keen eye of you might have noticed that actually the three words in this triple increase in severity, nobody likes to feel underappreciated, but I definitely don't like to feel disregarded.

And you might notice that actually the words progress in order of severity.

And that is a really quick and effective technique that you can use when writing triples to really create a harsh and condemning tone and be really convincing and persuasive because creating that more condemning tone is really what's helping and elicit sympathy for those underappreciated and disregarded canteen staff.

So it's a really critical technique here used to elicit that sympathy from our audience.

Another section of our model answer to look at.

Again, if you look to the the part in green and then think about how has the writer created a sarcastic tone here.

Again, pause the video, gather your thoughts, and we'll come back together to share.

I can tell how much you've learned already just based on those discussions.

Well done.

So here, some of you might have said that we see the intentional placement of these dashes and that actually that really slows down the pace of the piece and emphasises the qualities that the younger students do not have.

And this is essentially in creating that really sarcastic tone.

By emphasising those individual components of the sentence, we're really creating that harsh, condemning tone when talking about those younger students that our speaker clearly doesn't like.

Another check for understanding.

The writer creates humour by doing what? Is it using lots of exclamation marks? Is it using scenarios that they know their audience can relate to? Or is it playing around with commonly known phrases and slogans? And here I'd like you to choose two responses.

Fantastic work and well done to those of you that chose B and also C.

Well done, fantastic work.

Onto our last practise task of the lesson.

You will, in a minute, be completing a blank copy of this table, but first I wanted to walk you through an example.

You'll notice that this table has three columns.

We've got the success criteria, we've got an example and we've got an explanation of the effect.

Now the success criteria column has been populated for you just with our success criteria from earlier in the lesson.

What I'd then like you to do is go back to your model response and pick out the best example of this success criteria being fulfilled that you can find.

So here, what if we were looking for structural devices? We might have pulled out the fact that this extended metaphor that compares canteen staff to superheroes is established in the very beginning and then returned to at the end.

Now, in terms of explaining the effects, we know that this is called mirroring and we know that it gives the piece cohesion as there's this really clear thread that runs throughout the piece.

It also facilitates the clear shift in tone that we see from quite lighthearted to much more serious at the end when we're talking about the impact that our heroes can have on the community.

So it's really effectively used there.

And now it's over to you.

You'll be completing your own blank table using some of the questions that I've popped in this table below to help you.

So like I said at the beginning, your success criteria column is pre-populated.

So you don't need to come up with those.

What you need to do is come up with the example.

So here are the questions that I've given to help you out and I hope that you'll find them helpful.

And what I'm going to invite you to do again is pause the video for a few minutes while you jot down your answers and examine that model answer in a lot more detail.

I can't wait to hear what you come up with.

I am seeing some very full tables and I'm really impressed with those.

Some massive well done guys.

Okay, so let's have a look at some answers.

For our provocative and precise use of language, you might have picked out this amazing phrase, greedy grabbing of food by greasy little unwashed fingers.

I love this phrase because the alliteration and the assonance that is created by that repetition of the gr sound, it really reflects the greed here by speeding up the rhythm of the piece.

Okay, we can almost hear that desperation, the desperate grabbing of food just with a gr, okay, it's really effective there.

In terms of that consistent tone of voice with character, you might have pulled out the fact that each paragraph is actually started by a prediction of what the audience might be feeling at that given moment in the speech.

So quieten your rumbling stomachs.

And this is really effective because it shows the familiar setting of the speech.

We know that it's written to fellow students and actually this is really humorous and creates that really lighthearted tone because the speaker is drawing on shared experiences with the students.

And finally, our intentional use of punctuation for effect.

I think that this sentence really exemplifies that we are teaching them manners and humility -- to know their place -- to contribute.

And as I've just modelled there, the dashes really elongate the sentence and emphasise the key ideas here, and that is fundamental in creating that really sarcastic and condemning tone.

Well done if you picked out any of those examples or gave any of those explanations because that was a really hard task, so well done.

Let's summarise the lesson.

We've got to remember that when writing with flair and presenting opinions, we've always got to present that one-sided argument.

We are looking to adopt a consistent tone of voice with that clear sense of character.

We are looking to choose really thought provoking and precise language to convey meaning effectively.

We are also looking to structure our writing so that it enhances our argument.

So we're looking to choose a structure which supports our aims. Our use of punctuation and grammar should be accurate, but it also should be intentional.

Again, we're looking to enhance our argument using it.

And finally, my favourite, we are looking to use humour or sarcasm where it is appropriate and we in order to determine that we look to the form, audience and the purpose.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

I absolutely love teaching you and hearing all of your amazing suggestions.

Make sure you complete your exit quiz to test your knowledge, and I can't wait to see you again for lesson two in our Writing Masters units.

See you later everybody.